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Tracy Sample's avatar

I am thoroughly exhausted and disgusted with the fourth estate for failing to live up to its original purpose. Not only is it failing us now but it took its eyes off the ball allowing oligarchs and Christian Nationalists free rein to align and conspire in secret for decades. We shouldn't be surprised when all the major newspapers and cable companies are now owned by toxic billionaires. I recently had to back off twitter and went an entire month without so much as a click so I could be around Republican family members during the holidays. I didn't want to be freshly reminded how behind that smile and veneer of good cheer, how truly awful they are. I'm not out for the fight, but I am taking stock of how I can be most useful this year to get out the vote, while not risking my job. I didn't have that concern when I worked for an organization in 2020 to register voters and knock on doors to get Warnock and Ossoff elected. As for DeSantis's covid comment, I read a response to your tweet about that on twitter. This woman replied that a vaccine is no longer required to avoid getting covid and that people are rarely if ever dying anymore. Even if that were true, Republicans aren't just attacking covid vaccines but all vaccines because they're basically all libertarians now.

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Rick Massimo's avatar

I don’t think the problem is outrage fatigue as much as the stress of pretending not to notice what’s happening. The NYT writes one story about open fascism and thinks they’re done, while they essentially led with the president of Harvard for about three weeks. Our biggest media outlets never let the fact that Republicans lie constantly influence their judgment on whether Republicans might be lying to them again.

In my last newsroom job, I was the one who got fatigued, because I was constantly imploring my bosses to act as if the thing they knew was happening (and would agree with me on after work) was in fact happening. THAT was exhausting. Their approach--repeat what Republicans say, maybe repeat what the Democrats are saying in response, put in the occasional “without evidence,” call it a day--it didn’t seem to be wearing on them at all.

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