The Atlantic Descends

The Atlantic used to be a decent center-left publication with thoughtful pieces. Sometimes, it still has thoughtful pieces. But a lot of it, the publication itself, is another institution broken by Donald Trump.

This institution famously hired Kevin Williamson, a brilliant writer of the right who also skewers his own side, only to abandon him upon leftwing internal complaints at the publication.

There were plenty of signs that the publication had crossed over into leftwing insanity. That was the biggest. I had to cancel my subscription to a publication I always found thoughtful, even as I disagreed.

At this point, the only thing separating The Atlantic from Teen Vogue is the polysyllabic words. It has become leftwing drivel of the hivemind sort and has dedicated itself to irrational fears over Trump getting re-elected.

One of its writers, on television yesterday, suggested a Trump re-election would provoke a Russian invasion of Poland. Now, it wants you to know that Xi of China wants a Trump win.

It is all fan fiction of the left designed to provoke the left. It is not persuasive. It is riddled with Q Anon levels of fear and paranoia. But in the Washington-NYC corridor, it fuels the circle of jerks going blind in the bathroom with anti-Trump agitprop of a high writing style.

It’s sad to see, but of course, entirely expected. The Washington Post has become a publication with more sympathies for terrorists than the middle class. The New York Times now refuses op-eds from sitting Republican members of Congress lest the staff revolt and quit. Politico and Axios have embraced the progressive agendas and wordsmithing of the radical left from “unhoused” to “pregnant person.”

As an institution, the media is not just broken but broken in a particular way. It is broken in the way progressives have broken with reality. Good and bad, right and wrong, moral and immoral, are all now cast through the lens of intersectional politics and hierarchies. The transgender boy is the victim, and the girls who lost their scholarships to the boy are the bullies. The terrorists’ aggression is understandable because the typical Israeli has lighter skin with relatives who once lived in Germany. Christians in politics are bad, but transgender rabbis who support Hamas are good. Narrative trumps truth.

Over the next year, we’re going to see a further descent. You think it can’t get worse, but it can get so much worse. MSNBC is already playing up *checks notes* NIKKI HALEY as a right-wing extremist.

It is well past time for the Republicans to abandon the press. For all his faults at CNN, Chris Licht correctly diagnosed many of the problems at that network, including how it botched a lot of COVID reporting and how it had, frankly, become more aggressively partisan. The employees there revolted. His diagnosis was right in many cases, but the job of correction was too big for him.

Consider the revolt of the press corps for the audacity of CNN and Meet the Press giving a former President and party front-runner access to their networks to talk.

The press is still useful. After all, we learn much of our news from the press. But the press is also badly in need of correction. It has succumbed to post-modernism, where emotion trumps truth, and that emotion has been infected with arrogance.

The latest example is the Atlantic’s fan fiction for the left and its parade of horribles of a hypothetical second Trump term. We on the right can ignore it, but we must also note its existence. Their goal is not so much to amp up the energy of the left for the election but to scare persuadable voters.