Thread by @TCFKA_NCSteve

Thread:

1/25 This morning, listening to NPR, I snapped at how utterly surreal major MSM outlet coverage has become. Not because it is faithfully covering a surreal presidency, but because it has become profoundly disconnected from reality.

2/25 The surrealism of the coverage is the result of the sheer number of what I have come to rather sarcastically call in my head the Forbidden Truths of the Cult of the Savvy and the VSP's that have accumulated under this aberrant administration.

3/25 The "Forbidden Truths are manifestly obvious facts that the MSM erases from its coverage. They are not merely things that cannot be stated explicitly, but also things that cannot be referenced implicitly by subtextual incorporation into prevailing narrative frames.

4/25 For example, consider one especially obvious example of a Forbidden Truth: Trump and his followers are racist. Anyone who voices this truth is subjected to gasps and derision. This is how the norm is enforced even on those not in the MSM, i.e. Democrats.

5/25 Thus, coverage of the overt cruelty at CPB and ICE are covered as things that happen to be happening, not things with a common causal motivation. When Democrats discuss them, they are compelled to resort to conditional language, circumlocution, lest they too be erased.

6/25 The Forbidden Truths are enforced by explicit editorial control, by guidance of the conventional MSM narrative frames and through social norms that treat anyone who dares utter a Forbidden Truth as a Very Unserious Person deserving of anger, mockery and derision.

7/25 This is not due teh Big Corporate Oligarchy Media Conshpirasy. Rather it is the result of the MSM's deeply institutionalized normalcy bias, it's adherence to what Jay Rosen calls the Cult of Savvy in which deviation from the prevailing narrative gets you deemed ridiculous.

8/25 A big part of this is, of course, the GOP's relentless ref-working and the MSM's internalization of a belief that GOP claims of media bias are made in good faith or, to the extent they aren't, are just things savvy people can chuckle with them about over cocktails.

9/25 The pervasive fear of being called "biased" by people who will call them biased no matter what they say or do is, of course, also a consequence of the extent to which DC is still, as Josh Marshall put it throughout the Obama years, culturally "wired Republican."

10/25 Thus, the MSM still, even now, has no fear or regard at all for being called biased from the left, by people who are the readers and viewers, but are acutely concerned with not being seen as "biased" by the people on the right who never watch/read them.

11/25 Another component, though is normalcy bias. If you want to understand how they can fail to perceive that democracy itself is at risk, study up on this very human cognitive bias.

It's the cognitive bias depicted by the iconic "this is fine" cartoon.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalcy_…

12/25 Normalcy bias is the MSM's default position. It's how they keep, they think, from getting played for rubes, used, manipulated or just prone to get so far out on a limb that you end up looking ridiculous.

13/25 There always a few Forbidden Truths in play, mildly distorting or delaying coverage of events harmless to catastrophic: e.g. FDR's polio, JFK's womanizing. But when too many accumulate at once the deviation between news and reality becomes perceptually jarring.

14/25 When too many Forbidden Truths accumulate because the MSM cannot process what's happening through it's normalcy framing, their reporting of the news ends up being as divergent from reality and misinformative as intentionally false state propaganda.

15/25 And so, what these unspeakable Unspeakables, thes Truths that Dare Not be Uttered? Christ, we all know them perfectly well. They're right out there to be seen, yet must be ignored like the proverbial elephant in the room and the Emperor's nudity. Shall we count them?

16/25

1. Trump is psychologically unfit to be president, literally incapable of conforming his behavior to normal standards of decency or probity, or controlling his compulsive need for revenge, vindication, narcissistic supply. And he's deteriorating dangerously.

17/25

2. The GOP is no longer a normal party in the traditional American sense of a party dedicated to the values of liberal democracy - pluralism, majority rule, rule of law, human rights - that is a good faith participant in the project of governance, in or out of power.

18/25

Rather, since 1995, it has degenerated into an openly anti-democratic, nihilistic authoritarian movement built on oligarchic support and ethnic grievance. It is explicitly, gleefully illiberal, trades in eliminionist rhetoric and operates at all times in utmost bad faith.

19/25

3. The degenerated GOP is part of a larger transnational political movement, loosely, and more or less, led by Russia. They are waging open war on liberal democracy and yet hid behind the subverted institutions and trappings of a murdered democracy.

20/25

4. Almost every single major foreign policy move by Trump benefits, or seeks to benefit, Russia at the expense of the United States and/or its allies.

21/25

5. Certain journalists and members of Congress have been suborned by Russia. Because every member of Congress, and every prominent or potentially useful American that travels to Russia, gets a dossier opened and the GRU and FSB then set about filling them.

22/25

6. Trump is deeply, personally corrupt and the rot is systemic.

23/25

7. Fox isn't a real news organization.

24/25

8. Trump's supporters are stone racists. They aren't "economically anxious" except in the sense of being fearful of competing on an equal footing and they will never vote for a Democrat ever again.

25/25 The erasure of these facts, even as subtextual context, from coverage is why it seems more surreal than an episode of Green Acres.