A lot of liberal media types are deploring the deplorable people who deplore the media because of the result of this chart drawn from Gallup survey data showing that Democratic trust in the (Trump-hating) media is soaring, while discriminating people (that is, Republicans) continue to have less and less regard for the media:
Surprise, surprise! I wonder what could be causing this “polarization”? Maybe things like this, from the newspaper owned by the richest man in the world, the Washington Post:
It’s Time to Give Socialism a Try
By Elizabeth Bruenig
In the United States, we’ve arrived at a pair of mutually exclusive convictions: that liberal, capitalist democracies are guaranteed by their nature to succeed and that in our Trumpist moment they seem to be failing in deeply unsettling ways. For liberals — and by this I mean inheritors of the long liberal tradition, not specifically those who might also be called progressives — efforts to square these two notions have typically combined expressions of high anxiety with reassurances that, if we only have the right attitude, everything will set itself aright.
Hanging on and hoping for the best is certainly one approach to rescuing the best of liberalism from its discontents, but my answer is admittedly more ambitious: It’s time to give socialism a try.
News flash, Ms. Bruenig: Socialism has been tried. Lots of times. With the same result. If you send me your address, I’ll send you a hammer and you can try that experiment. Or Option 2, I’ll send you a one-way ticket to Venezuela. I’m sure you can help straighten them out. Won’t take but more than a dozen more columns like this. Or did I miss something and this column is actually an application for an academic appointment?
Special bonus drivel, from later in the column:
Not to be confused for a totalitarian nostalgist, I would support a kind of socialism that would be democratic and aimed primarily at decommodifying labor, reducing the vast inequality brought about by capitalism, and breaking capital’s stranglehold over politics and culture.
I don’t think that every problem can be traced back to capitalism: There were calamities and injustices long before capital, and I’ll venture to say there will be after.
Oh, right—democratic socialism! The best kind! The Post actually pays someone to write something this stupid? I know Jeff Bezos is now worth north of $100 billion, but even he can’t like wasting money this frivolously.
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