The Ethics of Loathing

The Media Abandons Even the Serious Pretense of Fairness, in Favor of Power

There’s something particularly sinister about being lied to openly, without the pretense of either party believing the lie. Both parties know and both know that the other one knows but the forms are still observed. This kind of cynical display is a gesture of pure contempt.

We’re social animals and a lie of that kind is as menacing a message as one can send: “we don’t need to convince you; we know you know we’re lying and it doesn’t matter!” This probably accounts-more than the loss of status or friends-for the unacknowledged psychological devastation of being ‘cancelled’ as a wrongthinking medical student (

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) or colleague or coach. Everyone is making claims (racist, transphobe, etc) that no one believes and the claims are angering people! And those people don’t necessarily believe the claims either! The entire bizarre theater production is an exercise in malevolent group psychology, an expression of unity through hate. A propensity for such attitudes evolved in humans in order to help ensure our victory in the myriad little wars of annihilation that we’ve spent our history fighting against each other.

The core dynamics of these righteous mobs seem to be groups of people so certain of their superiority that they are willing to do virtually anything against the ‘enemy’. This is a very dangerous mindset in humans and it precludes any honest communication or dealings. If you believe the ‘others’ are so wretched that even lying to them or ruining them or ostracizing them is good and proper then what remains? The truth is that many people hate Trump so much (as we saw clearly in the aftermath of the assassination attempts) that they are willing to bleed democracy and truth and fairness of meaning. If those concepts don’t constrain your behavior in dealing with opponents then they don’t exist at all, and any assumption of them is artifice. This kind of sanctimonious condemnation of things that you yourself are doing is the lowest hypocrisy, in my opinion. Does it trouble the consciences of the participants? No. They derive righteousness and purpose from the group. Standards of accuracy and fairness only apply to fellows and insiders. Outsiders, in this worldview, deserve every nasty trick and loss.

The lies of the media have transformed over the past decade: they started as subtle class- and issue-based biases. Trump helped instigate the early shifts, in which cable news channels basically divided along lines of ‘hate’ or ‘love’ of the man. These preset attitudes directed every story, and every hiring and editing decision. The pervasive emotional bias began to infect every other story: health, crime, sports. Then media organizations began making stories up: twisting pedestrian quotes and running with allegations or assumptions as if they were news: Covington Catholic, ‘Hands Up, Don’t Shoot!’, Jussie Smollett, a hundred more. Worryingly, they also began to bury inconvenient stories and narratives and twist dark events into issues of doubt or triviality.

By now those twisted and unreported narratives encompass nearly all of the American political landscape, to the extent that most television news channels in this country can’t report anything honest about crime or immigration or inflation or policy.

This election season has shown us the bizarre lengths that false certainty and the compulsion of out-group loathing will take people. The mask has come off and the only people who are listening are those in agreement… and fewer of those every day. If this doesn’t correspond with your observations, ask yourself: how is it that the Harris campaign hadn’t yet (until her FOX interview) been asked once about the conspiracy to hide Biden’s decline, or about the administration’s drastic and proactive changes to border policy? Whatever you want to call it this is not journalism.

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There are literally too many examples to count at this point: the concealment of Biden’s senescence; the vast and continuing non-story of Doug Emhoff’s violent impulses (witnessed by multiple credible sources); the plagiarism scandal around Harris’ book (read the headline for your self); the unethical CBS 60 Minutes edit of Harris’ interview. More appear daily.

The story is that Harris’ book contains many hundreds of words (across a dozen long passages) lifted from other publications and from Wikipedia, without attributions and with notable errors. THIS was the headline. This used to be the most esteemed newspaper on Earth.

I just want to note that we have now moved into a qualitatively different realm of media manipulation-brutal and sneering lies which don’t even try to convince the listeners.

These aren’t stories meant to inform or convince anyone. They are, rather, mantras for the believers, expressions of solidarity and of will, not to transmit meaning or arbitrate facts... but to defeat the enemy.

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I’ve already written at some length (links below) about the media’s duplicity. Honestly, it’s beginning to get difficult to keep up. It seems that EVERY DAY I hear a new flagrant incident of blatant mistruth. That means that every day, news watchers are becoming disillusioned and exiting the matrix.

Once you’ve left you don’t return.

Other essays/posts about the Lügenpresse:

Media Guide, Part 1: The Invisible Consensus

Media Guide, Part 2: Narrative Uber Alles

The Blind Spot

From Distortion to Farce

Reality vs. Reporting

Anatomy of a false fact-check (part 1)

Anatomy of a false fact-check (part 2)

Media Derangement

(and one of my first posts… )

Depp v. Heard