Thank you, Jeff Bezos.
On one hand, the news coming out this morning from the Washington Post issimultaneously shocking, grotesque, and, in ways that would only be possible in 2025, totally predictable.
Sean Murphy is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
On the other hand, once the disorientation settles (are you seriously surprised by this, is it possible you were still holding out hope for any other development?), recognize this as the gift that it is.
Yes, we owe gratitude to Jeff Bezos.
He has just done, with one oleaginous gesture, what it would take hundreds of Op-Ed writers many years to accomplish because, as writers recognize as much or more than anyone else, it really is about showing, not telling. Part of the reason we’re in this mess is because it manages to be at once easy and impossible to describe the sheer sociopathy on display, to articulate how a razor thin election can be appropriated and presented, with a depressing level of success, as a landslide mandate. Or, that this “mandate” involved the winner squeaking out a victory by insisting he’d bring down prices and not touch the very services so many Americans (particularly those in reliably red states) depend on, that the Project 25 blueprint he claimed to know nothing about is now being followed lockstep by malevolent bootlickers, giddy to set two centuries of decorum and order on fire. (It’s at once meme and cliche, but this guy was speaking big truths.)
The twin-killings of Twitter (thanks Elon!) and Washington Post (thanks Bezos!) bring everything into sharp relief. Not for the sentient and sensible who can see (and smell) what’s right in front of their noses; these acts of piracy –made possible by money possessed by evil cretins who make money only in the service of making more money– take the piles of shit we all could see and smell and hold it up in the faces of anyone and everyone who has been asleep, or optimistic (?), or, like some folks I know from my old man’s generation, congenitally incapable of assessing current events without saying “well, it’s not that bad” or “don’t get hysterical.” The man who turned Twitter into a playground for Nazis to pollute and this soulless schmuck telling staff the Op-Ed section (!) is henceforth a marketplace for Robber Baron era propaganda are doing us a favor. Seriously. By being allergic to soft selling (move fast and break shit—always a handy motto when you’re too rich to feel any pain and people way below you on the org chart have to clean up every mess you make) or introspection, or even having a modicum of historical awareness, they are accelerating a decline that would otherwise take years, and cause incalculably more hardship. By basically daring people to remain aloof, to ignore reality and deny, at long last, the wealthiest fraction of white dudes aren’t just figuratively insatiable, aren’t merely monomaniacal about seizing every available dollar, no matter the legal or moral implications of their quest, they actually aren’t capable of feeling anything unless they’re watching others (that’s pretty much everyone and if you’re reading this make absolutely no mistake, it includes you) suffer.
To be very clear: I am disgusted by this selfish, craven behavior, this unbridled expression of greed and accommodation (in the sake of accruing more money and power), but I’m not surprised—and I’m mostly relieved that it happened sooner than later, and with such clarity. And while I feel awful for the discarded journalists (just like, of course, I have endless empathy for all the government workers whose careers—whose entire lives—are being upended for no reason other than to momentarily amuse the biggest pricks on the planet), I will point out that all mainstream media is ultimately beholden to a single motive: profit. You’ll note that as certain reporters have gotten iced out of asking King Trump questions (then, now) and entire organizations are now being banned, the most logical and necessary thing has, to this point, never come close to happening: every single person walking out, en masse, as a statement, a gesture of solidarity, a mild pushback against such intolerable bullying in a nation with a First Amendment. Feel sorrow for the individuals affected, but as an industry, I’m sorry to report to any latecomers that the Ship of Integrity sailed many moons ago. (Consider what’s going down right now at MSNBC, a so-called “liberal” fortress that no conservative voter or politician could be forced to watch unless it was Clockwork Orange style; when the ostensible last bastion of semi-progressive networking is supplicating itself for powerful forces that mock them, we are many light years away from Profiles in Courage.)
No one is coming to save us.
Rather than despair that the mainstream media, which has been taking on water for most of this century, is now a combination billboard for billionaires and rotting corpse left out in the rain, be grateful there are myriad brave, uncompromised voices making noise, and providing the light necessary to navigate the way forward. The old world many of us, even the most cynical, maybe took for granted is never coming back. It’s gone, and we are now in a different battle: to arrest the speed with which the absurd people seated in the front row of Trump’s inauguration (and the relative handful of global despots and CEOs who both fund and profit from this chicanery) are dismantling America like a stolen car in a chop shop. The only hope, and sole path forward, is non-profit media. As oxymoronic as it seems in our info-overload, intensely crowded and competitive environment, it’s the last good possibility for honest, unfettered voices to emerge from this wreckage.
Look: if Democrats can’t rebound from a drug-addled maniac wielding an actual chainsaw to demonstrate (again, showing, not telling us) how he views the table scraps most tax-paying and hardworking Americans rely on for sustenance, we’re done. If the present budget (more tax cuts for the .0001%, savage cuts to social services!) isn’t obvious enough to use as effective counter-messaging, we have more immediate and severe issues than the Washington Post becoming the apotheosis of what Bezos (and any other wealthy bozo who ever bought a media outlet) envisioned when he snatched it for pennies on the dollar. Cancel your subscriptions if it makes you feel better, but disabuse yourself of any fantasy that it will make the faintest difference; buying a newspaper and a social media network is a sunk cost in advance, a means to an end; having people unsubscribe or not use social media is the entire point of the last few years; nothing assists this movement more than owned libs raging, and the ultimate goal, as always, is apathy.
Don’t succumb: help fund the indefatigable efforts of independent voices, something you frankly should have been doing all along (and by the way, buy some books and albums and write some checks to non-profit arts orgs, and do more to materially aid artists who have never navigated a more ugly, unpromising landscape; help sustain these heroes who are drowning in the same fetid sewage we’re all swimming in and turning their pain into beauty).
And lastly, join me in thanking Jeff Bezos, as well as Trump, Elon, and the entirety of their farcical, unqualified cabinet. It’s not often that historic moments create themselves, serving up mendacity on such a platter; if this won’t get people fired up and involved (in some form, in any fashion), it’s over. Listen: it’s inevitable that MAGA—this rotten castle made of sand—is going to implode in spectacular fashion. The only questions are how quickly and what will be left when the tide retreats and whoever’s left on shore figures out how to survive in the new weird order.
Recommended writers to support: Heather Cox Richardson, Rebecca Solnit, Paul Krugman, Wajahat Ali, Mehdi Hasan, these guys, and especially this guy.
