THE REAL DEEP STATE: ATTACK-DOG RIGHTISTS AND FINGER-WAGGING CENTRISTS

There's not much difference right now between coverage of the fall of Afghanistan in the mainstream media and the right-wing media:

Afghanistan is a mess (although it's a twenty-year mess) -- but the mainstream press is writing about the crisis with relish, attacking Biden the way the right-wing media usually attacks Democrats.

It's always harder for a Democrat in a crisis because a Republican can count on the right-wing media to close ranks around a GOP president, which often inspires the mainstream media to temper its criticism of the Republican. If you're a Democrat in a crisis, the right will unload on you and the mainstream press will pile on as well.

The attack-dog right, inspired by speeches written for Trump, recently opposed "endless wars" -- until Joe Biden actually ended one. But two decades ago the right and the mainstream media agreed that those endless wars were absolutely necessary. What I see in the response to the Afghanistan news by many mainstream pundits and journalists is smug satisfaction that, after years of having to apologize for getting Iraq wrong, they can now revert proudly to the interventionism they loved all along. That's the real Deep State: centrists and right-wing extremists agreeing that a Democrat is world-historically awful.