At The New Yorker

THE MINDLESSNESS OF MAINSTREAM MEDIA

I notice that on February 14, The New Yorker magazine held a discussion, moderated by Amy Davidson, and including a panel of “experts,” on the subject of “Ethics and Drone Warfare.”

Think about that for a minute, because the very title of the subject is revealing. It allows the possibility that drone warfare could somehow, in their moral universe, be “ethical.”

Sell drones to us as a necessity for our survival. BUT, there is nothing remotely ethical about them. It’s an aspect of American Empire. There’s also something about them uniquely cowardly. They’re immoral. Neither do they achieve for the United States any moral benefit in the military sense of the word moral, which is akin to morale. Or: what kind of p.r. do they give us? Curiously, it was Obama who was going to change our image in the world.

(Were the atomic bombs dropped on Japan necessary? Possibly. Ethical? Were they not in fact a barbarous act, an instance of utter inhumanity?)

Which brings us to another question. All these staff people at The New Yorker suddenly showing questions about the Obama administration three months ago were giving him their slavish support. There’s likely not a person in the entire New Yorker building who didn’t vote for the man. It likely never occurred to any of them that there was any other choice.

After all, the argument goes: Mitt Romney would’ve been worse. We thus get a sense how the political game is played. Forget any talk about the Republican Party vanishing. They’re a necessity. They exist with the Democrats in a symbiotic relationship, because the existence of one justifies the behavior of the other. Any behavior. “Romney would’ve been worse,” the Amy Davidsons of mainstream media can argue—which justifies on the part of the Democrats in particular, and good liberals generally, anything. ANYTHING.