Monday, February 14, 2022

THE GREAT MAN THEORY OF NATIONAL DECLINE

Many people say that American political journalism is bad because it ignores real issues and overemphasizes the politcal horserace -- who's winning, who's losing. But here's a New York Times story about right-wing megadonor and supervillain Peter Thiel that downplays what's taking place in key races because it doesn't fit the article's thesis, which is that Thiel is one of the Great Men who drive politics.
The wine flowed. Donald Trump Jr. mingled with the guests. And Peter Thiel, the tech billionaire and host of the event, had a message for the well-heeled crowd: It was time to clean house.

The fund-raiser at Mr. Thiel’s Miami Beach compound last month was for a conservative candidate challenging Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming for a spot on the ballot in November’s midterm elections. Ms. Cheney, one of several Republicans who had voted to impeach President Donald J. Trump on charges of inciting the Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol, was the face of “the traitorous 10,” Mr. Thiel said, according to two people with knowledge of the event, who were not authorized to speak publicly. All of them had to be replaced, he declared, by conservatives loyal to the former president.

Mr. Thiel, who became known in 2016 as one of the biggest donors to Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign, has re-emerged as a key financier of the Make America Great Again movement. After sitting out the 2020 presidential race, the venture capitalist this year is backing 16 Senate and House candidates, many of whom have embraced the lie that Mr. Trump won the election.

To get these candidates into office, Mr. Thiel has given more than $20.4 million. That essentially puts him and Kenneth Griffin, the chief executive of the hedge fund Citadel, in a tie as the largest individual donors to Republican politics this election cycle, according to the nonpartisan research organization OpenSecrets.

What sets Mr. Thiel’s spending apart, though, is its focus on hard-right candidates who traffic in the conspiracy theories espoused by Mr. Trump and who cast themselves as rebels determined to overthrow the Republican establishment and even the broader American political order. These campaigns have raised millions in small-dollar donations, but Mr. Thiel’s wealth could accelerate the shift of views once considered fringe to the mainstream — while making himself a new power broker on the right.
It's good that the Times is informing its readers that the Trump movement isn't just the random malcontents who invaded the Capitol on January 6 -- it's also deep-pocketed resentniks like Thiel, who believes "that the establishment and globalization have failed, that current immigration policy pillages the middle class" (though it's hard to imagine Thiel actually caring about the plight of the middle class), "and that the country must dismantle federal institutions." (Yes, Thiel sounds a lot like Steve Bannon, who's quoted in the story: "'I don’t think it’s just about flipping the Senate,' said Mr. Bannon, who has known Mr. Thiel since 2016. 'I think Peter wants to change the direction of the country.'") If you think democracy is dying and the country is in an irreversible decline, now you know that Thiel deserves his share of the blame.

But this is journalism for the post-Reagan Second Gilded Age, so every detail has to suggest that Thiel is awesomely powerful. The title of the story is "The Right's Would-Be Kingmaker." We're told,
Mr. Thiel has attracted the most attention for two $10 million donations to the Senate candidates Blake Masters in Arizona and J.D. Vance in Ohio. Like Mr. Thiel, the men are tech investors with pedigrees from elite universities who cast themselves as antagonists to the establishment. They have also worked for the billionaire and been financially dependent on him.
Later -- under the subhead "Giving to Win" -- there's more about Masters and Vance:
Mr. Thiel’s political giving ramped up last spring with his $10 million checks to PACs supporting Mr. Vance and Mr. Masters. The sums were his biggest and the largest ever one-time contributions to a PAC backing a single candidate, according to OpenSecrets.
Eventually we read this:
In November, Mr. Vance wrote on Twitter that anyone who donated $10,800 to his campaign could attend a small group dinner with him and Mr. Thiel....

What we're not told -- because it would be embarrassing for both Vance and Thiel -- is that Josh Mandel, one of candidates Vance is running against in this Senate primary, humiliated Vance with this response to the dinner-with-Thiel offer:


It's only in paragraph 50 -- in a 54-paragraph story -- that we're informed,
[Thiel's] backing may not be enough. In Ohio, Mr. Vance trails in polling, partly hampered by a previous denunciation of Mr. Trump. In Arizona, Mr. Masters is competing in a crowded field.
Blake Masters isn't just "competing in a crowded field" -- he's trailing by double digits. And Vance doesn't just trail -- he trails badly.


But that information would make Thiel seem like less of a demigod. This is Great Man journalism. The Times is writing about Thiel the way business journalists write about "hero" CEOs. We're meant to believe that Thiel is the superstar CEO of MAGA, Inc. So of course hints of anything less than undisputed-alpha dominance must be carefully avoided.
Posted by Steve M. at 8:43 AM

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