SPECULATIVE OBEDIENCE

The Washington Post and Lost Angeles Times’ refusal to endorse Kamala Harris is being rightly described as anticipatory obedience (see On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder). For what it’s worth I spent nine years on the Pulitzer Board and met some of the most courageous journalists / scholars / writers on the planet, but I was also exposed to corporate journalism’s penchant for anticipatory obedience — in one instance there wasn’t even a concrete or imminent threat, just the fear that one might materialize — anticipatory obedience of the speculative kind.   

Anticipatory or speculative obedience — either way, these submissions by billionaire-run newspapers reveal some very unpleasant truths about the elite capture of our civic society — truths that won’t go away no matter who wins in November. They are also illuminating from a writerly perspective. 

Unless you’re a chosen one, we writers have to fight tooth and nail to earn a bare minimum of lectoral authority — but amoral politicos seem to be granted unlimited electoral authority for free, no matter what they say or do. 

It’s one of our age’s great tragedies — people preferring bad leaders to good art. 

If only people were as generous with their books as they were with their devourous politicians, or better yet if only people were as demanding with their devourous politicians as they are with books —

— what a world that might be.