A few days ago I began toying with the idea of starting a new blog/Substack/podcast/TikTok/Whatever the cool kids are doing these days.
I was thinking of calling it "Benefit of the Doubt" or maybe "Good Faith" or "Most Generous Interpretation" or maybe "Let's Assume For The Moment This is True".
Because, I don't know if you've noticed, but there this is a performative tic you will find in almost every Big Time Resistance Podcast, especially Big Time Resistance Podcasts that are larded with recently-former Republicans. Hosts and guests who feel the need to address the most ludicrous and lurid MAGA nonsense by taking both sides of the argument, then making the best case possible for the ludicrous and lurid MAGA nonsense: a case which MAGA morons are themselves incapable of making.
From a recent Bulwark podcast:
Tom Nichols: Again, trying to... here... let me bend over backwards to be fair to Donald Trump.
Tim Miller: Which doesn't feel... that's not usual on the Bulwark podcast.
Tom Nichols: This is also steel manning the case, right?
In case you are unfamiliar with the term, from the internet:
Steelmanning, the opposite of straw manning, is a rhetorical technique where you present your opponent's argument in its strongest possible form, even if that's not how they initially presented it. It involves actively trying to understand and articulate the best possible version of the opposing viewpoint before offering a rebuttal.
Every time you hear this sort of thing (and once you start listening for it, you will hear it everywhere) ask yourself, WTF? Or, by way of a more genteel rejoinder, I turn to this quote from the movie Lincoln:
At all rates, whatever must be proven by blood and sacrifice must have been proved by now.
What, in all the wide world, is there left to "prove" to anyone?
I mean, they can't very well debate us Liberals, first, because we're now more or less on the same side, and, second, we always show up with a sample case full of very inconvenient receipts from the Before Time that, frankly, intimidate the shit out of our Never Trump "allies".
But they can't debate the MAGA mob, or the Nazi podcast scum that shape the conversation on the Right either, because what's the point? Persuasion is dead, because the mindless recitation of lurid and ludicrous lies that passes for "argument" on the Right has shown itself to be completely impervious to reason.
And if they think they're doing this for that always-just-over-the-horizon, mirage audience of imaginary disinterested, disengaged "Undecided" voters? I hate to break it to you guys, but those people do not listen to your podcasts, or any political podcasts.
What these Big Time Resistance Podcast are starved for is what they have trained for their whole professional lives: epic, public struggles over Big Ideas. And now that the era of Big Ideas has been indefinitely interrupted on account of MAGA Fascism for Dummies, I think maybe they run through this empty exercise over and over again because they're lonely and nostalgic.
They want to be Clarence Darrow, stepping into the arena on the side of Reason, Justice and Modernity. Facing down an ignorant mob, an unjust law and impossible odds in the stifling heat of a Dayton, Tennessee courthouse 100 years ago this month. And, sure, maybe they lose the Scopes trial in court, because there was never any way to win it in that court anyway, and the fundamentalists of Dayton, Tennessee are unpersuadable rubes. But History Shall Record that they were vindicated in the much wider court of national public opinion thanks to the acid pen of H. L. Mencken and the first live courtroom broadcast on the new medium of radio.
Or they're back on the high school debate team, and they're so unstoppable, the debate judges invoke the Mercy Rule halfway through their opponent's opening speech, then awards them the win, two ears and the tail, and a perfect "30" speaker points for logic, evidence and presentation. Then they want to take that score sheet home to Mommy and regal her with stories of how awesome they were as she bakes them ginger snaps and sticks the judge's score sheet on the fridge for the whole world to see.
But there are no debate judges anymore, and no Mommy to pat them on the head and tell them how proud she is of their mighty victories. And in case you hadn't noticed, the ideological descendants of the unpersuadable fundamentalist rubes of Dayton, Tennessee now have their own political party. They run the entire federal government, they have billionaires financing their madness and mayhem, and they dominate both the old media of cable news and Hate Radio, and the new media of Substack/podcast/TikTok/Whatever the cool kids are doing these days.
And yet, this "Benefit of the Doubt" garbage continues. So, as a crafty yet economically anxious blogger living too damn close to the poverty line for comfort, I figure, what the hell. Given the annual revenues of Big Resistance Media...
... ChatGPT scanned from multiple sources:
Crooked Media is a privately held company, so it doesn't publicly disclose detailed financials. However, various industry sources collectively suggest that its annual revenue is in the tens of millions, likely ranging from $10–30 million USD.
... ChatGPT scanned from multiple sources:
Estimated revenue of The Bulwark: $10–12 million/year, driven primarily by subscriptions (~$9M) and YouTube ad revenue ($1.8–3.6M), not including other smaller income streams.
... and given how much of their content is scrapped from the critiques of itinerate Before Time Liberal bloggers, why not isolate this one thing they all do -- this thing for which thousands of people are apparently willing to pay -- and monetize it!
But before approaching potential backers to for startup money to build a thing that will machine gun audiences with dozens of 30 second "Let's give Trump the Benefit of the Doubt" TikToks and YouTubes per day, it behooved me to understand exactly who is willing to pay for this schlock, and why they are willing to pay for it.
And, sadly, what I found they were mostly the same credulous Liberals who were willing to shower the Lincoln Project with tens of millions of dollars to crank out ads that tickled their ganglia but didn't move the electoral needle one micron.
People who don't expect big wins anymore, because deep down they know there are no big wins to be had. Just small wins at the margins, which sometimes is enough, and sometimes is not. So they turn to Big Resistance Media for the pro wrestling version of the debates they used to watch on teevee during the Before Time.
...and all that's left of those stately, blessed pleasures are the third-hand vicarious thrills of, "This is what the MAGA mopes woulda said is they had one brain between them, and this is how I would have soundly beaten them!"
People for whom the here and now is so incomprehensible and scary, that they will settle for theatrical gladiatorial reenactments of past glories, scripted and safe within the confines of the Big Resistance Media bubble. "Hail Caesar! We who are about to debate the merits of higher marginal tax rates salute you!"
But no one in the MAGA provinces hears them or cares what they have to say because it is an article of faith among the denizens of the MAGA provinces that all Democrats are American-hating, baby-killing commies and all news that isn't their news is Fake News.
And those chimeral Undecides are too busy with NCIS, Law & Order: SVU, The Rookie, Chicago Med, Survivor, Grey's Anatomy and Young Sheldon to notice or care.
No comments:
Post a Comment