Like many on the left, I’ve railed against both siderism, though I defer to Driftglass (highly recommended), as the champ in that field. Read that blog and you have no need to personally read David Brooks to get incensed at his latest atrocity.
This morning I had to gasp, for right in the midst of reading an excerpt from a pundit implicitly attacking both-siderism was a classic case of … you guessed it! Both siderism:
Most pundits in Washington now recoil at any suggestion that the Trump-Russia story is really about treason. They all want to say it’s about something else – what, they aren’t quite sure. They are afraid to use serious words. They are in the business of breaking down the Trump-Russia narrative into a long series of bite-sized, incremental stories in which the gravity of the overall case often gets lost. They seem to think that treason is too much of a conversation-stopper, that it interrupts the flow of cable television and Twitter. God forbid you might upset the right wing! (And the left wing, for that matter.)
via The Intercept
Most pundits in Washington are in thrall to both-siderism. That accounts for their inability to wrap their minds around Trump’s (and the Republican Party as a whole) criminality, because in order to do so they would have to abandon their religious devotion to both-siderism. James Risen, who wrote the above, has a point. But notice how he sticks the finish. Somehow, he sees a world in which the feelings of the left are as tenderly coddled as those of the right. Either that, or he thinks the left would somehow be offended at talk of Trump’s treason. It’s a reflex among the punditocracy, even when one of them is implicitly attacking that very reflex.
Now, on to something completely different, and yet oddly, not so different.
Yesterday Robert Mueller indicted 13 Russians and a few Russian based corporations for meddling in the U.S. elections. Anyone with brains can see that there are plenty more shoes to drop. He has the Trump organization in the crosshairs, there can be no doubt, and he no doubt feels he’s got the goods on them. It’s a huge story. A federal prosecutor is getting ever closer to charging a president and his confederates with conspiring with a foreign power. It’s a front page story in today’s New York Times.
But.
It’s tucked away on the left hand side of the page. What story gets the most attention? A story about the fact that the FBI got warnings about the Parkdale school shooter. Sure, it would have been nice if the FBI could have stopped the guy, but a) how many warnings do they get about various people and how many resources do they have to respond, and b) what precisely were they supposed to do since the guy bought the gun legally and had done nothing illegal. Besides, he was a right wing white person, and we don’t bother right wing white people in this country. This story is pure diversion, yet another example of the right wing determining the narrative. In this case it serves two purposes: it supports their campaign to discredit the FBI, thus covering for Trump’s treason, and it diverts from the real issue: why are American citizens able to legally buy weapons whose sole purpose is to enable mass killings of human beings? Today’s front page brings to mind the classic Times’ front page featuring three stories about Hillary’s emails, written about the same time that the Times ran an article headed: Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I. sees no clear link to Russia.
It’s often been said (and it’s true) that facts have a well known liberal bias. The fact of the matter is that both siderism has a well known right wing bias.
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