What is happening with editorial boards is not normal. You need to understand this first.
They are not part of the newsroom, so anyone telling you that is lying. What happened at the LAT and WaPo are the beginning. Have you not read history? They come for you. You just think it’s more steps away.
or the outrage over the non-endorsements is contrived, irrational, and/or self-important; an embarrassing freak-out
I think it’s more that most ‘normies’ never actually thought we’d get here (this close to an open autocracy), and this is the clearest indicator to most of them that autocracy is rapidly arriving, and now they’re freaking out. Obv the capitalist class was always going to align with an autocrat rather than risk their wealth, and never should have been allowed to run newspapers, but here we are.
Meanwhile, with Harris’s enthusiastic acceptance of Dick Cheney’s endorsement, there’s a resurgent fascism within the Democrats that these normies are happily ignoring. That guy did more to expand American fascism than Trump even promises. Therefore, this election isn’t really about totalitarianism versus democracy. That’s another reason why the anticipatory obedience accusation isn’t relevant. It would have also been anticipatory obedience to endorse Harris.
Be careful with this. I do not tolerate gaslighting in here.