Journalism is failing America.
At least mainstream media, newspapers and TV networks and such, the remnant still chugging away.
What’s our job? To report the news, to convey what’s happening.
And what do we do? Describe fantasies, ghosts, processes that aren’t occurring.
Consider the recent murder of Loyola student Sheridan Gorman, out with a group of friends at a beach in Rogers Park when approached by a masked man, shot in the head and killed.
That was all too real.
But the moment the suspect was identified as a Venezuelan immigrant, the MAGA outrage machine started to whir. Led by President Donald Trump , who called him “an animal.” The murder was waved about as confirmation. Because one member of a minority group always represents everybody in that group. While white folks, naturally, are individuals, each unique in his or her own way, hardly responsible for their own actions, never mind stand-ins for anybody else.
And how did the media present this deceptive carnival? This acrobatic leap from one crime on the North Side of Chicago, one victim and one suspect, to the entire country and all immigrants everywhere?
A conversation. An argument. The Sun-Times called it “a national immigration debate.”
There is no conversation. No argument. Nobody is debating.
What is going on is dehumanization. The officially designated pariah group — nowadays, immigrants — is being stained with false rationales to justify their abuse: they are violent; they are diseased, they don’t belong. If these rationals are contradictory — they are lazy and take all the good jobs — that doesn’t matter. In 1930s, the Jews were both dirty vermin crouched in the shadows and jewel-encrusted millionaires secretly running the world. Few Germans seemed bothered by the contradiction.
The nation is busily building … let’s call them “detention camps” … for this despised group .Billions are being spent ramping up a paramilitary force to snatch people off the street. Don’t be fooled by the hesitation after Minneapolis. A temporary setback. The Democrats trying to get ICE under control is what the entire airport nightmare is about. Air travel in the United States is being throttled so we can deport more immigrants. A reminder that racism blows back on the racist. Trying to hurt others, they hurt themselves. Ask the Germans.
Why doesn’t the media hit this point harder? Our error comes from a 7th grade civics class, how-a-bill-becomes-a-law mindset. It’s our job to list the excuses given, noting, eventually, how inaccurate they are.
So we seek refuge recounting this Turning Point parody of debate. MAGA smugly states their premise: immigrants are violent murders who add nothing to this country and must be forcibly expelled now. They grin condescendingly while some garble is offered in reply — in actuality, immigrants are 2 to 4 times more law-abiding, as a group, than native-born U.S. citizens. Then they twist that reply: “So now you’re slandering American citizens…”
And away we go.
Words don’t mean anything because they’re not listening. They don’t care. As a Democrat, you’re nearly subhuman already. Maybe you’ll end up in those detention centers too. Gorman wasn’t a person, in their eyes, she’s a symbol, the latest in a list of sympathetic victims — always women — who can be performatively mourned while demanding faster deportations.
To argue is naive. It’s like the SAVE Act, the supposed election security bill. Talk all you like a out the extreme rarity of voter fraud, they never reply, “Oh, right, point taken. Let’s address actual problems.” Because the bill isn’t designed to stop the fraud that isn’t there, it’s designed to constrain voting — not to help voting, but hurt it. The war against immigrants isn’t intended to stop crime; it’s intended to commit crime, against people whose lack of legal status makes them easy targets. Hurting them is called patriotism.
The ongoing horror is getting to seem so … ordinary. Business as usual.
“Man is a creature that can get used to anything,” Dostoevsky writes in his semi-autobiographical novel, “The House of the Dead.”
That gets quoted often. Less noted is its context. The observation comes after a description of the low, stuffy room that was the narrator’s home for ten years, sleeping on boards, amidst “noise, uproar, laughter, swearing, the sound of chains, soot and fumes, shaven heads, branded faces, ragged clothes, all that is accursed and dishonored … yes, man has great endurance.”
Is this endurance a good thing? Maybe Americans allow themselves to endure far too much. Yes, a third No Kings protest was held Saturday. Important? Sure. Maybe. Or maybe protest, like the media observing its rituals, is part of making something normal that should never be considered normal. This isn’t a debate. It’s madness. And we know where madness leads, or should.
