Brutal: The Hacklash

Ed Driscoll » The Hacklash: "It’s a common enough phenomenon that I suggested it needs a name, and a couple of smart friends suggested I call it “hacklash.” I’ll take a stab at fleshing out the problem: Again and again we see the media and political establishment, which frequently collude, trying to preempt calls for honesty and accountability by enforcing some elite consensus that’s dismissive of the need to address institutional failures. There’s a dismissal of legitimate concerns, right up until the facts finally overwhelm the preferred narrative and prompt some degree of public outrage. When the public inevitably gets wise, it’s often before the media catch up, but usually too late to have avoided some secondary consequence or disaster.  Each failure leaves the public more distrustful then they were before, and this necessitates even more aggressive attempts to ratchet up the elite consensus. Lather, rinse, repeat. This is basically the story of the Obama presidency, where nearly all of the staggering failures and crises–Ebola, ISIS, Obamacare, Benghazi, et al.–have played out in a similar fashion."

Oof. Perfectly painful.