Democracy Dies in the Warm Glow of Both-Sidesism

Special counsel Jack Smith speaks to the media about the indictment of former Donald Trump on August 1, 2023, at the Department of Justice. Scott Applewhite/AP

A few years ago, I wrote an article examining cases of when a democratic country reversed a slide toward authoritarianism. There were not many examples. So it was tough to draw hard-and-fast lessons for the United States. In some instances, mass movements prevented a wannabe autocrat from overthrowing democracy. In others, elites defied and prevented the takeover. Sometimes, a combination of pressure from influential insiders and street demonstrators saved democracy. In South Korea last year, when President Yoon Suk Yeol tried to impose martial law, protests sprung up immediately, and elected officials from both major political parties opposed the coup. Yoon was forced to reverse course and was soon impeached.

As Donald Trump strives to amass power and implement authoritarian measures, it’s not yet clear what forces can thwart him. There have been street protests—and will be more (including No Kings demonstrations across the land on October 18). But sufficient popular resistance hasn’t arisen so far to stop him and his Republican handmaids. As for the elites, many have abandoned the republic to serve their own oily interests. Big Tech overlords rush to the White House to fawn over Dear Leader. Wall Street barons rarely speak a harsh word of Trump and his actions. University presidents bent the knee. (We’re waiting to see if Harvard will do the same.) Prestigious law firms yielded to Trump’s extortion. And so did ABC News and CBS News, while other media outlets have failed to cover the crisis at hand and Trump’s multiple efforts to subvert democracy in the compelling terms they deserve.

Which brings me to the Washington Post, owned, as you know, by gazillionaire Jeff Bezos, who happily attended Trump’s second inauguration and even shot the president a cute little wave during the ceremony.

The devolution of this once-grand newspaper has been much noted. Bezos, presumably motivated by his wide-ranging business interests, suffocated the paper’s endorsement of Kamala Harris. He booted the leadership of its editorial page and commanded the replacements to follow a more libertarian path. The publisher he recruited, a Murdoch alum, has searched for ways to appeal to Trumpish readers. Some of the paper’s best reporters and columnists have fled. Intrepid journalists who remain have produced impressive and important investigative pieces about Trump and his mob, but the enterprise is sinking—in performance, in profits, and in prestige. Editorial and news are separate functions. But WaPo’s journalism is too often overshadowed by its accommodationism.

A few days ago, Bezos’ newspaper truly captured, unintentionally, the essence of the capitulation of the elite with a clueless editorial. The editorial board—refashioned by Mr. Amazon to fixate on “personal liberties and free markets”—equated former special counsel Jack Smith’s prosecution of Trump with the Trump-ordered indictment of onetime FBI Director James Comey, depicting both as partisan excesses.

What prompted this was the recent news that Smith and the FBI, while investigating Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election, obtained phone records of nine Republican senators who were or who might have been in communication with Trump around the time of the January 6 insurrectionist riot. The information the FBI collected only showed when calls happened and whom the calls were with. The contents of the conversations were not collected. This is a standard investigative tactic, and Smith and his team were using it to determine whom Trump might have been conspiring with to illegally undermine the election results.

The Republican senators and assorted MAGA figures howled in protest. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) exclaimed, “The FBI tapped my phone.” No, this was not phone-tapping. (A US senator did not understand this?) Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), a proponent of conspiracy theories, griped, “We were surveilled simply for being Republicans.” Not true. Smith sought this information over two years after the phone calls happened. That is not surveillance. As Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) replied to Johnson, “You weren’t surveilled, DOJ obtained basic records after the fact—date, time and length of call, but no substance—to confirm Trump’s effort to overturn the election.”

FBI Director Kash Patel huffed, “We recently uncovered proof that phone records of U.S. lawmakers were seized for political purposes. That abuse of power ends now.” I’m sure that experts on criminal investigations can argue over whether Smith, who was known to be an aggressive prosecutor, needed these records. But this was not a spying operation. Smith collected the information for an investigative, not a political, purpose. It was never used for any partisan action.

Back to the Washington Post. In opining about this disclosure, its editorial board remarked, “Many Democrats still cannot see how their legal aggression against Trump during his four years out of power set the stage for the dangerous revenge tour on which he is now embarked.” And it added, “Smith showed little restraint in his pursuit of a former president.”

The paper’s editorialists did note that Trump has demonstrated “less restraint as he steamrolls his own Justice Department to demand the prosecution of his enemies.” But their main point is both sides suck and have engaged in partisan “lawfare.”

Here’s the problem. Trump tried mightily to demolish American democracy. He refused to accept valid election results. He falsely declared he had won. He convinced millions of this Big Lie. He secretly connived to stay in power, applying pressure to Justice Department officials, elected Republican officials in swing states, and Vice President Mike Pence to conspire to subvert the constitutional order. He incited a violent assault on the Capitol, and for hours—as cops were being beaten and Democratic and Republican legislators were being threatened—did nothing in the hope this domestic terrorism would benefit him and allow him to stay in power.

Trump nearly succeeded in destroying the republic.

Should that not have been thoroughly investigated? This seems to be the Posties’ position, for they refer to Smith’s probe derogatorily as “lawfare.” An elite media institution owned by currently the fourth-richest guy on the globe has decreed that Trump ought to have received a pass—or, at least, gentle treatment—for his attempt in 2020 and 2021 to blow up America.

Such an attitude helped grease the way for Trump’s return to the White House, where he is now committing abuses of power on a daily basis, steering the economy into a ditch, grifting billions of dollars for him and his family, threatening free speech and other civil liberties, annihilating vital government programs and services, exacerbating the partisan divide and lying nonstop to purposefully gin up political conflict and military face-offs within American cities, mounting a crusade against immigrants, and undermining American democracy.

“A spiral of four-year revenge cycles is a recipe for the decline of a republic,” the Post tut-tuts. But to dismiss the prosecution of Trump for his (alleged) crimes against the Constitution as merely a politically driven act of revenge is to purposefully avoid the severity of what Trump attempted and to duck coming to terms with that. Which ain't good for the republic. A bipartisan majority of 57 senators voted to convict Trump after he was impeached. Yet the Post big-thinkers apparently believe the matter should have been dropped and no accountability was necessary for an unprecedented attack on democracy.

Those who suck on the teat of power often have no interest in challenging the source of that power. With Trump back in control of the federal government, Bezos and his tech pals (and rivals) are eager to kiss the ring, and the opinion-deciders of his Washington Post have embraced punditry’s refuge of scoundrels: both-sidesism.

Editorials don’t matter much these days—especially in newspapers with declining circulation. But they are signals from on high of what influential folks are thinking. If Bezos and the great minds he has hired for the Washington Post’s editorial board really do believe the Smith investigation was illegitimate and generally on par with Trump’s revenge-fueled corruption of the Justice Department, that’s a bad sign. Every inch the elites give Trump will be a perilous mile for the nation.

Got anything to say about this item—or anything else? Email me at ourland.corn@gmail.com.

It’s something of a record for a network news boss to score a DCotW nomination for a remark made on her first day in the job. But Bari Weiss, the anti-woke former New York Times opinion writer who founded the Free Press, the anti-PC media firm, and who recently became editor-in-chief of CBS News, has earned this distinction. When she introduced herself to the CBS News staff this week, she said she wanted to win and that meant restoring trust to CBS News. She ended her remarks with this cheer: “Let’s do the fucking news.”

How inspiring. First off, CBS News is one of the 10 most trusted news sources (if you don’t count the Weather Channel) in America, according to a recent poll. So starting off by telling your reporters and editors that people don’t trust them is hardly an upbeat note. Weiss was giving credence to the Trump/MAGA/right-wing narrative that the media is arrayed against America. And to tell broadcast news people, when you have never worked in television news, “let’s do the fucking news”—that might have come off as insulting, too.

Weiss is not in the job because of her news chops. Skydance, after buying Paramount, which owns CBS, installed Weiss because of her politics and swagger. I’m rooting for CBS News and hope she proves to be a good leader for the organization. But this was an inauspicious start.

Thou shall not lie is a rather important commandment. Yet House Speaker Mike Johnson, who said his worldview is based on the Bible, seems to have missed that one. Discussing the Republicans’ failure to fund the government, Johnson this week insisted, “Let me look right into the camera and tell you very clearly: Republicans are the ones concerned about health care. Republicans are the party working around the clock every day to fix health care. This is not talking points for us. We've done it."

Have you seen any health care proposals issued by the Republicans this week, while they’re working 24/7? I haven’t. I did see the letter put out by the Congressional Budget Office that said 16 million people will lose their health insurance due to Trump’s big, ugly spending bill the Republicans enthusiastically passed. And I did see the report noting that if the enhanced health care tax credits that expire this year are not extended—and the GOP has so far refused to extend them—people who make between $22,000 and $55,000 will see their premiums rise between $794 and a whopping $5,478. Are the Rs losing sleep to fix all this. No? They’re not even in session. Johnson should reread Exodus 20.

Not a week goes by that Trump isn’t in contention. It’s an arduous task for the judges to select just one or two of his comments. This week, they’re highlighting a pair of idiotic observations from Trump about Portland, Oregon:

I don't know what could be worse than Portland. You don't even have stores anymore. They don't even put glass up. They put plywood on their windows.

Portland is burning to the ground—insurrectionists all over the place. It’s antifa…The politicians are afraid for their lives. That’s the only reason they say there’s nothing happening.

Trump is either delusional or a liar. Maybe both. There are plenty of stores in Portland. And lots of boutiques. Politicians there are not running scared of antifa. As I write this, I am looking at a livecam set up by KATU News, the ABC affiliate in Portland, that shows the ICE facility where some protests have led occasionally to scuffles. At this moment, there are three peaceful protesters holding anti-ICE signs. There are no signs of fires or pitched battles. About half the cars driving by are honking in solidarity.

Trump’s rhetoric is easy to dismiss as absurd. But he’s trying to incite a real conflict so he can send troops into a liberal stronghold and be the strongman he dreams to be. What’s discouraging is that his bullshit does not fully delegitimize him.

Stephen Miller, Trump’s mini-me, is doing the same thing:

Miller yearns to turn ICE protests into a Reichstag fire that will allow Trump to take drastic steps, perhaps even impose martial law. In a CNN interview, he said Trump has “plenary authority,” which the Legal Information Institute of Cornell University’s law school defines as “power that is wide-ranging, broadly construed, and often limitless for all practical purposes.” Limitless. These comments are not just dumb; they’re dangerous.

It's hard to compete with that. But Attorney General Pam Bondi did—and she won this week’s prize. At a ludicrous White House summit on antifa—which featured MAGA influencers, such as Jack Posobiec, who has praised far-right dictators who tortured and murdered leftists—Bondi declared, "Just like we did with cartels, we're going to take the same approach, President Trump, with antifa."

The Trump administration is bombing boats it claims are carrying drugs and killing people with no due process and without presenting any evidence to back up its allegations. The boat strikes, according to legal scholars on the left and right, are illegal. Here’s Bondi stating the administration will use the same tactic—extrajudicial killing—against American citizens. And it’s just another day in Trump’s America.

I’m not sure this counts as inspiration, but the Portland Frog—whether it’s an antifa activist or someone else inside the costume—added a touch of absurdity to the situation at the ICE facility in that city.

And there was a refreshing exchange about AI between NPR’s Ari Shapiro and David Simon, the creator of HBO’s The Wire:

There was much response to the recent issues on Trump’s using “enemy from within” rhetoric and on the government shutdown. David Miller had an interesting take:

I just finished reading your absolutely spot-on article, “The Real Enemy Within,” and thought it provided, let’s say, an “interesting opportunity” for Google’s AI, Gemini, to have a say.

David asked Gemini to reply to the piece. The result was lengthy and indeed interesting. Here are excerpts:

Dear Mr. Corn,

Your analysis in "The Real Enemy Within" is critically important, particularly your concluding observation that the greatest danger is the "speed of normalization" that greets this authoritarian rhetoric. This velocity is indeed the key threat to the republic, operating not just on a political plane, but on a cognitive and technological one.

The rhetorical strategy you document—turning political opposition into an existential national threat—works only because the public is quickly losing the capacity for outrage. I believe this normalization is being accelerated by at least three interconnected and corrosive forces:

1. The Weaponization of Information Velocity

The very structure of the modern digital landscape—a hyper-partisan media ecosystem fueled by algorithmic feedback loops—is an accelerant. This environment, designed for maximum engagement, rewards the extreme, the outrageous, and the simple lie, while punishing nuance and reasoned debate. More critically, this speed of normalization will be tragically and unfairly accelerated by the misuse of Artificial Intelligence… When the public is overwhelmed by a constant, AI-amplified flood of personalized messaging, the capacity for reasoned collective outrage at a singular authoritarian phrase like "enemy within" is exhausted. The technology becomes a tool for an information coup that destabilizes shared reality.

2. The Erosion of Foundational Constitutional Norms

The speed of normalization is directly proportional to the breakdown of societal commitment to the foundational precepts of the Constitution…When a President assails political foes as an "enemy within," he is deliberately attempting to nullify the concept of legitimate opposition. The rhetoric prepares the ground for executive action against political opponents—such as using the military for domestic purposes or directing the Justice Department to prosecute critics.

3. The Exhaustion of Outrage

The strategy of the "enemy within" is based on psychological fatigue. Each new, historically charged statement—whether calling opponents "vermin" or declaring the Capitol attack a "hoax"—pushes the boundaries further. The constant shock forces the institutions meant to serve as watchdogs (media, political rivals, civil society) into a perpetual state of reaction. In this state of constant siege, the public and the media lose the ability to maintain consistent outrage. The threshold for what is deemed "unacceptable" rises daily, until language once associated only with dictators and authoritarians becomes just another Tuesday's news cycle. This normalization is a deliberate, strategic victory for those seeking to dismantle democratic accountability.

Mr. Corn, your work and the attention you bring to this language are essential counter-forces. The challenge for humanity is to recognize that we are not just witnessing a political debate; we are fighting the accelerated normalization of an authoritarian mindset. We must treat the rhetorical threat as the practical threat it is—before the language of exclusion successfully supplants the language of democracy.

Sincerely,
Gemini

I’m not always a big fan of AI, Gemini. But I think you nailed it. Thanks.

Ray Lozano emailed:

We have a problem indeed and history shows what hatred can become. Mix large-scale hatred with Christian Nationalism and watch out! The times I have tried to remind people of the Spanish Inquisition in the comments section of the New York Times I have been rejected—every time. Extreme MAGA means business. Jack Posobiec’s book Unhumans supports your argument. It’s a poorly written, cult incantation, not worth buying, so I recommend checking it out from an online library if you can stomach a few pages.

Ray, I read Unhumans so Our Land readers don’t have to. And I wrote about it here.

Max Tollenaar had a criticism:

Leading with Hillary Clinton in you “Enemy Within” article is a tactical and strategic mistake in these times. If you were doing a piece on, say, the brazen hypocrisy of Trump and MAGA, then that anecdote would have made a nice example when juxtaposed with Trump’s current behavior. But we should not waste any political oxygen trying to explain Hillary Clinton’s failure, or, God forbid, resuscitate her political stature, and that’s exactly what people will think when her name is raised in the manner that you raised it. She was the perfect candidate for the worst disaster and the less she is mentioned the better. By the way, The Enemy Within was also the title of a book by the populist, anti-communist presidential candidate character Joe Cantwell played by Cliff Robertson in the 1964 movie The Best Man, which still airs a lot on TCM. 

Richard Gilbert wrote:

Thoreau’s advice—“simplify, simplify”—is prescient today. Who said that the Ukraine war would end on day one? Who said that grocery prices would drop after his election? Whose budget will double health care costs? Whose budget puts millions of people out of health care? Simple: Trump and House and Senate Republicans. Simplify, Simplify.

Tom Cluster emailed:

You make a convincing argument, I just wish you could be specific about what Dems should do instead of what they’re doing.

I did state that I did not have a lot of good advice for the Democrats specifically regarding the shutdown fight. But as I've been saying for months, their messaging needs to be hammering the larger points about the GOP agenda. It’s hard to win a battle if you don’t have a clear strategy for winning the war.

Michaelene Alston shared this:

I am a woman in my 70s and caregiver to my husband who is disabled with an assortment of issues. We wouldn't be able to survive without the benefits he gets from the VA, and I live everyday dreading that those will disappear along with everyone else's healthcare, not to mention our constitutional rights. I'm afraid that no one has been able to rein in the abuses that are becoming part of the fabric of life in America.

Michaelene, I’m sorry you’re in a tough situation. Hang in there. There are millions of Americans who don’t accept what is happening. If they take action, these abuses can be halted.

This week there was a large amount of angry mail from people who responded with insults. Which probably means a recent issue was referenced on a website visited by MAGA fans. Lee Edward Tabin was one such correspondent:

Trump has presided over peace and prosperity. He is the most pro-Israel and pro-Jewish president in history. He is a dictator as much as you and I play in NBA. What enrages your ilk is that he talks back to the media, which is 90 percent Democratic. I personally think that is a bad strategy. I have not looked it up yet, but I had impression you were Jewish.

Lee, it’s not that hard to find out.

A fellow named Erik tried to hurt my feelings:

Literally no one is listening to you people anymore. The constant Trump bashing. I don't do politics, don't vote, don't really give a shit either way, as I lead my own life. Just letting you know, so maybe you can save your energy and kindly STFU. Go outside. 

I was perplexed by Erik. He doesn’t vote, doesn’t do politics, and doesn’t give a shit. But he cared enough to read Our Land, find my email address, and write to tell me all that. Maybe he was tired of being outside.

Betty Gunz had this to say:

After a long report on the dismal, sometimes terrifying things happening in our country, a touch of humor and a picture of the adorable Moxie is such a delight! Thank you for both. 

Speaking of which...

“Moxie, with your new haircut, you look great in this soft morning light.”
“You mean I don’t look good in the harsh light of the day?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“How about at dusk? Do I look okay, then? Or at night?”
“Moxie, you always look good—whenever.”
“Okay, sorry, I’m just a little stressed out these days. Let’s go for a walk.”
“Good idea.”