Sam Alito: Knight of the Sacred Military Constantinian Order of Saint George

Just when you think things could not get weirder, they get weirder. Above the Law reports on old but obscure news:

Sam Alito Got Knighted... Just Like The Founding Fathers 

EXPLICITLY MADE UNCONSTITUTIONAL

It turns out Sam Alito hates the Constitution as much as you thought he did 

The Intelligencer has a story today that actually happened several years ago but — not unlike Alito’s Upside-Down Flag nonsense — didn’t register with the public at the time. As we noted last week, Alito has been taking expensive gifts — as the conservative Supreme Court justices are wont to do! — from a right-wing German princess, but it turns out he’s been cultivating more ties to the European aristocracy.

It turns out the last time Donald Trump was president, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, author of the Dobbs decision setting women’s health care back a few centuries, added a knighthood to his own résumé, pledging an oath to the Sacred Military Constantinian Order of Saint George. The knighthood, bestowed in 2017, wasn’t widely reported at the time, but the order’s website was updated in July with Alito’s investiture on the front page.

May we present, Sir Samuel of Blackacre! We don’t know his sigil, but it’s meant to be flown upside-down.

Alito’s “An Appeal to Heaven” flag is a reference to John Locke’s argument in favor of a right to rise up against monarchists. Alito himself accepted a knighthood from an order managed by the House of Bourbon–Two Sicilies. The grand prefect of the order’s son is a pretender to the Imperial Throne of France.

Thank Dog for right-wing German princesses and the European aristocracy! Someone has gotta maintain law, order and sanity in America!!

And, for the wonks in the herd:

Q: What is the Sacred Military Constantinian Order of Saint George?

A: The Sacred Military Constantinian Order of Saint George is an ancient equestrian order with origins dating back to the time of Emperor Constantine. It is considered one of the oldest orders of knighthood, tracing its roots to Emperor Constantine after the appearance of the Cross at Saxa Rubra. The main purposes of the order are to propagate the Christian faith and glorify the Holy Cross. It is also involved in social welfare and charitable activities. .... The current Grand Master is H.R.H. Prince Charles of Bourbon Two Sicilies, Duke of Castro and Head of the Royal House of Bourbon-Two Sicilies

 

Order of St. George

Highest military decoration 

of the Russian Federation

. . . . . . Gadzooks!! Alito is a Knight of the Russian Federation!! Unleash the aristocrats! . . . . . no wait, leash the aristocrats!

St. George engaging the dragon

Alito's Appeal to 

Heaven flag

A commentary on civics, journalism, the deep state and shocking ignorance

Michael Lewis, author of The Undoing Project (book review here), wrote a fascinating opinion for the WaPo (not paywalled):

Directions to a journalistic goldmine

The federal government had set aside a big pot of money for the candidates of both parties to staff their presidential transition teams. Trump and Hillary Clinton had both built massive teams of people ready to enter the 15 big federal departments and hundreds of smaller federal agencies to learn whatever was happening inside. A thousand or so Obama officials were waiting for them, along with briefings that had taken them six months to prepare. But then, days after the election, Trump simply fired the 500 or so people on his transition team. “Chris, you and I are so smart that we can leave the victory party two hours early and do the transition ourselves,” he told a perplexed Chris Christie, who’d assembled the team.

Then he appointed Rick Perry as his secretary of energy. In his own presidential campaign, Perry had called for the Energy Department’s elimination — and was forced, at his Senate confirmation hearings, to acknowledge that he’d had no real idea of what went on inside the Energy Department, but now that he’d spent a few days looking into it, he really did not want to eliminate it. At that moment, it became clear that none of these people, newly in charge of the United States government, had the faintest idea what it did. .... People capable of ruining panel discussions and dinner parties with their steady stream of opinions about American politics were totally flummoxed by the simplest questions about American government. Questions like: What do all those civil servants do all day inside the Agriculture Department? (They preserve rural America from extinction, among other things.)

This situation, though sad for the country, struck me as a happy journalistic opportunity. The outgoing Obama people had created what amounted to the most timely and relevant civics class ever, and no one had bothered to enroll. And so I signed up to audit it. .... At some point, I realized that several dozen humans could spend their lifetimes getting the briefings ignored by the incoming Trump administration, and so I stopped and wrote a series of magazine pieces about what I’d seen and heard. I then stapled the pieces together and published them as a book called “The Fifth Risk.” The pieces attracted more attention than just about any magazine articles I’ve ever written, and the book sold roughly 10 times more copies than I or anyone else imagined it would.

But even that wasn’t what was strange about the experience. What was strange was what happened next: nothing. .... I further assumed that after a book in which the central character is the Agriculture Department sold more than half a million copies, the market would correct. Clearly there was a readership that hungered to know more about whatever Donald Trump was neglecting. The supply would expand to fill the demand, the curiosity of the American public would be slaked, and I’d need to find something else to write about.

I was wrong. The recent series published in this newspaper [by Lewis and six other writers] — titled “Who is government?” — proves it. .... All six writers now have enjoyed the same experience that I had the first time around. Each has been surprised by how well it pays to write about federal bureaucrats. None required more than about five minutes to find a subject that made their socks go up and down. Each has more or less said to me: I cannot believe how good this material is — and how overlooked.

My original investment thesis — that the journalistic marketplace was just a bit slow to pick up on reader interest in this new existential threat to an institution everyone has long taken for granted — no longer really suffices. Everyone can now see the threat. [I wish that was true, but it is not] And so some other forces must be at work here. One possibility: Our media is less and less able to fund long-form storytelling, and these stories require time, money and space. Another: Our government — as opposed to our elected officials — has no talent for telling its own story. On top of every federal agency sit political operatives whose job is not to reveal and explain the good work happening beneath them but to prevent any of their employees from embarrassing the president. The PR wing of the federal government isn’t really allowed to play offense, just a grinding prevent defense. And the sort of people who become civil servants — the characters profiled in our “Who is government?” series — tend not to want or seek attention.  

You never know what effect any piece of writing will have. Writers write the words, but readers decide their meaning. My vague sense is that most readers have come away from this series with feelings both of hope (these civic-minded people are still among us) and dread (we’re letting something precious slip away). My own ambition for the series was that it would subvert the stereotype of the civil servant. The typecasting has always been lazy and stupid, but increasingly, it’s deadly. Even as writers grow rich proving it wrong. (emphases added)

I want to try to make and plead for at least some understanding of two points:

• The elites who drive America's radical right authoritarian, anti-government wealth and power movement are either mostly stunningly ignorant about the false claims they routinely make about government functions, they are mostly cynical liars, or they are a roughly even mix of the two. Rick Perry was obviously in the first category -- his ignorance was stunning. So was Trump. Sadly, Trump probably still is just about as ignorant as he was in 2016. I suspect most of the rest of the radical right authoritarian elites are not nearly so ignorant as Trump and Perry, but that could be wrong. Lewis makes a great point about the deep ignorance that drives the authoritarian MAGA movement. 

• A central target of the radical right authoritarian narrative is the alleged tyrannical, socialist/Marxist "deep state" full of corrupt shady bureaucrats working to oppress all of us. The dark free speech tactic amounts to harsh attacks on mostly honest professionals who know what they are doing and are trying their best to serve the public interest. The attacks include lies, slanders, insults, and loads of BS backed mostly by flawed reasoning or just cynical crackpottery.

Law school: American radical right Authoritarianism hits democracy real hard, again

The title of this post at r/scotus, the subreddit devoted to US supreme court activities, instantly sent a major shot of deep fear right through me. This one really and truly scared the dickens out of me. The title of the post made clear that the Republican partisans who control the USSC were openly rewriting federal laws. Immediately after my emotional fear response, there was a surge of intense anger. 

OT comment: It is interesting that I am beginning to become much more aware of my own unconscious emotional reactions as they start to become conscious. There really are visceral responses that come just before feelings become consciousness. By golly, social science really does get some things right.

This is terrifying on several levels. First was an oddity, the link to the external source of the analysis was xcancel.com. I had never seen xcancel before. I clicked on this link and got an ominous warning message that the comment or account was canceled. I thought I had been tricked into clicking on a toxic link, so I immediately closed the window before reading the warning in the hope of avoiding a nasty case of digital herpes (malware, etc.). But my bad curiosity got the best of me. I clicked the link again to read the warning message, but it disappeared before I could read it. Instead, this popped up:

Then I understood what was going on. Norm Ornstein is a well-known legal analyst, previously with the formerly conservative but now-radical right authoritarian American Enterprise Institute. Ornstein posted on X and Elon Musk was trying to block his analysis of a new, blatantly authoritarian supreme court anti-democracy decision. A Perplexity search indicates that my assessment here that Musk or his minions blocked Ornstein is probably correct, see 2nd Q&A.

What was the USSC decision? Ornstein's 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th comments on X explain it:

2. Congress has superseding authority on federal elections. Actions like Youngkin took are expressly forbidden within the 90 day window before the election. Six justices decided that their partisan views are more significant than the law. This is not the first time.

3. Alito has led the way here. He has made it clear, with a majority of allies, that they will rewrite the law and impose their own views. It is an astonishing and deeply disturbing distortion of what the framers intended, and how the Court operated before Roberts took over.

4. This is a Court engaged in a hostile takeover of the Constitution and democracy. Justices, including the Chief, arrogant enough to believe that the ethic standards that apply to everybody else in government don’t matter for them.

5. Even if Trump loses, the Roberts court will do everything it can to undermine the Harris presidency and promote voting rules that enable Jim Crow-style actions in the states and undermine voting rights while giving enormously way to the rich and powerful who share its politics.

We are now at a point, and have been there for several years, where the USSC is a major American radical right authoritarian power willing to write laws as it sees fit. There is no other reasonable way to  explain this.

However, to be fair and balanced, the last comment in the Ornstein thread that I posted above was this:

They are "self-identified noncitizens" that came to the state's attention via their Bureau of Motor Vehicle paperwork according to CNN. Seems definitive.

That is true, but it does not mean two things. First, it does not mean that all of those people are illegally registered to vote. Most of them probably are legally registered at this time. They will have to re-register if they want to vote in this election. Most of them who want to vote, will probably be unable to do so. Most of the illegally registered people will probably not try to vote at all because it is a crime in Virginia. It is a felony to knowingly vote in Virginia when not qualified to do so. Illegal voting in the US is extremely rare, despite constant, outrageous lies to the contrary from the morally rotted elites who control the authoritarian, American radical right wealth and power movement.[1]

Second, and far more importantly, it does not mean the USSC has the power to rewrite federal laws it disagrees with. This is what scared the bejesus out of me. Federal law is explicit that states must make voter roll changes at least 90 days before an election. The reason for that is to stop states from engaging in partisan voter suppression before an election, which used to be a fairly common practice.

How much clearer does the gravity of the threat 

to democracy and civil liberties need to be?

The gravity of the authoritarian radical right Republican Party threat to democracy, fair elections and voting rights cannot be much clearer than this. This radical right Republican USSC is an unstoppable, partisan authoritarian power unto itself. What does it take to wake people up to this dire threat? Or, will unfounded fears, anger, resentments and false beliefs drive enough Americans (voters and non-voters) into killing democracy and civil liberties to put true, deeply corrupt, radical right authoritarianism in power? 

This country is in very deep trouble. About half of Americans are in a world of politics consisting of a lot of comforting lies, fantasies and flat out false beliefs. 

SCOTUSblog comments further about this unsigned, unexplained USSC 6-3 decision. All 6 Repubs voted in favor of purging a voter roll in Virginia. In essence, this decision appears to quietly overturn the federal law that required voter role chances to be done at least 90 days before an election. Think about that. What basis in the constitution gives the USSC to power to do this? That is not explained, nor is it likely to be explained, probably because there is no rational explanation.  

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/scotusblog/

Footnote:

1. Regarding illegal voting in major US elections:

Q: How common is illegal voting by non-citizens in major US elections?

A: Illegal voting by non-citizens in major US elections is extremely rare, despite some claims to the contrary.

Non-citizen voting in federal and state elections is exceptionally uncommon: 

A study by the Brennan Center for Justice analyzing 23.5 million votes across 42 jurisdictions in the 2016 general election found only about 30 instances of potential non-citizens voting.

The Heritage Foundation's database, covering cases from 2002 to 2023, identified only 85 instances involving allegations of non-citizen voting over two decades.

In Georgia, only 20 non-citizens were found to be registered among 8.2 million voters in 2022. 

These numbers indicate that non-citizen voting occurs at a rate of less than 0.0001% of total votes cast.

Thoughts about how to talk about politics in a radicalized, divided society: It is even possible?

Recent criticisms of me have centered on the harshness of criticisms of targets I pick. It is normal for those criticisms to include implicit or explicit assertions that I unfairly smear, disrespect and insult individuals and whole groups of people. 

I never see it that way, and certainly never intend unfairness, but I suppose that using harsh language to reasonably (based on facts, true truths and sound reasoning) criticize targeted people will lead to criticisms of me basically being an asshole. Two conflicting reactions bubble up. One is geez, how can I tone it down without diluting reality as I see it? The other is geez, I resent being put in a position where I have to try to defend myself from what I consider to be unreasonable criticisms.

Out of respect, I have never called all Trump supporters stupid, fascists or garbage. But I do sometimes argue that most of them are deceived and unknowingly supporters of authoritarianism and kleptocracy. But when I level criticisms at a group, (i) I almost always qualify it to "many", "most", or the like, and (ii) I look for some evidence that what I assert is true. I know there are outliers in all or almost all big groups of people. Regarding deceptive misinformation, authoritarianism and kleptocracy: 

Q: To what extent can average Trump supporters be considered to be significantly deceived, and misled into supporting authoritarianism and kleptocracy or corruption based on various false beliefs, e.g., the 2020 election was stolen, Trump's 1/6 insurrection was peaceful and/or of no importance?

A: There is evidence to suggest that many Trump supporters have been significantly misled and deceived into supporting authoritarian and kleptocratic tendencies, often based on false beliefs. Here are some key points to consider:

Trump and his allies have employed tactics from what some scholars call the "Authoritarian's Playbook," which includes: Weaponizing fear by embracing violent language and promoting a punitive culture. Targeting outsiders by stoking xenophobia and blaming domestic problems on scapegoats like immigrants. These tactics can lead supporters to embrace authoritarian policies out of misplaced fear or anger.

The Trump administration has worked to: Undermine key democratic institutions like the courts and free press. Rewrite history through control of education and media to indoctrinate the public. This erosion of democratic norms and institutions can make supporters more accepting of authoritarian governance.

Despite campaigning as a populist, Trump has: Openly built a kleptocracy backed by billionaires and white supremacists. Used the presidency to enrich himself and his family, resembling kleptocrats like Ferdinand Marcos. Some Trump supporters have expressed alarm at these developments, saying "this is not what they signed on for." 

While not explicitly mentioned in the search results, the query references false beliefs about the 2020 election being stolen and the January 6th insurrection being peaceful or unimportant. These beliefs align with the pattern of misinformation and undermining of democratic institutions described in the sources. 

In conclusion, while not all Trump supporters can be painted with the same brush, there is substantial evidence that many have been misled into supporting authoritarian and kleptocratic tendencies based on false beliefs and manipulation of fear. This deception has been facilitated by a combination of deliberate tactics, media manipulation, and the erosion of democratic norms and institutions. (emphasis added)

I routinely refer to Fox News as Faux News. That really pisses some people off. But I use that label because I believe it is fair and accurate. MBFC analysis of Fox News:

Q: To what extent has Fox News contributed to the understanding (or misunderstanding), normalization and acceptance of (i) various forms of authoritarianism, e.g., autocracy, Christian theocracy and unregulated plutocratic capitalism, (ii) corruption in government, and (iii) the use of lies, vulgarity and insults of political opposition and honest governance characterized as, e.g., tyrannical evil socialist deep state subversion?

A: Fox News has played a significant role in shaping public perception and discourse around authoritarianism, corruption, and political rhetoric in the United States. Fox News has been criticized for promoting views that some argue normalize or legitimize authoritarian tendencies: The network has been accused of showing bias in favor of the Republican Party and conservative viewpoints, potentially skewing public perception of political issues. There are concerns that Fox News has aided efforts to undermine democratic processes, such as promoting false claims about election fraud.

Corruption in Government: Fox News' approach to covering corruption allegations has been inconsistent: The network has been accused of downplaying or dismissing corruption allegations against favored political figures. Conversely, Fox News has also been criticized for amplifying unsubstantiated corruption claims against political opponents.

Political Rhetoric and Discourse: Fox News has been influential in shaping the tone and content of political discourse: The network has been accused of promoting divisive rhetoric and personal attacks against political opponents. Some argue that Fox News has contributed to the normalization of inflammatory language and conspiracy theories in political discussions

Impact on Public Understanding: Fox News' influence on public understanding of these issues is significant: As a major news outlet, Fox News plays a role in shaping public opinion and framing political debates. The network's coverage has been accused of creating an echo chamber that reinforces certain political viewpoints

The network recently settled a defamation lawsuit with Dominion Voting Systems for $787.5 million over its coverage of the 2020 election. This settlement has highlighted concerns about the network's commitment to factual reporting and its role in spreading misinformation.

In conclusion, while Fox News maintains a significant audience and influence, its approach to covering political issues has been the subject of ongoing controversy and criticism. The network's impact on public understanding of authoritarianism, corruption, and political discourse remains a topic of debate among media analysts and political observers.

Q: What are 4 prominent examples of misinformation that Fox News continually reports about?

A: Here are four prominent examples of misinformation that Fox News has been accused of continually reporting:

1. 2020 Election Fraud Claims: Fox News extensively promoted false claims about widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election, despite knowing these claims were baseless. The network's hosts and executives privately acknowledged that allegations of rigged voting machines and stolen votes were unfounded, yet continued to air these conspiracy theories on their programs.

2. COVID-19 Misinformation: During the COVID-19 pandemic, Fox News has been criticized for downplaying the severity of the virus and spreading misinformation about its causes, spread, and treatments. Some hosts promoted unproven remedies and questioned the efficacy of public health measures like mask-wearing and social distancing.

3. Climate Change Denial: Fox News has a history of promoting climate change skepticism and denial, often featuring commentators who question the scientific consensus on human-caused global warming. This has included misrepresenting climate data and giving disproportionate airtime to climate change deniers.

4. "Replacement Theory" Rhetoric: Some Fox News hosts, particularly Tucker Carlson, have promoted ideas aligned with the "Great Replacement" theory, a conspiracy theory that claims Western elites are deliberately replacing white populations with non-white immigrants. This rhetoric has been criticized for stoking racial fears and xenophobia.

I try to always treat all of my criticisms the same way, i.e., crafted to be reasonably precise and based on evidence and sound reasoning.

Qs: Do I have anything to apologize for? Do I need to tone down my criticisms? Do I need to call it Fox instead of Faux out of respect for a powerful, mendacious authoritarian voice that is poisoning American politics and tearing our society apart?

Essentially contested concepts: Adjusting rhetoric to fit the situation

Trigger alert: After the summary, this post gets wonky. 

🥺

Summary

Thanks to PD pointing it out, I have recently become aware of the fact that I don't fully understand the concept of the ECC (essentially contested concept) as WB Gallie described in in 1956. Gallie laid out 7 criteria for a disagreement to qualify as an ECC. Some of the criteria I was aware, but some of the 7 I just glossed over and basically ignored. That bothers me. To assuage my cognitive dissonance, I need to adjust my rhetoric.

Long story short: Instead of calling political disagreements that are very likely not resolvable except by reasonable compromise or some form of coercion or force ECCs, I will instead call such disagreements contested concepts (CCs). That label includes ECCs, possible ECCs and things that are clearly not ECCs. 

Or, would the label democratically contested concept (DCC), be better to point out the compromise vs non-compromise ways of dealing with a political disagreement? Since authoritarians do not compromise unless forced to by circumstances, the scope of what can be meaningfully contested by the public, special interests and political opposition is low to none. In other words, democrats contest and compromise, but authoritarians rule as they wish whether special interests, political opposition or most of the public likes it or not.

The point I wanted to make by using the ECC label was to (i) highlight the two options to deal with political non-resolvability, i.e., generally democratic compromise and generally authoritarian non-compromise, and (ii) make clear the personal cognitive or social subjectivity that most intractable political disagreements seem to be heavily grounded in. 

Q: About what % of the American public is sympathetic to openly supportive of some form authoritarian rule for the US?

A: Approximately 25-30% of the American public appears to be sympathetic to or openly supportive of some form of authoritarian rule for the United States. .... 

Hm, that seems to me to be too low. It probably excludes another ~15-20% of Americans who sincerely believe they are pro-democracy but support various forms of authoritarianism in government and law enforcement, e.g., Trump and the Republican Party.

Qs: What is the best label? Is this summary wonky?

___________________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________________

The wonky part

I asked Perplexity this question about ECCs:

Q: About what % of common political issues are essentially contested concepts and what clearly % fall outside of the ECC concept and what % are unclear as to their status as an ECC?

A: A rough estimate might suggest that around 40-50% of common political issues involve ECCs to some degree. [40-60% makes more sense in view of the 20-30% estimates given below] 

Issues Clearly Outside ECCs 

Some political issues are more factual or procedural in nature and fall outside the realm of ECCs. These might include: Specific legal procedures, quantitative economic data, demographic statistics and certain administrative processes. Approximately 20-30% of political issues might fall into this category. 

Unclear Status

There's a significant grey area where it's not immediately clear whether an issue qualifies as an ECC. This category might include: Emerging political concepts that haven't been fully debated, issues that combine both contested and uncontested elements, and topics that are contextually dependent. Roughly 20-30% of political issues might fall into this unclear category.

Perplexity describes the 7 criteria:

Gallie proposed several criteria to identify essentially contested concepts:
1. They must be evaluative, delivering value judgments.
2. They must have an internally complex character.
3. The evaluation must be attributed to the concept as a whole.
4. The concept's elements must be variously describable and open to different interpretations.
5. Users allocate different weights or importance to the concept's elements [and they are aware of this difference in their analyses -- hence my point in constantly harping on getting to stasis in disagreements].
6. The concept must be derived from an exemplar or tradition that unifies competing interpretations.
7. The contestation must be "genuine" and sustained by respectable arguments.

Criteria 1, 4 and 5 make sense to me. That is how I generally viewed ECCs. But criteria 2, 3, 6 and 7 are incomprehensible. 1 and 7 strike me as circular, e.g., 1 is subjective and 7 is incoherent in view of 1 -- a "genuine" disagreement and a "respectable argument" are both value judgments. As for 6, I do not know what exemplar or tradition that unifies competing interpretations means analytically or logically, but some examples are asserted to include, democracy (ancient Athens), art (Renaissance period), social justice (John Rawls' Theory of Justice), religion (the life and teachings of Jesus Christ) and the rule of law (the Magna Carta).

Political concepts that may be mistakenly considered ECCs but may not fully meet the criteria: Sovereignty, citizenship, separation of powers, federalism and dictatorship. 

Q: Please list 7-10 common contested concepts that are not formally ECCs.

A: 1. Intelligence, 2. happiness, 3. success, 4. love, 5. health, 6. morality, 7. culture, 8. religion, 9. education, and 10. progress.

These concepts are often debated and interpreted differently by various individuals and groups, but they may not fully satisfy all of Gallie's criteria for ECCs. The distinction between contested concepts and ECCs can be subtle and depends on careful analysis of how the concept is used and debated in practice. (emphasis added)

OK, I give up. I clearly do not understand the concept of an ECC. Nor do I understand why it is important and useful to carefully distinguish an ECC from a CC, DCC, or whatever other label(s) makes sense. I am not even sure that Perplexity understands it.

An example of flawed reasoning; Cynicism or sincere?

Jeff Bezos published an explanation (not paywalled, I think) for him blocking the WaPo's endorsement of Harris, claiming that was needed to show journalistic "independence":

In the annual public surveys about trust and reputation, journalists and the media have regularly fallen near the very bottom, often just above Congress. But in this year’s Gallup poll, we have managed to fall below Congress. Our profession is now the least trusted of all. Something we are doing is clearly not working.

Let me give an analogy. Voting machines must meet two requirements. They must count the vote accurately, and people must believe they count the vote accurately. The second requirement is distinct from and just as important as the first.

Likewise with newspapers. We must be accurate, and we must be believed to be accurate. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but we are failing on the second requirement. Most people believe the media is biased. Anyone who doesn’t see this is paying scant attention to reality, and those who fight reality lose.

Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election. No undecided voters in Pennsylvania are going to say, “I’m going with Newspaper A’s endorsement.” None. What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence. Ending them is a principled decision, and it’s the right one.

Lack of credibility isn’t unique to The Post. Our brethren newspapers have the same issue. And it’s a problem not only for media, but also for the nation. Many people are turning to off-the-cuff podcasts, inaccurate social media posts and other unverified news sources, which can quickly spread misinformation and deepen divisions. The Washington Post and the New York Times win prizes, but increasingly we talk only to a certain elite. More and more, we talk to ourselves. (It wasn’t always this way — in the 1990s we achieved 80 percent household penetration in the D.C. metro area.)

While I do not and will not push my personal interest, I will also not allow this paper to stay on autopilot and fade into irrelevance — overtaken by unresearched podcasts and social media barbs — not without a fight. It’s too important. The stakes are too high. Now more than ever the world needs a credible, trusted, independent voice, and where better for that voice to originate than the capital city of the most important country in the world? To win this fight, we will have to exercise new muscles. Some changes will be a return to the past, and some will be new inventions. Criticism will be part and parcel of anything new, of course. This is the way of the world. None of this will be easy, but it will be worth it.

Personally, I find Bezos' reasoning to be disingenuous, obviously flawed and unpersuasive, his comments insulting and his plan to make some changes in a return to the past threatening. His assertion that "increasingly we talk only to a certain elite" really pisses me off. Exactly who are these elites? Not me, that's for damn sure. He doesn't have the guts to tell us that by elites he means pro-democracy, pro-civil liberties, pro-rule of law citizens. He sees the handwriting and needs to appeal to authoritarians falsely claiming to be pro-democracy, pro-civil liberties and pro-rule of law.

His plan to go back to the past is a threat against democracy. What changes does Bezos have in mind? He is silent about that. I assume he intends to sink the WaPo to the low level of Faux News so that they can compete for those people listening to off-the-cuff podcasts, inaccurate social media posts and other unverified news sources. 

Bezos is silent as to what he can do to increase the WaPo's credibility. From what I can tell, the most plausible tactic is to resort to what Faux News, crackpot podcasters and toxic social media do. If not that, then exactly what? Truth is truth, facts are facts. How can that possibly be distrust-inducing unless there are well-funded forces claiming that truth and facts are lies? Bezos' "reasoning" is nonsense.

Bezos' claim that he does not and will not push my personal interest is insulting, cynical and disingenuous. By quashing the Harris endorsement, he pushed personal interest. He was afraid of Trump and wanted to protect his wealth. His comments about the uselessness of endorsements is not even close to persuasive. What he did is direct evidence of non-independence from political threat. That is authoritarian, not democratic. 

A final criticism: An outrageous, insulting omission in Bezos' screed about low public trust in the mainstream media points to a critical part of American authoritarian infrastructure. Low public trust came from decades of authoritarian radical right dark free speech that relentlessly criticized the press and professional news media generally. Bezos' lament shifts all blame for low public trust on the media itself, instead of leveling most of the blame (85% ?) where it obviously belongs, namely America's authoritarian radical right propaganda Leviathan. Crackpots, creeps, cranks and cynical, divisive authoritarians from Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck to Faux News, the Republican Party, Newt Gingrich, Elon Musk, Christian nationalist hate and lies spewers and giant, anti-journalism special business interests (including plutocratic for-profit ownership) are the main reasons for low public trust. 

Bezos knows all of this and has no answer for it. So, instead of calling out the main culprit, he blames the media itself. To me, Bezos is an arrogant authoritarian, self-serving liar.

***************************

NPR reports that about 200,000 subscribers, about 8% of paid subscriptions, have canceled since Bezos was forced by his fear of Trump to publicly go rogue anti-journalism. Over time, my opinion of Bezos could change depending on what he does to the WaPo. But at present, it feels like what Rupert Murdoch did to the Wall Street Journal. That got me to drop my WSJ subscription years ago. I canceled my WaPo subscription but will have access until the end of next April. Between now and then what he does to the WaPo can convince me he is sincere and pro-democracy, or he can reinforce my bad opinion of him. My mind will remain open.