"A 2022 analysis of media coverage of crime in New York City paints a damning picture of how the news distorted people’s perceptions. Toward the end of the analysis, a graph compares two values: actual shootings in New York City and mentions of shootings in local media, from 2019 to the end of 2022. For most of the graph, the two are uncorrelated at best; spikes in shootings often produce no change in coverage, and coverage sometimes spikes even as shootings remain flat. In 2022, in the run-up to a crucial federal midterm election, however, the picture becomes much worse: Shootings themselves remain almost completely flat, but the coverage of them soars, hitting levels about three to four times higher than during previous periods with similar levels of gun violence. As Politico noted, these “blood and guts headlines” helped Republicans claim one open New York House seat and take three more from Democratic control."
The New Republic
First, there is a pattern here we've seen before. The favorite scaremongering topics of conservatives, crime, immigration, gender transitions (or queer stuff), regardless of the real underlying conditions of these issues, spike dramatically in news stories in the run-up to elections.
This is a criticism of Dems and liberals made by Ezra Klein: scolding people for hyperventilating about rising crime when the actual numbers, murder rates, for instance, are actually going down is alienating voters. People vote on vibes, not statistics or scientific measurements.
Klein's basic point, trying to give him his due, is Dems should take people's concerns about crime seriously and not condescendingly present them with contrary evidence suggesting their feelings aren't real. Note how much this resembles, though, a similar postmortem take about the economy. People were frustrated by inflation and the price of eggs and alienated or dismissive of journalists or academics condescendingly pointing out to them facts to the contrary.
Honor thy voter "vibes," is the cautionary tale. Okay, but it still comes back to electorate views. If Trump vs, really, Anybody, is nothing but a Humpty Dumpty 1.5% +/- choice about the price of eggs, paying no heed at all that he also promised a bunch of forced deportations and DEI purges and disregard for human rights and violent crackdown stunts, this could be some minimum threshold of civic education under which a democracy fails.
I mean, there was no red pill, blue pill mystery here. A lot of the postmortems read as desperate efforts by journalists to try to rationalize or justify electing Trump. Biden was too old. Harris abandoned the progressives. The Dems are always weak and in disarray.
So more bad Dem messaging to blame, say the pundits, but what can the Dems really do as a minority opposition? Oppose, I guess. Call out the crimes and abuses of the public trust, which the republicans of course will drape in a bunch of phony patriotism. Report the crimes and abuses until people hopefully figure out this crackdown fascist government thing is not a growth leader but a crypto bubble bust away from people wondering how anybody ever thought Grump or Lusk had some good economic ideas?!
But even such resistance as this feels rare and privileged. Many, myself to a degree for sure, have concluded already, reasonably, best to keep your head down, take care of business, say nothing, avoid contact with violent fascists.
Anyway, if Grump's assault on government workers-- again, like the police in Jan 6-- and now all civil servants destabilizes the economy I'm guessing we'll learn soon enough whether this is what his supporters voted for.
We know they voted for forced deportations (57% support, last I saw). Now we'll see how they feel when the collateral damage, legal citizens swept up in the profiling of "illegals," the stress of any forced deportation process at the scales they're boasting about, 10, 20 million, crazy scales like he's Mao Zedong dismissing the casualty rate of the Great Leap Forward. We'll see now how far they'll go.
But I don't know how far that will be. Reviving Guantanamo is not encouraging, to be sure. But, again, republican voters did by all indications vote for forced deportations. Regrettably but true. But they really didn't vote for this Project 2025 fascist purge of government workers and the Deep State, DEI, did they? Some probably would have, the cracked libertarian (and thin and tenuous, I've heard) thread connecting Steve Bannon to the Tech Billionaires. But Grump was campaigning against any association with it, obviously responding to his base with something more than empathy. And now, fuck it, 'I was always about the Project 2025, it's a blueprint of how to save our country from the radical leftists and the creeping socialism that would restrain the animal spirits vital to great success in business and celebrity and, well, really, in being a president, like me. Thank you very much."
I know, I'm making Grump sound like the last Elvis. The final horror, predator Elvis!
Anyway, the brazen audacity of trying to sell the country on a retro 19th century great powers imperialist struggle for global supremacy (that did clearly culminate in two gigantic and devastating world wars, by the way) with Big Tech leading the investment rich vanguard way in a 21st century global struggle based on in reality impoverished corrupt kleptocratic petrostates that only allow "fake news"/State propaganda like Hungary and Russia or Saudi Arabia or North Korea. Where's the South Park movie on this Big Lie?
Impossible to make-up and some day a Shakespeare's sister and/or a future Marlon James is going to write a hell of a Pynchon-like masterpiece novel about all this. Hope I get to read it.
