Our Flailing Elites

The Bewildered Spasms of the Intelligentsia

This essay is about the myopic and contemptuous attitude of our intelligentsia (specifically journalists) towards mainstream America (specifically Trump voters), using one gifted foreign policy commenter as a case study. My intent is not to insult or cause offense. The fact is that we KNOW the media is ignoring and twisting available information… because it’s writing about us. Mischaracterizing Trump supporters has cost the media and this country a great deal of time and energy. This is not an anti-intellectual piece. It’s an anti-’shortsighted and presumptuous journalists’ piece, and a reminder to everyone to constantly interrogate assumptions and engage those with whom you disagree. I respect science and merit and SKEPTICISM and logic. I remain willing to have a conversation about any of this-but progressives rarely seem interested in that. Why converse with folks when you have the institutional heft to slander and marginalize them?

I enjoy the foreign policy-centered Substack (Cosmopolitan Globalist) of

Claire Berlinski

. I know little about her other than that she seems educated and well-off, and she lives abroad. Her focus is global and her policy preferences seem to be internationalist, pro-Ukraine and pro-Israel. She’s probably a moderate Democrat. I always wondered how much interaction she had (besides Twitter spats) with opponents on these issues. I wonder that about all commentators. After reading her latest piece I suspect it may not be much.

I’m using her writing, and that of other commenters/journalists in this piece, as an avatar for a disconnected and arrogant attitude I always encounter in the media: Trump is just SO BAD and the people who support him are SO BAD they shouldn’t be ‘platformed’ or seriously addressed. Unfortunately that kind of approach only works if you’re a (clear) majority. Institutional power and status are important but they’re ultimately not enough in a democracy. You must speak to people, and this demands respecting their viewpoints and understanding their values.

In a long and alarmed essay about the psychopathology of Donald Trump and the prospect of his election,

Claire Berlinski

writes:

After three insufferably muggy months together the State House in Philadelphia, the Constitutional Convention formed a committee to put their decisions in writing. The windows of the State House had shuttered for privacy—and to keep flies from biting their stockings—and the delegates had been sworn to secrecy, Then they formed another committee, the Committee of Style and Arrangement to debate the finishing touches, and handed the document to Jacob Shallus, a clerk for the Pennsylvania assembly, for engrossing.

…

There were no crowds. I was almost alone in the room. There was no heavy security, no metal detector, no Marines standing guard. Yellow filters protect the manuscript, I later learned, from damaging light rays, which is why it seems to glow. As I approached the yellowed parchment in its glass case, the familiar script, with those familiar words, came into focus, and my eyes filled with tears.

My grandparents were immigrants, refugees from the Nazis. The story of their desperate flight across Europe’s ravaged borders, the SS on their heels, was an aspect of my history no more remarkable to me, when I was a child, than the sound of musicians playing chamber music in the living room. Children accept everything as normal. No one ever told me about the Holocaust because no one needed to; I always knew. But I also grew up knowing I lived in a the freest, most generous, and most decent country in the world, and my God, was I grateful for it. I never felt anything but wholly American. Not one person ever caused me to doubt it, and had they tried, I would have found it absurd, not sinister.

I may be projecting my own experiences on to her, but I sense that in this respect, Kamala Harris might be like me. She’s about my age. We grew up in the same part of America. Her parents were immigrants. Her family story would lend itself to her feeling this way. Her mother was born in Madras in 1938. I visited Madras more than fifty years later. It made a big impact on me. I knew no one in America would believe me if I tried to describe India’s poverty to them, because I didn’t understand it until I saw it.

I can relate. Seeing the poverty and violence of Afghanistan was a life-changing experience for me. It made me profoundly grateful for what we have in this country and impressed the importance of good policies upon me: law and order, market growth, freedom of expression, elections. I do not perceive the same issues-driven enthusiasm on the part of Kamala Harris. She seems to have completely abandoned her old (terrible) policies and adopted an entirely new and more moderate slate. This kind of universal inconsistency is a big red flag in a political candidate.

I would be very surprised if Kamala’s eyes would fill with tears upon being confronted with an artifact of national history, or any document, or even any value or pledge. She hasn’t been overly complimentary to veterans or US history as far as I know. This is purely my opinion, but I suspect that Claire is letting her dislike of Trump cast the only alternative at this point (Harris) in a rosier glow than available facts can support. I submit that if Harris had the sincerity to be deeply affected by national history she might have been able to point to some instance of service, some hard job done well (her legal career certainly does not fit the bill) or some notable sacrifice or humility, rather than a relentless climb up the ladder of status and station and romantic prospect. True, Trump also lacks such examples (other than surviving two assassination attempts) but I wouldn’t claim that Trump would get misty-eyed when confronted with the Constitution. He’s not a good man but he’s relentlessly authentic and he has popular policies. If she were good or sincere, Kamala Harris might not have assented to the lengthy and insidious concealment (aided by the media) of Biden’s decrepitude. If she felt compelled to, she might have offered us an explanation or an apology in the single instance she was asked about it. I doubt that Harris has ever spared a thought or an uncredited dollar for the poor of Madras, or Ohio. I see no evidence of this, at least.

Harris supporters are right now gathering their ammunition-piles of ‘what about’s. ‘What about Trump! He…. ‘. Let’s forego that. This essay is about the electorate, and the media.

Reader, I hope you can acknowledge that the media (most news networks, corporations, Google and most other tech platforms) have tended to favor Harris in this race. I also hope we can agree that there has been a great deal of concealment and dishonesty by the media in the past year. If you’re a Harris voter you might think that this is valid or beneficial but it has certainly happened. If you can’t think of any cases just find a well-informed independent and she’ll rattle off a dozen in the past month alone. Cases of mainstream publications or magazines or tech platforms disadvantaging Harris are rather less frequent.

Claire is beset by feelings of doom by the prospects of another Trump victory.

[It’s] as if Americans have been bubbling in a cauldron of berserk for so long that they can no longer tolerate even a homeopathic dose of reality. It’s not just that we have a few people with a couple of nutty beliefs. It’s that so many, maybe the majority, have no sane beliefs left at all.

And

[N]one of this could be happening at such a breathtaking pace, with such evil consequences, if we had not suffered a moral collapse every bit as shocking as our break from reality, but much harder to explain.

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These are her thoughts on the voters:

It will come down to a handful of “low-propensity” voters in Pennsylvania or North Carolina. Taut with dread, most of the world is pleading, “Don’t do it,” while the jokers are rubbing their hands together gleefully and crooning—Do it, do it.” But they can’t hear us. They think that maybe Door Number Two leads to something nice. Like zombies, they walk toward it inexorably.

To Claire I would say: I actually don’t think the election will be that close. Based on hundreds of conversations with different folks and my first-hand observation of the country in question (a perspective not available to Claire) I expect this victory to be by at least 50 or 60 electoral college votes. Perhaps all of these folks are insane but if you spoke to them I think you might be surprised. Perhaps they are persuaded by a bleak policy landscape (in certain respects) and the campaign of a candidate who is widely perceived to be shifty and vapid and deeply unprincipled. Can you honestly say that Harris has done her utmost to speak to them and represent her values? Perhaps all of the voters are crazy or perhaps you’re mistaken, in other words.

She quotes

Brian Klaas

Once sufficient gobs of neural matter have degenerated into an unfortunate wet ooze, the most spectacular David Attenborough-worthy display will inevitably follow. Millions upon millions of Muskian keyboard warriors who have been drawn into the machine will begin to proudly define themselves as independent thinkers. To showcase their independent critical thought, they will, in seemingly coordinated unison, howl their shared, newfound battle cry into the digital ether whenever they encounter a bigoted viewpoint: “FREE SPEECH!”

But this is not a story of ridicule. Instead, it is a story of high-stakes political devastation. Hidden changes are warping the already broken ecosystem that determines how many citizens—particularly in America—construct their sense of reality. The Machine is now approaching new and dangerous frontiers. And eventually, whether imminently or in the not-so-distant future, Musk’s powerful information weapon is going to cause major harm to us all.

You get the idea. A little clarity returns once you realize that Claire does not live in the United States. She’s using Twitter and a closed ecosystem of Leftwing journalists to gauge the mood of the nation, and her conclusion revolve around brainwashing and moral collapse and a critical mass of malevolent nonsense. Imagine that. I want to raise a different possibility: the media landscape is shifting and legacy outlets are losing credibility. Not because of misinformation but due to the many, many examples our earlier independent friend provided of naked bias and highly motivated reasoning on the part of journalists who refuse to disclaim their allegiance. If you were an undecided or a Trump supporter (empathy is important) how would you view the media’s coverage of the election? Rigorous? Fair? Shrill? Biased?

There are a lot of bad (wrong) ideas out there: black men are at much greater risk of death in police interactions (wrong), imposing heavy controls on Western energy economies will reduce global emissions (wrong), women face systemic wage discrimination in the workplace (wrong), etc. These are bad ideas on the Left. The Right also tends to believe a lot of (probably) incorrect things, about stolen elections and tax cuts being a panacea and conspiracies among the elites (although the Left now has its own growing list of Twitter conspiracies). These beliefs are varied, though, and they don’t seem to be driving voting patterns in the presidential race. Most voters are not motivated by ‘misinformation’ or even by widely disputed facts.

On the other hand, misinformation informs many opinions supporting environmental policies or in favor of defunding the police but that misinformation is never a concern for the progressive Left and the institutions they dominate. Misinformation and cynical media manipulation also characterize the Harris campaign. Are you, as an observer worried about the integrity of our system, calling it out? Many lies have been told about Trump and the GOP but I rarely hear journalists address them. This is not about truth or accuracy for its own sake. It’s about agendas.

Personally I’m less interested in the opinions of journalists and more interested in the views and observations of small business owners and parents and Border Patrollers and police. I understand that each of these groups favors Trump. Maybe they have valid reasons. How can you know if you don’t speak with them?

Even if large numbers of voters were motivated by misinformation, the only solution would be to inform them and convince them one by one. That’s one of the primary functions of the media, after all. They’ve had 9 years at this point. I rarely see that happen. Instead they try to shame or frighten or rebuke. When was the last time you spoke to a Trump supporter and laid out your case? ANYONE can tweet or start a podcast. The fact is that most people would not be interested in these journalists’ potential podcasts because they often seem narrow-minded and unhappy. They don’t understand or like Trump voters and they simply don’t want to talk to them. It’s much easier to stay in your privileged urban enclaves, surrounded by folks of your background and worldview. Journalists usually seem to be speaking to and writing for each other, and for folks who already agree with them (see the excellent piece by Freddie deBoer below).

It's Got a Price

You can participate with others in the contest of truth… or give up and claim that all those who disagree with you are ‘conspiracy theorists’. Frankly, if you’re not interested in respectfully engaging with ordinary folks I submit that perhaps you shouldn’t be a journalist. The frustration on the Right, I can tell you, is that many journalists seem reluctant to criticize certain aspects of the power structure: FEMA waste, COVID deceptions, urban crime, the negative effects of mass migration (for there are certainly many), the parasitic relationships of non-profits, public school decline, Left-wing terrorism… these issues and more are largely ignored and the omissions are so systemic that even independents have detected a pattern. The only thing which would be required to begin regaining credibility would be to report on these issues.

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Claire Berlinski

, I voted for Biden in 2020 and I truly do not recognize the situation you are describing (from afar) in this country. My first question is, “how many Trump voters are you talking to?” Not many, I suspect. Perhaps one shouldn’t rush to the judgement and description of 100 million decent and (mostly) decently intelligent voters. There certainly is misinformation, but unless folks are misinformed that Harris is currently in the White House and immigration policies have caused a surge of illegal migrants and inflation has been high these past few years, I don’t think it’s much of a factor. Conspiracy theories aren’t more pronounced than they used to be… except that now matters of public record are often dismissed using that term. Honestly, is it possible that most people are simply surveying the (dim) policy landscape as it appears to them (in reality, not on Twitter) and assessing Harris’ dreadful performances and deciding, “no”? After all, Twitter users tend to be more liberal and most voters are not voting based on information they read online and Harris voters are not obviously more sensible or realistic than Trump voters. They’re rather more feminine and more credentialed and more often single, but they’re not more rational as far as I can tell. I want, again, to raise a distinct possibility: you have a warped and minority view of American realities and attitudes and, instead of engaging with them, you’re dismissing EVERYONE who disagrees. I think this is epistemologically risky and politically foolish.

I’m not accusing journalists of this, but something the (modern) Left has still has not learned is that you must understand and engage with people who disagree with you to make progress. You can get a fair amount done by seizing institutions and bullying and guilting and suppressing speech (cowing most opposition, if not convincing it) but that simply doesn’t work on a national scale when you’re a rich and isolated minority. After a few years you will begin to lose credibility and support. As will journalists who are perceived to be disingenuous or classist.

Claire Berlinski

, your feelings don’t indicate anything about the election. Your sense of doom is just an emotion. I feel some empathy for you but as someone who has struggled with mental health myself I will recommend a proven cognitive behavioral therapy technique: reality testing.

Maybe you’re right that Trump is a wannabe dictator but I don’t think so and Trump supporters don’t think so and the Democratic party leadership doesn’t appear to think so either. Right? Has their behavior and have their decision over the past year been those of people confronting an existential crisis? Absolutely not. The prominent national politicians who calculated that their chances were better in 2028 weren’t calculating the end of democracy. It’s a political crisis, certainly, but one exacerbated by their own inept policy-making. We’ll probably disagree on that-fine. Most folks agree with me though, and this essay is about voters as a collective and not your opinion or mine.

Maybe I’m wrong about Trump (although they said the same thing about George W. Bush!), but you can say that about any possibility. Maybe it’ll happen but it would only possibly happen if most Trump supporters wanted it to and they simply do not. Personally, I thought Biden would avoid opening the border and abstain from swelling the debt by historical amounts and avoid undercutting Title IX and weakening military recruitment. That’s why I voted for him. Every election is a risk. You need to understand that inflation and (especially) immigration have alarmed Americans greatly-not information they’ve seen on the news but the reality in their stores and communities. I think the racial breakdowns of exit polls will bear this out. For the record, the Left’s behavior and machinations during the past three years are a HUGE part of the reason Trump is now so popular. The biggest reason, in my opinion. There are massive risks associated with a Harris administration as well, of course. That’s priced into voting: the voters evaluate the risks (using information mainly provided not by Musk but by you and folks who agree with you) and they cast their ballot.

Humility is warranted on these issues. No one has the full picture and most barely have an outline. This is one reason why silencing ‘hate speech’ or controversy is so dangerous. I’m automatically suspicious of those who want to control speech, especially if they refuse to engage with and debate the opposition. Certainty isn’t something you simply have, pre-made. It must be earned and built through discussion. Whenever you’re confronted with an issue in contention you should ask yourself: “What would i need to see or learn for my mind to change?” What would you need to see or learn to reassure yourself that this isn’t the death of our republic Claire?

False Alarm

I don’t actually believe that the entire legacy media is truly fearful for the system or democracy, unless you conceptualize democracy as something which necessarily supports their agenda. I don’t believe these folks are truly concerned for judicial independence or budget rules or free speech (and without free speech-so often derided by them-what freedoms do we really have?). I think when they say ‘democracy’ they mean feminism and anti-growth and equity and multiculturalism, etc. Unfortunately for them those are all fairly unpopular concepts in this country.

There’s a sense on the Left of progressive inevitability. Democracy means the advance of feminism and ecological fundamentalism and gender ideology. Just because progressive used to mean a person fighting for equality and access for the marginalized doesn’t mean that’s still the case though. If you’re fighting for the privileges of a certain group there will come a point at which you can declare some kind of victory… or continue fighting for progressively more radical solutions. I believe this has happened on many issues. Liberal or progressive doesn’t equal ‘pro-democracy’. Democracy is the will of the people effected in government, and the people do not agree with you and your academic theories. Progressives can also be anti-democratic, you know.

Use contrapositives – imagine that the kinds of things they’re afraid of are enacted by the other side. Would they mind? Would they support the prerogative of a Republican Congress to aid Israel or cut social security or close the border? Those proposals are just as democratic (a necessarily value-neutral quality) as any other lawful idea. Populism (which I’m not defending) is democratic… with some anti-elite bias thrown in. Elites must earn their place in society though. How do you think they’re doing?

Does our system include the Supreme Court’s right to overturn Roe (Dobbs)? Legally imprison Hillary Clinton (if an indictment is brought and a jury convicts)? Cut all federal funding to equity initiatives? Is THAT the system you’re defending? If you only assent to the things passing that you support then you’re not defending a system; you’re defending a political agenda. When you say ‘the system’ I think you mean a kind of centrist conceptualization of institutional power, with progressive language and priorities standing right behind it. That’s not the system though. That’s not ‘our democracy.’ That’s just your political agenda, and the tools to enact it.

I can generally tell whether a journalist is anti-Trump from reading their articles. That should NOT be the case. I googled ‘Harris campaign’ and ‘Trump campaign’, just out of curiosity. For any individual who doubts heavy and affirmative tech bias I recommend regular tests like this. See for yourself. Is this election interference? It would be if Russia was doing it… but it’s okay because it’s US corporations? Is this the system you’re defending? A system of secretive mega-corporations using algorithms and billions of dollars of donations to manipulate the public?

In this article (Harris Campaign Shifts Strategy… ) the author talks about Trump’s ‘strongman image’ and ‘extreme rhetoric’, both clear indications of someone who dislikes the candidate. As usual, no Trump supporters are queried or quoted. Such a thing almost never happens. They are defined according to others but rarely permitted to express their own viewpoints. Could it be that this 50% of the electorate is more pacific and sensible than the descriptions imply? That’s been my experience. Most of the intolerant and bitter folks I know are on the Left-but they operate certain of their own righteousness.

The working class belongs to Trump. Married women are tending towards Trump. Hispanics, blacks… 45% of gay men voted for Trump in 2016.

The truth is that you simply can’t know the reality of policy or economic optimization or political strategy. No one can-not experts or journalists or anyone. There are too many variables and one should always remain humble and open to new information. But: we know you’re lying because you’re talking about us! Perhaps it’s just misunderstanding and delusion and not dishonesty but it doesn’t matter.

Within an hour of the debate the media had mostly fallen into lockstep… a formation which is increasingly ignored by regular people

I began scrolling through the links above, chuckling to myself. The indignation is so transparent, and so the information isn’t compelling. Here’s another outstanding piece of penetrating and not at all narrative-building journalism (from Salon)

‘Campaign official admits Trump "refusing" interviews because he's "exhausted": report’

Trump has cancelled at least 11 campaign events since August even as he accuses Kamala Harris of dodging media…

See! Trump is shamming too! Other than his 30,000-person rallies every day the man is reticent, hiding… probably demented. You can certainly rely on journalists to be sensitive to any hints of dementia. Any indication would prompt scrutiny! That’s the role of the media, after all. Is the headline true? Who cares? It’s barely news and its obvious implications make it unsuitable even as propaganda. Can you imagine a similar headline about Harris (who notably missed the Al Smith dinner event, full of luminaries-a regular stop for candidates for decades)?. You could be analyzing early voter polls or speaking to the many groups which are shifting away from the Democrats in this election or pressing Harris for policy specifics or discussing foreign policy implications.

(Below this headline on the Salon page is an article about Taylor Swift… and this:

‘Fungi deserve same protections as plants and animals, conservationists argue’

Fungi are the “firmament of life on Earth,” experts say but don’t get equivalent protections of plants and animals…

)

Are these the same journalists fretting about the state of our democracy? Surely you jest. These are the journalists working to reverse “misinformation”… along with the dozens writing friendly pieces about Harris and avoiding any serious questions about her record or her family or her integrity.

Misinformation = ideas and figures they disagree with

If falsehoods or suppositions support their worldview they are rarely scrutinized or corrected. Suspiciously, the media NEVER seems to write about shaky allegations or transmit errors that benefit Republicans. That’s not accuracy-it’s ideology.

Mitchell in Oakland

recently wrote, “For every Pat Buchanan, there's an Angela Davis”. Extremist and terrorist are two labels which rarely seemed to be used to describe black separatists or BLM rioters or Antifa or anyone on the Left. Obviously extremism is distributed fairly evenly across the political spectrum (which would look like a kind of flattened Bell curve across multiple variables I imagine). ‘Far-right’ is used often. When did you last read ‘far-Left’? For a principle to be honest it must apply equally to both sides, in all situations. None of your values or ‘principles’ fit this description.

The Chattering Class

The media think they’re unique. Black folks might be motivated by handouts and women by abortion and the working class (negatively) by immigration but they’re only drawn to truth, goodness, accuracy. Obviously that can’t be true in such a partisan environment, full of motivated reasoners. The truth is they are a class just like every other and their conceptions (of democracy, fairness, extremism, etc.) and values are artifacts of their positions and interests. I didn’t see many writers calling for the student loan forgiveness funds to be directed toward relieving credit card debtors or single mothers. Did you? In fact I never see journalists in the wild! They live in cities, generally come from privilege, and seem to prefer Twitter to rooms full of carpenters or PTA members or MMA practitioners, or anyone who doesn’t intersect with and feed into their narratives. Why report on foreclosures and urban crime and corruption in federal agencies and sexual abuse in public schools, when you can be a righteous scribe, a warrior in the ranks of the elect, working to defeat an enemy of democracy.

The Naked Emperor

I love Claire’s writing. She’s a smart, and obviously privileged and fortunate, person-and she lives outside the United States. She wasn’t alarmed when inflation ate up trillions of critical dollars for the underclass, or when immigrants changed (often for the worse) their communities. She wasn’t alarmed when violent crime rose or academic indicators fell. She’s more concerned about “democracy”, and assisting Ukraine. That is her right (and I mostly agree with her) but a government exists by and for the people, not primarily to create a superstructure to empower media or implement foreign policy projects.

Claire is alarmed because of alliances and policies and ideas. To defeat Trump the Left will need an army concerned with people, and not just as ciphers for their policy agenda. She still doesn’t want to help Trump voters, or speak to them, or convince them. She regards them with contempt and incomprehension-an incomprehension which began in 2015 and seems to have only gotten worse. Folks tend to find contemptuous and ignorant people fairly unpersuasive.

The bad news for Claire (especially as a journalist) is that, from where I stand, she is completely mistaken about Trump voters. The good news is also that she is completely mistaken about Trump voters and it’s an easy mistake to correct! Just find some and speak to them.

10 years ago the legacy media could impose their narrative upon the country (in the historical record if not in the daily lives of citizens) but those days are over. If Claire is wise she’ll consider her bias and her disconnection and join the millions of citizens who, like her, earnestly want the best for American who are NOT deluded or brainwashed or racist. I think she’ll find us a lot more welcoming and reasonable than the folks in her imagination.

Thanks for reading! Please like, comment, subscribe, and SHARE.

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The Original Piece

Claire’s piece, and another one (of many) displaying the same intemperate rhetoric and cries of alarm. Trump won’t end democracy. I’m not even convinced all you journalists believe that. He might end aid to Ukraine and federal DEI and uncontrolled border crossings (probably not!) but that’s what a large and diverse electorate-your customers-are voting for.

In other words…

Democracy 🗽

What Trump 2.0. Really Means

Cluster B