People focus rightfully on Fox News as the main media outlet to carry the message for Trump and Republicans, but there is also a very large adjacent pundit class with figures like Joe Rogan, Lex Fridman, and Tim Urban who basically have built a permission structure for conservatives to see themselves as liberal and to utterly ignore how extreme the Republican Party is.
Who else would you put in this group? I'd also say that many of these people don't even know that they're doing this.
@mattsheffield
One of the clearest examples hereof which I've seen of late is with the pundits in the New York Times and even WaPo - your Jonathans Chait, your Pamelas Paul, your Dowds and Brooks and whathaveyou.
Casting themselves as centrist or even liberal, their written words nonetheless handwave, excuse or both-side the abuses and extremism so thoroughly displayed by the Republican party -- and of the billionaires they serve. It's hard to think of them as anything but disingenuous.
@theogrin I think several of those people you name are actually conservative and always have been. But because what calls itself "conservatism" in the US is repellent reactionaryism that many people do not realize they are on the right.
I'm not sure that Chait fits that diagnosis, but I think the others do. And Brooks has been smart and honest enough to admit that he is conservative.
@mattsheffield Brooks, at least, knows he’s conservative, and I think Douthat probably would as well if you forced him to put a label on it, along with a few others. French certainly wouldn’t deny it.
There ARE some genuine progressives in the mix, of course, but I personally suspect the majority have convinced themselves their neoliberalism is really a sterling example of “independent thinking.”
@ronhogan Definitely Brooks and Douthat would describe as conservative.
Among the neoliberals, I think they probably would not even realize that they are neoliberals and that globally, neoliberalism is regarded as a conservative ideology.
We see the same things after the threat of RRR sadopopulism failed despite three weak to ass-whoopin' level elections for them.
Threats? Realization that going in on this means killing a party? Money men who own the newsmedia dont want their taxes raised?
a RRR government in DC
back then it was more understandable, but after 18, 20, and 22, its a bad horse to bet on unless ??? is in play
R in the white house
R led senate
R led house
Matthew Sheffield
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Jennifer Kayla | Theogrin 🦊
Robin from Colorado 🇺🇸🇺🇦
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