For a long time now, there have been people on this side of the great divide arguing that the real source of power in American society is the media. The media has power because they control the moral framework and the discourse within it. If the media declares a set of facts unacceptable, then no one talks about them, unless they have a desire to be hurled into the void. The media controls what is allowed to be said, so they control how things are done and by whom.

On the surface, this was true, and it was always true to some degree. A popular political quip from the analog days was that “You should never pick fights with people who buy ink by the barrel.” If the New York Times decided to declare a fatwah on you, there was a very good chance you were going to lose. This was why so-called conservatives and Republicans would crawl on their bellies to talk with the press, even though the media treated them as the official punching bag.

The model for this was Watergate. If not for media pressure, the political class would not have done anything about Nixon. The reason for that is they had no reason to hate Nixon, even if they disagreed with him. It was the media that made Nixon into a villain and then demanded the political class do something. Congress did not force Nixon out of office because they hated him or they believed he violated the rules of politics, but because they feared the media.

Ever since, the name of the game in politics has been to make sure you manage the media, which meant hiring an army of media consultants. Often, these people came out of the media. Of course, the media was an extension of the managerial class, so this new relationship created good jobs at good wages for people long on credentials and short on practical talent. This peaked under Obama when hundreds of media members got jobs in his administration.

This is why politics shifted from backrooms and onto the pages of the media, where narratives, narrative management and narrative collapse became the defining features of the public debate. The point of politics was to create a story, in which the hero defeated the villain and everyone clapped. This was to herd the managerial class into the hero side and paint the enemies of the managerial class as the villain. Politics was all about good guys and bad guys, as determined by the media.

In the end, American politics was like a Greek drama. The players on the stage were cast in their roles not by their actions, but by the commentary provided by the chorus, which was the media. It reached the point where in the Obama years, people truly thought “healthcare” was a thing that existed in unlimited quantities, but needed to be freed from the grasp of the monster called the insurance companies. Healthcare reform was a bizarre pantomime for the entertainment of Washington.

In the digital age, it went beyond the parlor games of the political class so that media power became the tip of the spear in the cultural revolution. Every activist declared herself a journalist and dedicated her life to finding heretics. Her job was to “report on the heretic” but her hope was that major media would pick up her “reporting” and have the heretic hurled into the void. Like every political terror in the ideological age, what started with the politicians was visited on the people.

This is when ideological and theological fevers break. People can suspend their disbelief and accept even the most bizarre moral framing, when it is limited to the action on the stage. They know it is just entertainment. Even when in the form of a lecture or sermon, they believe they can take from it what they will. When the directors of the moral drama begin dragging the people onto the stage, or off to the gulag, then the people can no longer suspend their disbelief.

The natural questions of all moral disputes then begin to appear. Those questions are “Who says?” and “So what?”. These questions crept up on the managerial class over the last ten years and they were never able or willing to answer them. This became obvious in the runup to the election. The media kept screaming, “Trump is evil!” and the people kept wondering, “Who says?” When they yelled about his alleged crimes and indictments, the response was, “So what?”

A great man once said that you will know that the revolution is upon us when a conservative waddles onto the stage muttering about the various “isms” and “who we are” and the audience remains silent. Then someone giggles, then another laughs and suddenly a wave of laughter sweeps the room. The great preference cascade is unleashed as everyone all at once seems to realize that everyone else thinks what they think about these ridiculous fools.

It is what we are now witnessing. Team Trump has started smashing up the managerial system in ways thought impossible. The media rushed to their pulpits to give their sermons, but the audience just laughed. The Wall Street Journal did the point and shriek at one of the DOGE kids and the audience not only laughed but turned “Big Balls” into a hero of the cause. The Vice President now goes on Twitter and mocks reporters who do the point and shriek.

There was a scene in the movie Braveheart in which William Wallace kills a group the king’s soldiers in an effort to free his wife. The last of them is the magistrate, who had killed Wallace’s wife. Wallace initially lowers his eye when he confronts him, then looks him straight in the eye and slashes the man’s throat. It is a great scene because it reflects the reality of power. The man had power over Wallace, as long as had moral authority, but he had squandered it.

That is what is happening in the United States. The media and the managerial class they represented held the moral high ground and people accepted it. This was the real power of the media. Then they squandered their moral capital on the cultural terror of the last decade. Their excesses not only damaged their credibility but also discredited their moral claims. They are now on the same level as the rest of us and we are cheering as the DOGE kids put them against the post.

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