Less Than A Week Into 2025 And The Legacy Press Is Already A Complete Failure

Boy, that was quick.

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Well, fuck. Just six whole days into 2025 and the legacy press is telling us exactly what the next four years are going to be like. Honestly, I don’t know why I’m even the tiniest bit surprised. This is what they’ve been doing for the last…what? Twenty fucking years? LOL! Just kidding. Try longer than I’ve been alive.

Oh, wait! You don’t know what I’m bitching about yet! Let me remedy that so you, too, can foam at the mouth.

Remember the stupid MAGA shithead I mentioned in this morning’s article? The one who killed himself and then blew up a rented Tonka Truck Cybertruck because he wanted to kick off the mass murder of libtards and Democrats and, I dunno, the deep state or something? Turns out the press doesn’t really want to talk about that part:

Over the last four days, the bizarre Cybertruck fire outside a Trump hotel in Las Vegas has run from comical interlude to possible terrorist incident to tragic suicide of another veteran of America’s forever wars. Each of these descriptions still captures an important part of the story. As I noted yesterday, while Matthew Livelsberger appears to have had a series of combustible and likely abusive relationships going back many years he also appears to have suffered from PTSD and possibly a traumatic brain injury since returning from a tour of duty in 2019. (I’m tentative on the spousal abuse front only because for now the direct evidence for that that I’m aware of comes only from the friend of his ex-wife.) But at least for the moment there is a pretty striking lack of attention to the political motives he expressed in at least two documents or what I guess we might call minifestos that investigators found on his iPhone.

Meanwhile, the press has been all over the other piece of shit terrorist who killed people in New Orleans and his fealty to ISIS. Republicans have been screaming about how this terrible attack means we have to seal the border because something something “terrorism” and “immigrants.” Don’t you fucking talk about the fact that this guy was born and raised in the United States. Texas, actually. CLOSE THE BORDER AND PUT A DRUNKEN RAPIST IN CHARGE OF THE MILITARY!

It’s true that the schmuck in the Cybertruck didn’t kill anyone important¹ while Mr. ISIS killed 14 people. But let’s be perfectly clear: If their ideologies had been reversed and the Cybertruck doofus had been ISIS and the New Orleans killer had been full-on MAGA, the result would have been exactly the same. We would still be seeing a lot of frantic headlines about Islamic radicalization and little to nothing about yet another far-right terrorist.

This is what the legacy press does. This is what they always do. This is what they’ve been doing for quite literally the entire history of the United States. Violence from angry racist white men on the right is treated as normal. Nothing to get upset about. Move along. Pay it no mind. Don’t talk about it.

This is why so many millions of white people were appalled in 2019 when they googled “Tulsa Race Riot” for the first time after watching HBO’s Watchmen. That wasn’t a real thing was it…OH MY FUCKING GOD THAT REALLY HAPPENED?! Yes. Yes, it fucking did. I can’t say for sure but I’ll bet cold, hard cash most Black people knew about it. And if not Tulsa, specifically, one of the other numerous Black communities burned to the ground by racist mobs of white people.²

This literal whitewashing of history is not ancient history. The press is still doing it right now. This is how January 6th has been erased from the larger public awareness. The press took something we all saw happening and whittled it away until it became a liberal talking point.

When racist militias exploded under Obama, the press pretended it wasn’t happening. When Nazis took to the streets under Trump, the New York fucking Times did everything in its power to make them seem sympathetic. They’re just like you and me, after all. Except, of course, for the part where they want to ethnically cleanse the country.

Why wouldn’t they carry on their mission of normalizing and obscuring right-wing violence and depravity? I’ve talked about this more than once. When the right commits acts of violence, it maintains and enforces the status quo. It’s only when the left lashes out that the press panics because we threaten The Way Things Are and that shit cannot be allowed.

The mere suggestion that CEOs can be killed for the inhumane crimes they commit against us sent the legacy press into fits of hysteria and finger-wagging for weeks.

But when the right commits mass murder in a Black church or a synagogue? Well, that’s a tragedy but can we really hold anyone accountable? Let’s move on as quickly as possible, thank you very much. Thoughts and Prayers,™ people. Thoughts and Prayers.

And so it is with another story highlighted by Jay Kuo. A story that ProPublica broke over the weekend:

In 2023, I received an envelope with no return address. Inside was a flash drive containing tens of 1000s of secret files.

It came from a vigilante with a tumultuous past, who’d done a years-long undercover operation. He didn’t tell the FBI or his family. He only told me

Outraged by Jan 6, he spent two years getting inside the top ranks of militias like the Oath Keepers. He was stunningly successful. He penetrated a new generation of militia leaders, which included doctors, cops & government attorneys.

This is his story.

I’m still reading through the ProPublica piece. As with most of their reporting, it’s thorough and long. Here’s a key takeaway, though. This fucking hero, John Williams, infiltrated several militias and found a massive network of dangerous terrorists with deep connections to law enforcement and the United States government.

Oh, that’s not the interesting part. We all pretty much knew that was happening because of how loudly Republicans scream whenever the FBI investigates far-right terrorism. Here’s the real fucking scandal:

Williams tried for years to get someone in the media to pay attention to the work he had done, but it took an independent journalist at ProPublica to bite.

You know Williams tried to get this story to the New York fucking Times. The Washington Post. Politico. The Hill. Any number of “reputable” news outlets and they all refused to take the story. Why? Because reporting on white nationalist terrorism just isn’t news. We don’t like to upset Republicans and their base of violent monsters. That’s bad for business. Why, Trump might fire a mean tweet at them!

That’s the state of journalism in America. Our vaunted legacy press not only downplays the violence of the right, they actively work to bury it whenever they can. That’s how you sell the “both sides” lie to the public. That’s how a felon gets re-elected after leading a deadly insurrection.

That’s how the coming crimes against humanity will be swept under the rug by a complicit media.

But just because the press looks the other way doesn’t mean we have to. Watch what they do. Ignore the shiny objects and distractions. Record what happens when it happens so they cannot rewrite history later. Never stop speaking the truth and when this is over, name the names who need to pay for what they’ve done.

That’s how we move forward and if the legacy press won’t get on board with defending the rule of law and democracy, burn them to the ground and start over.

There are 301 days until the first Blue Wave and it starts in Virginia, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.

The legacy media has abandoned us in favor of sucking up to oligarchs and fascism. Find voices you trust (other than me) and subscribe where you can. Independent voices (like the Opinionated Ogre) will be needed in the coming days and we will require your support. This newsletter is free but for $5 a month or just $50 a year, you can keep the lights on.

1. I mean, he killed himself, but like I said, no one important.

2. I knew about Tulsa before Watchmen. I stupidly believed that was the only massacre of that scale.