In recent weeks, I have forced myself to endure a task that often makes me want to pull my hair out: watching cable news coverage of the United States’ unbearably long presidential election season.
Staying abreast of the news cycle is, after all, one of my professional responsibilities; some of what I write is media criticism. This is particularly necessary in an era when the US stands on the brink of fascism – a position that our civil society institutions, including and especially the free press, have at best failed to prevent or, in some cases, enabled.
It has long since been obvious that it is all but inevitable that Donald Trump will be the Republican candidate for president in this year’s general election. Yet I found that the major news networks have all been covering the earliest nominating contests – the Iowa caucuses on 15 January and the New Hampshire primary on 23 January – with such excitement and enthusiasm that one might think they actually mean something.
