Thread by @joshtpm

I think a lot of people are actually canceling their wapo subs. It’s not like the usual round of claims. But I think the brand damage to the Post may be greater than people realize and go beyond the near term hit on subs. A big slice of America is living in a climate of ….

2/ bewilderment. It’s basically Blue America or the more politicized part of Blue America and it’s tied to the role of billionaires in public life, Trumps role in our public life. The recent revelations about Elon Musk have confirmed the way that he now exists way outside …

3/ even the most limited sort of public accountability. This isn’t new info. But Musk has raised it to the level of a kind of performance art. You can’t not see it. Just as you can’t not see the fact that Trump is running around the country acting like a degenerate fascist madman …

4/ and the country may be about to send him back to the White House. In this climate of bewilderment there is both an intense desire or demand to find the people or institutions which follow the set of rules that govern how these people think American society is supposed to …

5/ operate. And in the frenzied intensity of these final days of the 2024 election there’s a spiraling impatience spilling into rejection of those that don’t. It’s been suggested to me that Bezos’s decision may be based on more than just fear. I don’t know if that’s true.

6/ But whether it is or not, Bezos’s decision here has the whiff of decisions or deals made off stage, out of public view. A lot of the country is convinced that a second Trump presidency will push America into the kind of elective autocracy that we see in country’s like …

7/ Russia, Turkey, India. That brings with it all the expected curtailments of press and other civic freedoms. But here we seem to see billionaires who own press operations on the side maybe deciding it’s easier to pull up stakes in advance, get out of the way of the freight …

8/ train, lay down in advance before Trump has even won the election. Again, out of view, off stage, a surrender in advance without even the formalities. We talk a lot about the crisis of public trust in America. But when we do we’re generally talking about Red or …

9/ Disaffected America. Lack of trust in the press, in elections, in scientific or expert authority, etc. But there is this other crisis of trust in institutions and people that’s the province of Blue America. And Bezos with this one decision has stepped right into it.

10/ Probably without even realizing it. Frankly, I’M surprised at the intensity of the reaction. But seeing it it makes sense. It’s a whose side are you on moment, sides which transcend partisan politics. And Bezos has rung a bell I’m not sure he can unring.