I suppose that there are still some people waiting for Donald Trump’s bubble to burst – any day now! But it keeps not happening. And it’s becoming increasingly plausible that he will go all the way to the Republican presidential nomination. Why?
One answer – probably the most important – is what Greg Sargent at The Washington Post has been emphasizing lately: The majority of Republican voters actually support Mr. Trump’s policy positions. After all, he’s just saying outright what mainstream candidates
have implied for years through innuendo – how are voters supposed to know that this isn’t what you do?
I would, however, add a casual observation: At this point, Mr. Trump has been the front-runner for long enough that it’s very hard to imagine his supporters suddenly losing faith. That would be too embarrassing.
Bear in mind that embarrassment, and the desire to avoid it, are enormously important sources of motivation. Just consider what has happened to the supposedly smart guys who predicted six or seven years ago that interest rates would soar and that we would
see runaway inflation. Almost none of them have conceded that they were wrong or that they should have done more homework. Instead, many of them – especially the academics – have become ever more obsessed with claiming that they were somehow right, or
they’ve been trying to tear down the reputations of those of us who were right. Nobody likes looking like a chump, and most people will go to great lengths to convince themselves that they aren’t.
Now think about someone who has supported Mr. Trump since the summer. For the Trump bubble to burst, many people like that would have to slap their foreheads and say: “Wow, he’s not a serious person! What was I thinking?”
Very few people ever do that sort of thing. Someone who has spent months supporting Mr. Trump despite establishment denunciations – which is something like a third of Republicans – will go to great lengths to avoid conceding that he has been foolish.
At this point, such people will insist that any negative reports about Mr. Trump are the product of hostile mainstream media. In fact, Mr. Trump’s very durability so far is likely to make him highly resilient in the coming months.
All this suggests that even if Mr. Trump’s candidacy does finally decline, his support is likely to flow not to an establishment candidate, but to another outsider figure. Everyone who knows Senator Ted Cruz well hates him. In this environment, that probably
enhances his appeal.
The general election will, of course, be quite different. But it’s getting really hard to see how the Republican establishment reasserts control.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
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