I’m thinking a lot this morning about how to cover Trump going forward. I think it’s important to keep an eye on him as he’s the leader of a violent, fascist movement, but there needs to be a change to how we allow him into our lives and how we let him affect discourse.
To understand the reactionary Right and this growing anti-democratic threat, I’m going to continue studying and analyzing the Trump behaviors and communications that motivate and shape his dangerous followers but turn away from any of the spectacle.
I’m done with palace intrigue. Who has an advantage with Trump. Who is in and who is out. And I’m done with the pathetic outbursts and attention grabbing stunts. I’ll only cover them if they might radicalize or change the political situation.
Every day, for the rest of Trump’s life, and undoubtedly Jr. and any number of the cronies, sycophants, and grifters who swim in his wake, are going to be hustling for attention and money. I’m not going to cover any of it unless it changes the political reality of the Right.
I’m going to cover Trump only in terms of how his peculiar mixture of abnormal behaviors and fascistic persona affects the Right as a radicalized, anti-democratic movement and how his delusions and lies warp that reality.
I’d urge other journalists, pundits, and analysts to treat Trump as both a threat and a symptom of a much larger disease. Reject the spectacle and the tabloid. We’ve got a massive fascist problem in this country that isn’t going away. We have to get working.
And I’d say the job is to sort Trump’s garbage into two piles as neatly as possible. What is grift and spectacle and what is fascistic. They will overlap, but we have to ignore the former as much as humanly possible considering the economic incentives.
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