"Complacency Kills"

Reflecting on an Unprecedented six months—and what's ahead

Photo by Bernard Hermant on Unsplash

A lot has changed in America and the world since I wrote my first post here on Substack six long months ago. But the three predictions I made about 2020 have all come true. As I said then:

Three things are certain:

1. The lies will be endless.
2. The distractions will be constant.
3. The media will fail us.

As I predicted in December:

The opposition will be relentless in its assaults on truth and decency. The bots will be out in force. Kremlin propaganda will be parroted daily on Fox News. On Facebook, Trump’s lies will be accepted as “paid advertising” and given the oxygen and share buttons they need to further pollute the minds of the already brainwashed. And if Putin’s ongoing attack on our democracy isn’t already bad enough, the GOP’s voter suppression efforts will make 2019’s college cheating scandal look like a kindergarten game.

Twenty-six weeks later, we are living in an age of unprecedented death, devastation and despair. The lies, stupidity, incompetence and corruption that are the hallmarks of the Trump Administration have been laid bare in new, unavoidable and incontrovertible ways. Yet, according to FiveThirtyEight, Trump’s national poll average remains 41.4%, down less than 2% since the start of April. Scarily, the latest general election poll in Wisconsin (while possibly an outlier) shows Trump ahead by 1%.

We can take nothing about November for granted.

After the last election, an entire wall inside NYC’s Union Square subway station was covered with sticky notes on which people expressed their thoughts on the election’s shock outcome.

“Complacency kills,” was the phrase I zeroed in on. As the past three and a half years have shown, the person who wrote that was 100% correct. It should serve as a reminder to the rest of us: We can take nothing about next November for granted.

The media will continue to fail us.

It is just four months since the first COVID-19 death was confirmed in the US on February 29. Since then, more than 128,000 Americans have died, eclipsing the annual death tolls of diseases such as diabetes and Alzheimer’s. The death toll is now double that of US fatalities in the Vietnam War—more even than World War I, the Iraq War, Afghanistan and 9/11 combined.

But Trump still has the power to distract reporters and cable news producers at will, with a “white power” retweet or a slimy new attack on Biden or the Constitution.

And the disinformation is getting worse. As Richard Stengel wrote recently in TIME:

A Knight Foundation study revealed that 65% of junk news and conspiracy theories on Twitter traced back to the 10 largest disinformation websites, which included Infowars. The even darker side of Trump’s attack on traditional media is that he empowers the 80% of Republicans who do not trust mass media outlets to become vectors of unchecked and unsourced information.

It’s now just four months until the next election. The shenanigans are only getting started. Trump may appear to be on the ropes, with people speculating he may even “do a Palin” and quit before voters get the chance to humiliate him. Or maybe his mystery medical issues will suddenly get worse, allowing him to bow out less shamefully. But don’t count on it. With Bill Barr and “Moscow Mitch” at his side, and Putin in his corner, it’s hard to imagine Trump quitting now (unless he’s 100% assured of blanket pardons from President Pence for himself and his whole family before he departs the stage).

As I noted in my very first article, even in the 4th year of his Presidency, the media still treat Trump and the Trump Crime Family with kid gloves, while willingly doing Putin’s dirty work for him. After and despite everything we’ve seen, I fully expect the media to hold Biden (and Hunter) to a higher standard than they expect from Trump (and Ivanka and Jared and Don, Jr. and Eric). Seriously, isn’t Jared’s handling of all the federal pandemic money a bigger scandal than Hunter Biden’s non-illegal foreign business endeavors? And what about the real “hunter” scandal— #SheepKiller Don, Jr. using political favors to stay out of a Mongolian prison last summer after cowardly killing a rare and endangered animal using a laser-sighted rifle under cover of darkness, and then sending taxpayers a $76,000 bill for the pleasure?

Even after Trump killed the record-breaking Obama recovery, lied us into a pandemic, caused tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths, left tens of millions of Americans unemployed, and repeatedly betrayed the country and its troops, it’s impossible to say with certainty that November’s election will result in the crushing defeat that he and the GOP clearly deserve.

For the corporate media, covering the election as a horse race (and keeping it as close as possible) is the easiest and best way to keep viewers watching and advertisers paying.

Amid all the lies and disinformation, I’ll keep plugging away.

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Again, to quote myself from six month ago:

Amid the blizzard of lies and the deluge of distractions, Unprecedented will stay focused on facts and reality. And unlike the “mass media,” I won’t be allowing Trump to use demented Twitter rants or the trappings of his office to dictate his own coverage…. The most important thing we can all do is to ensure a Democrat wins in 2020 and Democrats retain the House and regain the Senate. After that, we can begin to repair the unprecedented damage Trump and the GOP are doing to America and the planet.

That’s even truer now than it was then. Thanks for reading. And thanks for continuing to fight the good fight.