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So. We need to talk about some really troubling things at the heart of this Mueller Report situation, because it's just a complete breakdown on every level and the ramifications couldn't be larger. 1/
First of all, this is just another in a long line of Trump's attempts to slip his way past consequence. It isn't a hard pattern to notice. He denies it, lies, gets caught, denies it a little less, lies in a different way until he gets caught again. This is how he works. 2/
If you remember, this is what happened with the Trump Tower meeting denial with Trump Jr. You lie, you get caught, you lie in a different way that seeks to minimize damage. You don't have to be an expert to see this, and yet, journalists keep falling for this. 3/
And the reasons the media keeps getting Trump wrong are an indictment of the industry. They keep failing because the lies Trump peddles mean clicks and ratings. It's a ready-made story for an industry that needs ready-made stories. It's easier to regurgitate than investigate. 4/
If you repeat Trump's lies, you get the attention of people who support Trump and you get the attention of those who hate him. This clickbait/hateclick industry is proven, and it wins no matter what even as it erodes public trust. 5/
But there's another element that we don't like to talk about, and it's the society of media in which those who report the news are most often people from backgrounds that have benefited from the status quo and are thus less likely to critique the status quo. 6/
Donald Trump isn't an aberration. He's the personification of the problems plaguing this country. To really go after him and examine him is, for several media members, the equivalent of unpacking the very privilege that got them their jobs and livelihoods. 7/
For these media members, examining how Trump could've colluded with a foreign adversary or how he could get away with obstruction of justice would mean questioning whether the system that raises them up on high is corrupted and failing. It's a personal thing. 8/
It's so, so, so much easier to just regurgitate Trump's lies, which are designed to give reason to think that everything's fine besides Trump's vulgarity, than to do the hard work of looking at themselves and their own privilege and determining that huge change is necessary 9/
Whatever happens, the media in this country is complicit, whether it's in pursuit of ratings or the neverending desire to maintain a system that has benefited them, in not only electing Donald Trump but in maintaining him and the flawed system that birthed him. 10/
The only thing that's clear now is that to get past Trump, to have a better and more humane society, we're all going to have to reexamine what we thought our lives and our worlds were. We have to do a lot of soul searching, a lot of questioning, and it has to start now. 11/11
