Journalistic Indepedence

 Jon Chait has a long piece defending independent opinion journalism. His argument is that it's deleterious for journalists to never scrutinize "their side" of the political spectrum and that journalists are not and should not be activists who have an agenda that usually does not brook dissent.

There was a passage buried in the middle of the piece that captures the problem, though, that he sort of slides right by. 

The deeper confusion at work here is between the logic of political activism and independent-opinion journalism. Political action occurs within a two-party system that forces us to choose between flawed options. To allow your political decisions, like voting and advocacy, to be driven by a fixation with the flaws of the lesser evil would be perverse.

Opinion journalism does not need to observe these constraints. Voting is a binary choice, but thinking is not.

The bolded part is what is at the crux of bothsides refusing to allow dissent. Because elections are so close, you can't afford anyone to sit out an election where they might vote for your candidate. Any dampening of enthusiasm on your side could mean electoral catastrophe. Don't believe me? Look at 2016. Dissatisfaction/misogyny with Hillary Clinton led just enough votes in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin to flip to the Worst Person In America. 

In a culture where you can custom order almost everything as a consumer, it is tempting to see this in politics. We don't want the "flawed options", we want the Risen Jesus. This is especially true on the Left. On the Right, they will overlook every single flaw that Trump manifests on a daily basis, but Hillary voted for the Iraq War, and though she apologized and said it was wrong, I'm going to stay home and Trump will appoint three Supreme Court Justices as a result. 

I think Chait's analysis is mostly accurate, but I think he may miss the mark here:

This objective may seem a laudable, or at least necessary, defense against a Republican Party that is evolving into authoritarianism. What liberals need to understand is that copying the right’s epistemological methods will eventually mean copying its political style. The Republican Party has become radicalized and authoritarian because it is trapped in a bubble, seeing its enemies as dangerous and its own leaders as weak, responding to this reality in aggressive ways that only deepen its anger and paranoia.

The Left is incapable of lockstep action. It is - by definition - factional. What the Right screams about as the authoritarian leftism of Stalin, Mao or Kim is not really left wing in any meaningful way beyond nomenclature. If leftwing politics generally tends to prioritize equality over freedom, in what way did Stalin create equality? 

Chait is right that epistemological closure is a real threat to a political party's sustainability. The GOP has its head so far up its own ass that it's doubling down on abortion bans and book banning and anti-immigration policies that simply are toxic. If Trump channeled the vibes of Fox News, DeSantis has channeled the policy positions of OANN. 

However, I can't really point to many positions that the Democrats have taken that are specifically tied to an activist base that brooks no dissent. Student debt relief, maybe, but there is a logic to that beyond just factional allegiances.  Biden has increased funding to the police, increased defense spending and so on.

It all reminds me of the bullshit over "cancel culture" from the Right. They claim that if someone drops the N-word and all of his sponsors drop his podcast of TV show that this is a coordinated act by the Left to "cancel" someone. In fact, it is the actions of a society as a whole that does not want to reward bigotry. Who is being canceled on the Left? There was one guy I can think of who lost one job before landing another over questions being asked about crime during the George Floyd protests. We were all a little crazy then.

But Maggie Haberman - a frequent target of left wing ire - still has her job. Who's actually being canceled? Chait's point to be on guard about this would be more valid if the Left wasn't already so factional.