What is To Be Done?

America has the worst damn government money can buy. Money has infected every muscle and bone of both political parties. But the fault lies not just with politicians and their highest bidders. The media needs to look deeply into the mirror too.

Let’s start with the fact Donald Trump is an out-of-control, malignant narcissist who appears to be hiding physical issues like chronic venous insufficiency, a fact routinely ignored by legacy news outlets that claim to report the news without fear or favor.

Remember, this is a president whose physicians have routinely lied about his physical exams and his bout with COVID — and whose medical records from an attempted assassination have never been disclosed.

And while much has been written and discussed this year about the physical and cognitive decline of former President Joe Biden, we only hear crickets about the status of a man who claims to have ended six or seven wars this year alone.

Volodymyr Zelensky undoubtedly has a different viewpoint.

Admittedly it’s hard to report on mental health conditions, especially in light of the American Psychiatric Association’s “Goldwater Rule,” crafted in the aftermath of a magazine article looking at the 1964 Republican presidential nominee’s fitness to serve. Psychiatrists are not permitted to diagnose people they do not treat.

But the White House press corps — at least the legacy outlets not pushed out of the way by White House Propagandist Karoline Leavitt — are being met with evidence in the form of a daily barrage of lies and half-truths. That they dutifully record and regurgitate without context.

Yesterday was the Manic Monday that followed a Frantic Friday.

In addition to signing an executive order directly contradicting a 1989 Supreme Court decision upholding the right to burn an American flag, the “6-3, 215-pound” Trump went on a verbal tear about former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, calling each of them “slobs.”

Apparently there are no mirrors among the new gold adornments in the Palace of Versailles Oval Office.

But Trump wasn’t content to stop with mere insults. The man who lied when he said he would be a “dictator, but only on Day One,” said he is preparing to follow up his military incursions into Los Angeles and Washington, DC by sending troops into Chicago and creating specially trained National Guard units in DC and all 50 states for quick mobilization “ensuring the public safety and order.”

That prompted a strong rebuke from Pritzker:

“Donald Trump wants to use the military to occupy a U.S. city, punish his dissidence, and score political points. If this were happening in any other country, we would have no trouble calling it what it is: a dangerous power grab.”

But prior to that declaration he directly addressed journalists at the press conference, a comment that got far less attention:

“To the members of the press who are assembled here today, and listening across the country, I am asking for your courage to tell it like it is.

This is not a time to pretend here that there are two sides to this story. This is not a time to fall back into the reflexive crouch that I so often see, where the authoritarian creep by this administration is ignored in favor of some horse race piece on who will be helped politically by the president's actions.”

Nevertheless there were pieces looking at Pritzker’s remarks compared to California Governor Gavin Newsom’s social media mocking of Trump and how they would play in the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination race.

But wait, there’s more that’s being reported with little or no context. That would be Trump’s “investment” in private companies like Intel and US Steel, moves that have even right-leaning economists raising red flags:

“I think what we’re seeing is less a strategic, thoughtful shift toward state capitalism and more an opportunistic display of corporate shakedowns,” said Michael R. Strain, an economist with the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute. “Either way, this does create significant risks for the companies that are entering into these deals, and for the long-term prosperity of the American people.”

And of course there’s his retribution campaign against the banking industry for cutting off capital to his companies, whether threatening Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell or his illegal “firing” of Fed Governor Lisa Cook on an, ahem, trumped-up allegation.

“What Is to Be Done” is a foundational document of Marxism-Leninism, a call to build the proletariat into a vanguard political party by educating them about Marxism.

MAGA is that in reverse: a call to build the broligarchy by deceiving the working class.

Look no further than the genuflections by tech bros like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Tim Cook. Or major law firms. Or the zeal to settle spurious defamation lawsuits by Paramount and Disney, owners of CBS and ABC respectively.

Airing rants and bloviation without context is not journalism. People rarely get beyond the headlines and sound bites in a campaign Trump consigliere Steve Bannon has labeled “flooding the zone with shit.”

Conservatives launched their Slow Motion Coup with the creation of an alternative media that will gin up controversy over advertisements for jeans, the changing of a corporate logo or the inflammatory words of anonymous liberals.

This alternative media became overwhelmingly successful with the birth and growth of the Fox Propaganda Network. And unless legacy news outlets stop wallowing in Bannon-inspired excrement, quality journalism will go the way of the Dodo.