Media hacks and clueless liberals

This is an inherently unstable political environment. As Mead points out, "Populism arises when establishment leadership fails." And we certainly see strong strains of populism in the politics of both Trump and Sanders. While populist sentiments are an inevitable and probably necessary strain of politics in times of voter despair and indignation, they can also generate characteristics of civic meanness and radicalism.

At the same time, the inevitable resolve of the national elites to counter the populist challenge and retain power can spawn irresponsible and even dangerous actions on the part of the powerful. Since Trump's inauguration, national Democrats have "tried to stop his presidency from functioning," writes the Wall Street Journal's Daniel Henninger, who adds that this "irrefutably was the goal of the Russia collusion narrative, its attendant Mueller investigation and then the impeachment."

These projects "inflamed the normal workings of our politics," with the president's adversaries attacking relentlessly and Trump counterattacking in his distinctively ugly style. Henninger paints a picture of a baleful political syndrome in which politicians of both parties know they have entered a poisonous and malign environment but can' break out of it because it has become addictive. "Every issue," writes Henninger, "now defaults to the same petty level."

The campaign to impeach President Trump has begun
By Matea Gold. January 20, 2017:

The effort to impeach President Donald John Trump is already underway.

At the moment the new commander in chief was sworn in, a campaign to build public support for his impeachment went live at ImpeachDonaldTrumpNow.org, spearheaded by two liberal advocacy groups aiming to lay the groundwork for his eventual ejection from the White House.

Walking away from [reporter Jack Rogers], she realized she was exhausted by the effort of the interview. Talking to a reporter these days was like a deadly chess match; you had to think several steps ahead; you had to imagine all the possible ways a reporter might distort your statement. The atmosphere was relentlessly adversarial.

It hadn't always been that way. There was a time when reporters wanted information, their questions directed to an underlying event. They wanted an accurate picture of a situation, and to do that they had to make the effort to see things your way, to understand how you were thinking about it. They might not agree with you in the end, but it was a matter of pride that they could accurately state your view, before rejecting it. The interviewing process was not very personal, because the focus was on the event they were trying to understand.

But now reporters came to the story with the [lede] fixed in their minds; they saw their job as proving what they already knew. They didn't want information so much as evidence of villainy. In this mode, they were openly skeptical of your point of view, since they assumed you were just being evasive. They proceeded from a presumption of universal guilt, in an atmosphere of muted [mutual? – PN] hostility and suspicion. This new mode was intensely personal: they wanted to trip you up, to catch you in a small error, or in a foolish statement -- or just a phrase that could be taken out of context and made to look silly or insensitive.

Because the focus was so personal, the reporters asked continuously for personal speculations. Do you think an event will be damaging? Do you think the company will suffer? Such speculation had been irrelevant to the earlier generation of reporters, who focused on the underlying events. Modern journalism was intensely subjective — "interpretive" — and speculation was its lifeblood. But she found it exhausting.

And Jack Rogers, she thought, was one of the better ones. The print reporters were all better. It was the television reporters you really had to watch out for. They were the really dangerous ones.