Literally not seriously Version 2.0

This irony did not click with me till today till I second glance at this post. From We're told not to take "defund the police" and "abolish the police" literally. by Ann Althouse. Its not the post per se, its the heading.

In the 2016, one of the more insightful comments came from Taking Trump Seriously, Not Literally by Salena Zito.

On stage, Trump began by addressing the unrest in Charlotte. He praised police, condemned “violent protestors,” and called for unity. “The people who will suffer the most as a result of these riots are law-abiding African American residents who live in these communities,” he said.

[snip]

The best way, he says, is to provide good education and good jobs in these areas. “Fifty-eight percent of black youth cannot get a job, cannot work,” he says. “Fifty-eight percent. If you are not going to bring jobs back, it is just going to continue to get worse and worse.”

It’s a claim that drives fact-checkers to distraction. The Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the unemployment rate for blacks between the ages of 16 and 24 at 20.6 percent. Trump prefers to use its employment-population ratio, a figure that shows only 41.5 percent of blacks in that age bracket are working. But that means he includes full time high-school and college students among the jobless.

It’s a familiar split. When he makes claims like this, the press takes him literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally.

The whole article is worth rereading at this time. The press has not learned. They are more desperate and marginalized than ever.

At the time, broadly, I think people conceded the validity of Zito's point. Trump's supporters looked past the bluster and bombast to discern, correctly or not, the serious underlying message. The mainstream opposition media was happy to focus only on the target rich bombast and take that literally.

It was a rebuke to the media which did not sit well but was not easily refutable and journalists sort of cleared their throats, averted their eyes, and moved on to fact check the most recent bombastic opinion.

Zito was right and she is still right. With a twist. Trump usually has some core goal on which he is unwavering and he wraps it in bombast and strident messaging. But he always comes back to the goal. And it is almost always a goal people can agree. In the above example, who doesn't want good law enforcement, good education, and good jobs?

Now the mainstream media are forced to sit in the same seat. Their far left political darlings are spouting absolute nonsense, inanities and childish prattle. The media really disliked Zito's formulation because it aided Trump.

But now they have to adopt the same formulation they abhorred in order to protect the Squad and their Antifa ilk. It recently happened with the MeToo movement as well, when dealing with the reality of creepy Uncle Joe and the sexual assault allegation against him.

"You took us literally when we said 'Believe all women'. We weren't serious about that. We meant believe some women under some circumstances."

Same with Covid-19 social distancing.

"You took us literally when we said 'Congregating outdoors to peacefully protest would cause apocalyptic death rates'. We weren't serious about that. We meant that some people's First Amendment rights are more worthwhile than other people's First Amendment rights."

Same with defunding the police.

"You took us literally when we said "Defund and abolish the police'. We weren't serious about that. We meant reform and reinvent the police."

Same with Black Lives Matter.

"You took us literally when we said 'Black Lives Matter'. We weren't serious about that. We meant that black lives might be helpful for political purposes."

Same with peaceful protests.

"You took us literally when we said 'It was a mostly peaceful protest,' while standing in front of video showing burning buildings and beaten people. We weren't serious about that. We meant that you can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs."

Zito advised people to take Trump seriously and not get distracted by the bombast and slogans. Behind the bombast sat a reality that was much more bipartisan with shared goals of getting America out of foreign entanglements costing American lives, bringing back off-shored jobs, revitalizing the economy, getting people employed and earning again, making people safer, reforming the criminal justice system, etc.. She was right. There was much cross-aisle cooperation on many of these things and they have all been beneficial to most everyone, even if they were originally wrapped in divisive slogans which the mainstream media coyly took as serious.

Today? I am not sure that focusing on the serious objectives behind the literal headlines is going to help. Believe all Women, Black Lives Matter, Defund the Police, and Peaceful Protests. No, none of them are literal. We shouldn't take them literally. But what are the serious objectives behind those literal slogans? Abandonment of due process, Racialism embedded in law, anarchy, and tribalism. Going past the literal to the serious real objectives is not going to work in these circumstances.