2024 Post Mortem, Part I

Making the list, checking it twice

If we don’t conduct the autopsy, we’re likely to continue repeating the same mistakes.

I’m not waiting for permission to discuss the problems we’ve been trying to raise with Democratic Party members and leaders for years.

A lot of the problems were well known, but with no consensus on best solutions.

Others had solutions, but “leadership” either refused to listen or refused to provide the necessary resources to see plans through.

Over the next week or so, I’ll be writing about the 2024 problems and culprits in the hope of waking up the democratic and media infrastructure while they still exist so we can stop pretending to fight and actually take a swing.

In expanding this list, I want readers to understand that discussing a reason or cause behind an outcome isn't the same thing as assigning blame.

The #MeToo movement empowered women to speak openly about sexual harassment and abuse in one of the most important cultural shifts in modern American history.

#MeToo also birthed a maelstrom of reactionary male toxicity that ultimately indoctrinated and radicalized white men with absurd notions of masculinty and a deep hatred toward women. 

#MeToo had profound impacts grossly undervalued in our society. It also served as a catalyst for male rage.

In no particular order, we'll start with an industry I'm now considered a prominent critic of:

Reason #1: The media

The media played an outsized role in shaping the 2024 election.

The once-respected fourth-estate.

The accountability and truth telling necessary to a healthy democracy.

The media today does little more than repeat partisan talking points and pose disingenuous questions about what’s right and wrong.

They relay single-source and even no-source information from hostile foreign actors without investigation or even fact-checking.

When I reference “the media” here, I’m not talking about individual journalists, though we could certainly list plenty of newscasters and writers who are at fault.

I’m talking about the machine, much in the same way we discuss police brutality and corruption, in terms of power structures and systems that protect and reward the worst actors and entities.

While the argument often made is that the 24 hours news cycle killed traditional network news and the digital revolution killed off newspapers, as if it was some natural technological evolution, the truth is that conglomerates have been eating up and homogenizing information networks for decades.

Any media literate person knows that. But the lack of push back and the divide we've allowed to fester, especially during the last decade, can't be surmised by ignorance alone.

Billionaires bought the bullhorn

Billionaire owners of some of the largest news and media outlets used their influence to keep newspaper editorial staff from endorsing Kamala Harris, which become fodder for the right.

‘Even the liberal Washington Post won’t endorse her!’ they exclaimed. She must be bad if even they wouldn’t endorse her.

Trump spent years popularized his fake news narrative, painting the media as “the enemy of the people.”

When your enemies seemingly agree with you, your confidence in your own righteousness only grows.

So when the Washington Post seemingly rejected Harris, the right became more certain in their victory.