In the wake of Donald Trump’s 2016 election victory, a reporter friend told me he was quitting the business. “Journalism has failed,” he said. In the end, he changed his mind (or at least reconsidered his available employment options).

In light of our current national nightmare, it’s hard to argue he was wrong the first time.

Journalism, however broadly defined, didn’t save us in 2016 or 2024. Perhaps it’s true that the various forms of “journalism” didn’t do their presumed public service of casting sufficient light on the political darkness; more likely, having become an earnest sideshow to an otherwise lunatic commercial and amateur “media” circus, actual journalism was no longer up to the task in the first place.

At my own advancing age, a melodramatic exit from the stage would scarcely evoke an offstage chuckle. But after a couple of weeks of mordant brooding, I have a few thoughts about what just happened – and what will happen. Readers can accept them for what you will.

It’s been a rough month for progressives, for liberals, for Democrats … for anyone truly concerned with the future of the country, indeed for the future of humanity. I’ve tried to resist the myriad very easy and very knowing explanations for what went wrong, for what Kamala Harris or the Democrats did wrong, for the frustrated expectations of Donald Trump voters – both for what has happened, and for whatever what it means for the country. A narrow but effective majority of the electorate voted for a man manifestly unfit to be president. They did so despite his criminal record, despite his refusal to accept the established rules of a decent society, despite his willingness to promote violence if necessary to hold on to power.

He had shown them who he is, repeatedly, in great and grotesque detail. They voted for him anyway. Many of them did so, it seems, because of who he is.

That’s the toughest pill to swallow from this entire episode – that so many of our fellow Americans either don’t mind Trump’s wretched, amoral, narcissistic character – or they think it’s just fine. These are not “policy differences” between two political parties; they reflect a choice to overlook – or condone – the notorious and criminal behavior of a person who even the late, unlamented Jeffrey Epstein (Trump’s one-time “best friend”) described as lacking any “moral compass.” All of this was on display daily during Trump’s campaign, indeed throughout the last eight years. It’s difficult to believe that his voters were unaware of much of this. It’s more difficult to comprehend that they went into the voting booth ignoring it.

It’s also worth noting a couple of other lurking explanations. One is that far too many (most?) men, and quite a few women, will simply not vote for a woman for president. Add to that the “race” factor – Harris’ identity as an African-American/South Asian woman – and her task became doubly difficult.

Moreover, while it is undoubtedly tempting to blame “journalism,” especially the so-called “mainstream media,” for failing to sufficiently inform the U.S. public about the looming dangers to democracy represented by another Trump administration, it should also be acknowledged that a majority of Americans do not in fact read, hear, watch, or otherwise consume much actual “journalism” (mainstream or otherwise). Michael Tomasky of The New Republic aptly summarized the actual media ecosystem:

Today, the right-wing media – Fox News (and the entire News Corp.), Newsmax, One America News Network, the Sinclair network of radio and TV stations and newspapers, iHeart Media (formerly Clear Channel), the Bott Radio Network (Christian radio), Elon Musk’s X, the huge podcasts like Joe Rogan’s, and much more – sets the news agenda in this country. And they fed their audiences a diet of slanted and distorted information that made it possible for Trump to win.

He goes on:

To much of America, by the way, this is not understood as one side’s view of things. It’s simply “the news.” This is what people – white people, chiefly – watch in about two-thirds of the country.

Amanda Marcotte, considering the apparent contradiction that many Trump voters simultaneously voted for progressive policies (raising the minimum wage, supporting reproductive rights), made a similar argument in Salon:

The problem is most people simply do not absorb quality information. Instead, increasing numbers of Americans have a media diet that is mostly a bunch of lies, conspiracy theories, irrelevant diatribes and other such bunkum that right-wing propagandists use to deceive people. A study released by Pew Research in September showed people were exponentially more likely to get “news” from social media detritus than legitimate news outlets. And those results almost certainly downplay the ratio of nonsense-to-real news, since most people taking the poll won’t want to admit that they mostly scroll TikTok all day and haven’t read an actual article in eons. Looking at newspaper sales and news site traffic, we can see that the consumption of reality-based news is plummeting.

What is to be done? Tomasky earnestly calls on “rich liberals” to somehow spend enough money creating independent (and sufficiently widespread) media to counteract this growing tsunami of lies. I wish him luck. Since billionaires generally don’t arrive at that lofty status by their devotion to impecunious public service, I doubt that Tomasky’s solution is realistic. More likely, alas, is the major media’s rapid normalization of the Trump regime as the only government we’ve got. Soon it may well become the only government we can imagine.

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From 2005-2020, now-retired Austin Chronicle News Editor Michael King wrote about city and state politics from a progressive perspective in his weekly column, “Point Austin.” We’re pleased to bring back his column whenever he’s inspired to tackle the state we’re in.

Editor’s Note Monday, 8:24pm: A previous version of this story failed to indicate a quote from Salon. The Chronicle regrets the error.