Thread by @JYSexton

People like Chuck Todd aren’t presenting news. They’re covering politics as a game and critiquing strategies, legal, factual, or wholly made up.

It doesn’t matter if it’s dangerous, fascistic, or otherwise, what matters is whether it will work. We have to reject this mindset.

For years now we’ve had “news shows” engaging in coverage of “news behind the news,” or breathless speculation about strategies and maneuvers that influence the news.

Chuck Todd is literally discussing whether Republican lies will influence him and his friends.

Again, I’ve compared politics to wrestling, and the modern news media, like wrestling, isn’t focused on the product, whether it’s matches or coverage, but is obsessed with how power makes its decisions and how power alters reality for consumption.

One of the ways Trump came to power was this tabloid obsession with palace intrigue and moves within moves. What we’re fed is an insider’s perspective of how powerful people maintain power. It’s not about what’s actually happening but the lies that hide what’s actually happening.

Without exaggeration, a good chunk of the media is focused solely on discussing, as if they were at a cocktail party, whether attempts to brainwash voters and capture them in alternate realities will be successful. What’s lost is the real fate of real people.

Let’s be clear. Politics should be about whether we live better, safer lives. But it has been twisted into a game played by the powerful and an entire ecosystem paid to watch and comment on those games. It’s insidious and repugnant and we have to move beyond it.

This moment we’re at, with this spectacle journalism and the raging sea of conspiracy theories, is symptomatic of the obvious illusion of representation in our system. We know the game is rigged, that we’re being lied to, so we shift to rumors and analysis of the lies.

The only remedy and solution is to build grassroots coalitions, hold the powerful accountable, reject this postmodern, nihilistic coverage and gamesmanship, and return government to the people. Otherwise we’re just going to drown in this sludge.