Thread by @Mr_Electrico

On the matter of #FreePress, from me back in December of 2015 on the only subject which Donald Trump and Liberal bloggers have in common.

"Trump understands what we Liberal bloggers have long understood -- that the Beltway media gatekeepers are not guardians of the truth...

...or the integrity of journalism, but are instead the deeply corrupt priesthood of the American political system, who live large off the awesome and terrible power of a Holy Fraud which they themselves have invented.

Extravagantly rewarded, deeply inbred, openly contemptuous of the people it is supposed to serve and as thoroughly rotten as Catholic Church at the time of Martin Luther, the Beltway media has used the one power it actually has...

...control of the "respectable" teevee cameras, editorial pages and radio stations -- to enforce its baroque Both Siderist parody of actual journalism.

#FreePress
For as long as candidates and public figures have depended on the clowns who control the cameras, the high priests of the Beltway media have been able to position themselves as the indispensable intermediaries between The People and those seeking to fleece The People.

For decades, they have been the absolute arbiters of Seriousness and Sin and the dispensers of excommunication and expiation. Play their game, follow their Both Siderist rituals and make the appropriate sacrifices and...

..., as the highly successful careers of lifelong lying sociopaths like Newt Gingrich and craven frauds like David Brooks have shown, the kingdoms of the world can be yours.

But defy the Holy Church of Centrism, break the Both Siderist commandment and refuse to keep the Sunday Shows sacred & you are marginalized, ignored, cast into the irrelevant wilderness of occasional MSNBC Saturday morning Liberal ballast guest appearances or (horrors!) blogging.

For decades, the Holy Church of Centrism has maintained its hold on power by capitulating more and more openly to the barbarians -- acceding to the whims of the Genuinely Insane Right...

by playing them off against an Imaginary Unreasonable Left through a series of more and more transparently ludicrous false equivalences.

The whole, unholy contraption only holds together by an unspoken agreement among the primates of the church to never call attention to the absurdity of the bullshit they all must sling every day to keep up the charade.

And to never, ever give the microphone to anyone who may point out that their empire is a sham and its petty emperors have no clothes.

#FreePress

This depraved collusion between a political party which has become ever more openly fascistic & a Beltway media which has become ever more committed to pretending it isn't happening has provided the perfect opening for someone like Trump to walk right into the main cathedrals...

... of the Holy Church of Centrism, dick-slap its archbishops in the face, and dare them to call him out over it.

Trump is from money and fame and media, so he is not awed by the wealth and trappings of the Holy Church of Centrism. He understands that beneath the lights and makeup and costumes, it's just another wh*rehouse plying the world's oldest profession:

providing it's clientele with titillating fantasies in exchange for money. And broadly speaking there is nothing wrong with that profession: an honest sex worker providing a needed service at a fair price is no less honorable a honest carpenter, or baker or author.

But it is a world where everyone is playing a role that depends on the temporary suspension of disbelief. After the clients are gone, everyone understands that Chantelle the Naughty Nurse, Margueritte the Submissive Librarian and Joe the Stud, go back to being...

...Diane the single mom, Julie the student trying to work her way through a marketing degree at the University of Illinois, and Ernie the kinda schlubby divorced guy who works at Allstate and gets lonely sometimes.

The difference is, after the lights go on and the janitors roll their cleaning carts in at the Holy Church of Centrism, everyone goes right on pretending that Chuck Todd is a Serious Journalist, Bill Kristol is a Brilliant Thinker & David Brooks is a Wise Public Intellectual.

And they have gotten away with it for far, far too long.

/end thread/

driftglass.blogspot.com/2015/12/donald…

#FreePress