Movie Reviews As Political ‘Analysis’

Treating the candidates like entertainment is the quintessence of nihilism.

Matt Taibbi is a vicious nihilist In the linked piece, he reviews a Trump speech as though it were a standup performance, without even one single word regarding what Trump intends to do if he’s re-elected. One would think that someone who describes himself as a journalist, covering a political campaign, might spend a sentence or two on what the candidate proposes to do in office, but that person would not be Matt Taibbi, who seems to think that repeatedly mentioning how funny Trump is counts as brilliance.

I thought about taking the piece apart, but there’s not enough substance in it to merit that much effort. He spends several paragraphs noting that the US did some bad things under Trump, that Obama used drones and that Hillary Clinton objected to just one during her tenure as Secretary of State. (Ms. Clinton occupies a truly concerning amount of space in Taibbi’s head. He’s not capable of writing anything about politics without slamming her at least once.) He never mentions the role of the Republican Party in any of these decisions.

The much more serious problem with Taibbi’s piece is that he never once mentions anything Trump intends to do if he wins. He mentions several times that Trump is funny, as though the speech is entertainment. This election matters because the American President is easily the most powerful person on the planet. The campaign is the national job interview and the only thing that matters is what the candidates say they’ll do if they win the office. Journalists need to report the campaign promises and then analyze them against objective reality. Choosing the President is not a Comedy Central version of ‘American Idol.’ Taibbi only cares whether Trump’s jokes land with his audience. Taibbi’s nihilism will get people killed, and Taibbi does not care. He’s going to treat everything as a joke until we all die from not laughing.