The Political Mirror

Thursday, August 13, 2026

So yesterday I am “driving” around Southern California.  I put that word in scare quotes because traffic in SoCal is such that for the first time in my life I thought a self-driving car might be a useful thing as I crawled along at 10mph in bumper-to-bumper traffic.  Anyway, I hear a news report about the California Attorney General accusing Paramount of “blackmail” in its threat to leave California as the state attempts to block its merger with Warner Bros.  Let’s see, California business operates under a regulatory load, combined with heavy-handed enforcement, sufficient to invoke words like “hostage-taking” and “extortion” and a business doing what businesses do is accused of “blackmail?”  At some point the irony reached Twilight Zone levels.

Given how rapidly the content creation and distribution business is transforming, the wisdom of this currently proposed consolidation is both completely understandable, and probably in vane as the entire business model is on the verge of collapse.  But blackmail it most assuredly is not.  And yet I am struck by the choice of rhetoric and how much of our politics these days are littered with rhetorically exaggerated charges and counter charges when all parties involved are simply going about business as usual.  Struggling businesses consolidate.  Regulators regulate.  But in recent times rather than find middle ground and resolve matters, we engage in flame wars of that simply prolong the dispute.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the continued analysis of Anthony Fauci’s recent contemptuous appearance before Congress.  The lines were drawn long ago and not-so-stunningly reside very close to and parallel with the red/blue divide.  It seems he is either Satanic and worthy of becoming a verb or a saint that saved us all from an existential crisis.  I will say that to my mind his most recent appearance and his diaries have altered my thinking .  Until then I thought him a grossly misguided and a bit deluded bureaucrat.  I now think he was self-obsessed in the extreme and did real evil not in his misguided and sometimes wrongful covid guidance, but in setting a moral tone for the nation that is actually immoral.

There are two facts that I think need addressing.  Firstly, Fauci became FAUCI when AIDS first showed itself.  Way back when, AIDS was often referred to as “the first disease that had its own political movement.”  Because of that disease’s close association with homosexual promiscuity, even if not exclusively so associated, what to do about it and how many resources to give to it was a highly politicized matter.  Fauci’s reputation as an expert on and fighter of infectious disease was born in a highly political environment.  He has always been far more a political animal than “the science.”  Covid did not politicize Fauci – he was born that way.

Secondly, I ran across this quotation of a longer article to which I do not have access, that is fascinating:

“So what explains the rage directed at one of the most distinguished scientists of his generation? Some of it is the result of an era in which a major political party—in this case, the Republican Party—has become deranged and captive to conspiratorial thinking. It draws energy from the dark passions.”

“Many people within the party, especially within its leadership and the right-wing ecosystem, delight in destroying institutions and individuals. Fauci has a target on his back because during the pandemic, he refused to live in the Twilight Zone. He called out those who did. And for MAGA world, that is unforgivable.”

Read that carefully then step back for a minute and consider how much that sounds almost exactly like what a lot of right-wingers have said but pointed in the opposite direction.  How often have we encountered articles accusing the left of “conspiratorial thinking” and “dark passions?”  How many times have we heard phrases very similar to “delight in destroying institutions and individuals” when the discussion turns to the aims of the DSA movement in the Democratic party?

I could expend a number of posts examining the validity or invalidity of the charges and counter charges, but that is not the point I am trying to make here.  The point I am trying to make is this sort of “debate” is not actual debate.  It is more reminiscent of Pee Wee Herman or Monty Python than an examination of the actual issues at hand.  It is entertaining, but completely lacking in substance.  Like that movie you forget as soon as you step out of the theater, it engages your mind for a moment without leaving a trace behind.

Such engaging, but not-at-all-useful, rhetoric is the bread-and-butter of media in all its forms, including this one.  The game is to attract eyeballs and get clicks.  But I expect better of our public officials.  For the California Attorney General,  a man charged with knowing the law intimately, to use a word like “blackmail” in circumstances like these, cheapens the real evil that is blackmail and reveals a man far more interested in politics than law enforcement.

I expect more of public officials.