A Republic--If You Can Keep It

 

This is what the New York Times chose to publish on Independence Day just one week after the Supreme Court ruled that Republican presidents are above the law. pic.twitter.com/URoJg6ohru

— @StephenWolf.bsky.social (@PoliticsWolf) July 4, 2024

The New York Times, which has been going out of their way to promote "Biden is too old and must drop out" editorials this week, decided the way to follow up on that terrible trend was to platform some mook who wants to pretend voting is a bit of hogwash. Well...not just some mook. Matthew Walther is a Catholic conservative (although it's hard to say if he just sort of is a hater in general--he calls the Constitution a "231-year old piece of toilet paper" in this screed against the Tea Party libertarians) --just like Leonard Leo and Steve Bannon and the derpsticks who ruled Trump is kind of/sort of a monarch.

Encouraging people not to vote (especially if one does, in fact, vote--possibly for Tulsi Gabbard which feels like fuckery) is a kind of voter suppression. Which is weirdly in line with Russian active measures to undermine confidence in voting. 

Democracy depends upon an engaged, informed population. The press can be a valuable part of that process of informing and engaging citizens--or it can do whatever this is. The chattering classes who write about politics are, when not encouraging apathy, so stuck on horserace politics that in the discussion of possibly replacing President Biden on the ticket have invented a fantasy horserace to write about. 

Is there nothing else to write about? Maybe how often Trump was mentioned in Epstein court documents? His new Saudi project? What Ivanka and Jared are up to in Albania and with whom? Anything to do about Project 2025--but especially how it would permit foreign nasties to interfere in our elections? (I remember when Trump wanted to cooperate with Russia on "the cyber"--do you?)

How Trump is going to surrender Ukraine to Russia because he thinks Putin is great?  And how Russia agrees?

BREAKING: Putin says he supports Trump's plan to end the war in Ukraine..pic.twitter.com/vusrSGwdTd

— Douglas Macgregor (@DougAMacgregor) July 4, 2024

Democracies like ours are threatened everywhere and we need to not be stupid about that. They are especially threatened from within by division and a lack of common purpose and common sense. And sometimes they are threatened by actual brainworms.

 

Which is the thing of when a guy who arguably had a worse week than Biden on the order of having to explain he may have sexually assaulted a nanny but he definitely did not eat a dog and probably would not eat a human, is endorsed by a guy who ran off to Russia and does not vote here anymore. Because spying. 

So just for the record--we have a democratic republic gifted to us by the blood, sweat and tears of our founders, and refreshed by the protests of suffragettes and civil rights protesters and martyrs, the hopes of Selma, Seneca Falls and Stonewall. But as our founders knew, it was a fragile thing. It could die in bloodshed. It could die, as Kevin Roberts (who partnered with the Claremont Institute in the war games theorizing that preceded 1/6) menacingly suggested, "bloodlessly". 

Or it could be drowned in digital ink by people who won't or can't take the threat seriously. This is not to undermine the prerogatives of the free press, but to beg them to do better while they can. This i not to deride the interests and fascinations of the voting public, but to ask them to pay more attention and not treat our government as a game. 

It is not about "winning" and "losing"--it is our lives, our livelihoods, our liberty, and our most sacred honor on the line. The flag and Constitution bled for by good men and women over the last 240+ years. And we can't be fucking around.