Journalist Pride Comes to a Fall: Journalist Delivers Packages

This was top-link news on Drudge Report today (December 26, 2018)

I think it's fitting and quite funny that legacy media is not just in such rapid decline, but they are begging for bread from other corporate entities just to get by.

Amazon's CEO announced that they would not last forever. Such is the power of a truly free market. How much longer will former journalists last in any kind of work?

Austin Murphy

I Used to Write for Sports Illustrated. Now I Deliver Packages forAmazon.

Holiday parties were right around the corner, and I needed a cover story. I didn’t feel like admitting to casual acquaintances, or even to some good friends, that I drive a van for Amazon. I decided to tell them, if asked, that I consult for Amazon, which is loosely true: I spend my days consulting a Rabbit, the handheld Android device loaded with the app that tells me where my next stop is, how many packages are coming off the van, and how hopelessly behind I’ve fallen.

Notice the arrogance. He is a delivery man, but hides his new career as a "Consultant." That seems to be the rage for these arrogant elites. What is the matter with them? They so long disdained the working man, the middle-income worker, the people who put the pedal to the metal and make a difference in our daily lives.

And now they had to do the same kind of work which they so keenly despised. What a brutal turnaround!

Let’s face it, when you’re a college-educated 57-year-old slinging parcels for a living, something in your life has not gone according to plan. That said, my moments of chagrin are far outnumbered by the upsides of the job, which include windfall connections with grateful strangers. There’s a certain novelty, after decades at a legacy media company—Time Inc.—in playing for the team that’s winning big, that’s not considered a dinosaur, even if that team is paying me $17 an hour (plus OT!). It’s been healthy for me, a fair-haired Anglo-Saxon with a Roman numeral in my name (John Austin Murphy III), to be a minority in my workplace, and in some of the neighborhoods where I deliver. As Amazon reaches maximum ubiquity in our lives (“Alexa, play Led Zeppelin”), as online shopping turns malls into mausoleums, it’s been illuminating to see exactly how a package makes the final leg of its journey.

The journalist has been made redundant, and he goes out of his way to hold onto all the left-wing talking points, from white male privilege, to the technological revolution and the post-moral failures of their thinking.

These liberals just don't get it, do they?

There’s also a bracing feeling of independence that attends piloting my own van, a tingle of anticipation before finding out my route for the day. Will I be in the hills above El Cerrito with astounding views of the bay, but narrow roads, difficult parking, and lots of steps? Or will my itinerary take me to gritty Richmond, which, despite its profusion of pit bulls, I’m starting to prefer to the oppressive traffic of Berkeley, where I deliver to the brightest young people in the state, some of whom may wonder, if they give me even a passing thought: What hard luck has befallen this man, who appears to be my father’s age but is performing this menial task?

"Piloting my own van." Seriously? Are we sure that this guy wasn't fired? Bad writing, unethical aspersions against Americans of all backgrounds, the very term "legacy" to describe writing for Sports Illustrated

Thanks for asking!

The hero’s journey, according to Joseph Campbell, features a descent into the belly of the beast: Think of Jonah in the whale, or me locked in the cargo bay of my Ram ProMaster on my second day on the job, until I figured out how to work the latch from the inside. During this phase of the journey, the hero becomes “annihilate to the self”—brought low, his ego shrunk, his horizons expanded. This has definitely been my experience working for Jeff Bezos.

OK ... now he wants to claim that he has indeed been humbled. But the truth is that we have yet to see any kind of humility. The fact that he is comparing his downcast situation to Jonah is a little far-fetched, to say the least. Does he even believe in God?

During my 33 years at Sports Illustrated, I wrote six books, interviewed five U.S. presidents, and composed thousands of articles for SI and SI.com. Roughly 140 of those stories were for the cover of the magazine, with which I parted ways in May of 2017. Since then, as Jeff Lebowski explains to Maude between hits on a postcoital roach, “my career has slowed down a little bit.”

Funny. Sports Illustrated went down the tubes, or they had to cut back on their staff only because of the technology revolution? How about the fact that people got tired of the relentless politicizing that had overtaken the sports pages, networks, as well as the magazines?

Still, it's tough for people have to give up their prized, intended profession for something else, especially after working in that career for more than 30 years.

This proved problematic when my wife and I decided to refinance our home. Although Gina, an attorney, earns plenty, we needed a bit more income to persuade lenders to work with us. It quickly became clear that for us to qualify, I would need more than occasional gigs as a freelance writer; I would need a steady job with a W-2. Thus did I find myself, after replying to an indeed.com posting for Amazon delivery drivers, emerging from an office-park lavatory a few miles from my house, feigning nonchalance as I handed a cup of urine to the attendant and bid him good day.

Why would he worry about sending a urine sample to someone? What gives?

Little did I know, while delivering that drug-test sample, that this most basic of human needs—relieving oneself—would emerge as one of the more pressing challenges faced by all “delivery associates,” especially those of us crowding 60. An honest recounting of this job must include my sometimes frantic searches for a place to answer nature’s call.

Wow. Do I really need to read about this? Is this how low you went in the push from journalism to package delivery?

To cut its ballooning delivery costs—money it was shelling out to UPS and FedEx—Amazon recently began contracting out its deliveries to scores of smaller companies, including the one I work for. Amazon trains us, and provides us with uniform shirts and hats, but not with a ride. Before 7 a.m., we report to a parking lot near the warehouse where we select a vehicle from our company’s motley fleet of white and U-Haul vans.

Wow. You mean Big Business, the same corporations whose praises you were singing in your reports, takes advantage of its employees and cuts costs at the expense of the health and welfare of its employees? Really?!

I’m an Aries, so it stands to reason that I’m partial to Dodge Ram ProMasters. I like their profile and tight turning radius: That’s key, since we make about 100 U-turns and K-turns a day. Problem is, most of the drivers in our company—there are about 40 of us—share my preference. The best vans go to drivers with seniority, even if they show up after I do. Before it was taken out of service for repairs, I was often stuck with a ProMaster that had issues: Side-view mirrors spiderwebbed; the left mirror held fast to the body of the van by several layers of shrink-wrap. The headlights didn’t work unless flicked into “bright” mode, which means that when delivering after dark, I was blinding and infuriating oncoming motorists.

Once again, we see the entitled elitist peering through his "self-effacing" report on changing places and changing careeers. He wants to complain about the type of vehicle that he drives? He wants to play compare and contrast with other employees and the rides that they select for themselves?

I drove that beast on my worst day so far. After a solid morning and early afternoon, I glanced at the Rabbit and sighed. It was taking me to that fresh hell that is 3400 Richmond Parkway, several hundred apartments set up in a mystifying series of concentric circles. The Rabbit’s GPS doesn’t work there, the apartment numbers are difficult to find, and the lady in the office informed me that I couldn’t leave packages with her. She did, however, hand me a map resembling the labyrinth of ancient Greece. I spent an hour wandering, ascending flights of stairs that took me, usually, to the incorrect apartment. By now deep in the hole, with no shot at completing my appointed rounds for the day, I set a forlorn course for my next stop at the nearby Auto Mall. That’s when I heard a thud-thud-thud from the area of my right front tire, which was so old and bald that it had begun to shed four- and five-inch strips of rubber, which were thumping against the wheel well.

Poor baby! Can't stand a hard day's work, huh?

Although it was only 4 p.m., I called it quits. Some days in the delivery biz, the bear eats you. But I got some perspective back at the lot, where a fellow driver named Shawn told me about the low point of his day. A woman had challenged him as he emerged from her side yard—where he’d been dropping a package, as instructed. “What are you stealing?”

“That sucks,” I said. “I’m sorry that happened to you.”

“It's cool,” he told me. “I called her a bitch.”

Fun.

For both days of my safety training, I sat next to and befriended Will, who now shows up for work wearing every Amazon-themed article of clothing he can get his hands on: shirt, ball cap, Amazon beanie pulled over Amazon ball cap. I found that odd at first, but it makes good sense. If you’re a black man and your job is to walk up to a stranger’s front door—or, if the customer has provided such instructions, to the side or the back of the property—then yes, rocking Amazon gear is a way to protect yourself, to proclaim, “I’m just a delivery guy!”

He has to bring back the race card. What a shame. This guy can't rid of his left-wing worldview, which is probably why he bemoans his new lot in life.

Let us recall: his wife remains a high-powered lawyer, they own a home which they can refinance, and he has another job which pays pretty well (with overtime!). Yet he whines about his change of fortune. Whomp Whomp!

That safety training, incidentally, is comprehensive and excellent. After two days in the classroom, all of us had to pass a “final exam.” It wasn’t a slam dunk. In my experience, however, some of the guidelines Amazon hammers home to us (seat belts must be worn at all times; the reverse gear is to be used as seldom as possible; driveways are not to be blocked while making deliveries) must be thrown overboard if we’re going to come close to finishing our routes.

And there’s the bathroom issue.

The google search Amazon driver urinates summons a cavalcade of caught-in-the-act videos depicting poor saps, since fired, who simply couldn’t hold it any longer. While their decision to pee in the side yard—or on the front porch!—of a customer is not excusable, it is, to those of us in the Order of the Arrow (my made-up name for Amazon delivery associates), understandable.

No sense of deceny. None. How about identifying a key location and going to that place for your bathroom needs as needed? That shouldn't be too hard, now, should it?

Before sending me out alone, the company assigned me two “ride-alongs” with its top driver, the legendary Marco, who went out with 280 packages the second day I rode shotgun with him, took his full lunch break, did not roll through a single stop sign, and was finished by sundown. Marco taught me to keep a lookout not just for porch pirates—lowlifes who swoop in behind us to pilfer packages—but also for portable toilets. In neighborhoods miles from a service station or any public lavatory, a Port-a-John, or a Honey Pot, can be no less welcome than an oasis in the desert. (The afternoon I leapt from the van and beelined to a Honey Pot, only to find it padlocked, was the closest I’ve come to crying on the job.)

Delivering in El Sobrante one day, I popped into a convenience store on San Pablo Avenue. I bought an energy bar, but that was a mere pretext. “I wonder if I might use your lavatory,” I asked the proprietor, a gentleman of Indian descent, judging by his accent, in a dapper beret.

A cloud passed over his face. “You make number one or two?”

“Just one!” I promised. He inclined his head toward the back of the store, in the direction of the “Employees only” bathroom.

After thanking him on my way out, I mentioned that I was new at Amazon, still figuring out restroom strategies.

“Amazon drivers, FedEx drivers, UPS, Uber, Lyft—everybody has to go.”

But where? When no john can be found, when the delivery associate is denied permission to use the gas-station bathroom, he is sometimes left with no other choice than to repair to the dark interior of the cargo bay—the belly of the beast—with an empty Gatorade bottle.

I just want everyone to realize that this 33-year veteran journalist has not only been reduced to telling us long tales about his pursuit for a place to pee. Really.

It was late afternoon on a Monday when I may or may not have been forced to such an extreme. I was dispensing packages on Primrose Lane in Pinole, and I remember thinking, afterward: Aside from the fact that my checking account is overdrawn and I’m 30 deliveries behind and the sun will be down in an hour and I’m about to take a furtive whiz in the back of a van, life really is a holiday on Primrose Lane!

Why was his checking account overdrawn? Why did he feel compelled to bring that into the story?

Pinole, incidentally, is the hometown of the ex–Miami Hurricanes quarterback Gino Torretta, a great guy who won the Heisman Trophy in 1992. I covered him then, and a few years later when he was playing for the Rhein Fire in the NFL’s World League. Gino and I hoisted a stein or two at a beer hall in Düsseldorf. Some of the American players were having trouble enunciating the German farewell, auf Wiedersehen. To solve that problem, they would say these words as rapidly as possible: Our feet are the same!

So, we have a former Sports Illustrated writer who lives in the wildly overpriced South Bay section of the San Francisco Bay Area. No wonder he complains about the high cost of living Notice also that he draws out all kinds of sob stories about his once glorious career, including a specific professional athlete, all drawn from the city where he is dropping off packages.

Narcissism rears its ugly head again.

Performing my new job, I’m frequently reminded of my old one, whether it’s driving past Memorial Stadium in Berkeley, where I covered countless Pac-12 games, or listening to NFL contests during Sunday deliveries. I’ve talked and laughed with many of the players and coaches and general managers and owners whose names I hear.

Oh, how the mighty are fallen, right?

Sitting in traffic one damp December morning, I turned on the radio to hear George W. Bush eulogizing his father. His speech was funny, rollicking, loving, and poignant. It was pitch-perfect. In the summer of 2005, after returning from the Tour de France—cycling was my beat during the reign of Lance Armstrong—I was invited, along with five other journalists, to ride mountain bikes with W. on his ranch in Crawford, Texas. The Iraq War was going sideways; 43 needed some positive press. I jumped at the chance, even though I loathed many of his policies. In person, Bush was disarming, charming, funny. (These days, compared with the current potus, he seems downright Churchillian.) I wrote two accounts, one for the magazine, another for the website. Got a nice note from him a couple weeks later.

A confirmed liberal, just as I had guesses. And a biased liberal who hates Donald Trump. Wow, color me surprised!

Lurching west in stop-and-go traffic on I-80 that morning, bound for Berkeley and a day of delivering in the rain, I had a low moment, dwelling on how far I’d come down in the world. Then I snapped out of it. I haven’t come down in the world. What’s come down in the world is the business model that sustained Time Inc. for decades. I’m pretty much the same writer, the same guy. I haven’t gone anywhere. My feet are the same.

Yes, you have gone somewhere, into a bale of self-righteous irrelevance. 

When I’m in a rhythm, and my system’s working, and I slide open the side door and the parcel I’m looking for practically jumps into my hand, and the delivery takes 35 seconds and I’m on to the next one, I enjoy this gig. I like that it’s challenging, mentally and physically. As with the athletic contests I covered for my old employer, there’s a resolution, every day. I get to the end of my route, or I don’t. I deliver all the packages, or I don’t.

That’s what I ended up sharing with people at the first Christmas party of the season. It felt better, when they asked how I was doing, to just tell the truth.

This is also true: Gina and I got approved for that loan last week, meaning that our monthly outlay, while not so minuscule that it can be drowned in Grover Norquist’s figurative bathtub, is now far more manageable, thanks in part to these daily journeys which I consider, in their minor way, heroic.

Delivering packages is heroic? Seriously?

Final Reflection

The arrogance, the self-serving pre-eminence is hard to avoid, isn't it? How far had he really fallen, this legacy journalist overlooking his tired, lost legacy?

Not far enough, if you ask me. His crass liberalism unabated, his sense of self-importance still on the field, it's clear that this man's pride has not been dashed deeply enough. This guy is so-filled with this idea that he was the king-maker because he was a reporter, and yet he has learned the hard way that whatever you are selling, someone has to be buying.

And lots of people simply were not interested in buying souped-up liberal propaganda in the midst of sports. People want to see a decent game, and they want people to play, to have fun. And the Left can't stand the idea of anyone having fun.

Now we have a reported who turns his little challenges into front-page news. Who really cares that this guy struggles to find a place to urinate while delivering packages? Who cares, really?

What makes this report so gratifying, though, and intriguing is that it mirrors the general decline of the corrupted, liberal media.

And this downfall is spectacular!

Bret Stephens, Anti-Semitism, and Anti-Trumpism

Before Wall Street Journal columnist recorded a video for PragerU about the economic and cultural woes of the Arab world, he had written an article about it.

Bret Stephens, neoconservative with some social conservative leanings, exposed how throughout the Arab World, the reason for ongoing moral, political, and economic decline all traces its origins to Anti-Semitism.

In fact, almost verbatim he reads his editorial for PragerU audiences.

Click here for the video.

Here's the contents of the article:

The Meaning of an Olympic Snub

An Israeli heavyweight judoka named Or Sasson defeated an Egyptian opponent named Islam El Shehaby Friday in a first-round match at the Rio Olympics. The Egyptian refused to shake his opponent’s extended hand, earning boos from the crowd. Mr. Sasson went on to win a bronze medal.

If you want the short answer for why the Arab world is sliding into the abyss, look no further than this little incident. It did itself in chiefly through its long-abiding and all-consuming hatred of Israel, and of Jews.

That’s not a point you will find in a long article about the Arab crackup by Scott Anderson in last weekend’s New York Times Magazine , where hatred of Israel is treated like sand in Arabia—a given of the landscape. Nor is it much mentioned in the wide literature about the legacy of colonialism in the Middle East, or the oil curse, governance gap, democracy deficit, youth bulge, sectarian divide, legitimacy crisis and every other explanation for Arab decline.

Yet the fact remains that over the past 70 years the Arab world got rid of its Jews, some 900,000 people, while holding on to its hatred of them. Over time the result proved fatal: a combination of lost human capital, ruinously expensive wars, misdirected ideological obsessions, and an intellectual life perverted by conspiracy theory and the perpetual search for scapegoats. The Arab world’s problems are a problem of the Arab mind, and the name for that problem is anti-Semitism.

As a historical phenomenon, this is not unique. In a 2005 essay in Commentary, historian Paul Johnson noted that wherever anti-Semitism took hold, social and political decline almost inevitably followed.

Spain expelled its Jews with the Alhambra Decree of 1492. The effect, Mr. Johnson noted, “was to deprive Spain (and its colonies) of a class already notable for the astute handling of finance.” In czarist Russia, anti-Semitic laws led to mass Jewish emigration as well as an “immense increase in administrative corruption produced by the system of restrictions.” Germany might well have won the race for an atomic bomb if Hitler hadn’t sent Albert Einstein, Leo Szilard, Enrico Fermi and Edward Teller into exile in the U.S.

These patterns were replicated in the Arab world. Contrary to myth, the cause was not the creation of the state of Israel. There were bloody anti-Jewish pogroms in Palestine in 1929, Iraq in 1941, and Lebanon in 1945. Nor is it accurate to blame Jerusalem for fueling anti-Semitism by refusing to trade land for peace. Among Egyptians, hatred of Israel barely abated after Menachem Begin relinquished the Sinai to Anwar Sadat. Among Palestinians, anti-Semitism became markedly worse during the years of the Oslo peace process.

In his essay, Mr. Johnson called anti-Semitism a “highly infectious” disease capable of becoming “endemic in certain localities and societies,” and “by no means confined to weak, feeble or commonplace intellects.” Anti-Semitism may be irrational, but its potency, he noted, lies in transforming a personal and instinctive irrationalism into a political and systematic one. For the Jew-hater, every crime has the same culprit and every problem has the same solution.

Anti-Semitism makes the world seem easy. In doing so, it condemns the anti-Semite to a permanent darkness.

Today there is no great university in the Arab world, no serious indigenous scientific base, a stunted literary culture. In 2015 the U.S. Patent Office reported 3,804 patents from Israel, as compared with 364 from Saudi Arabia, 56 from the United Arab Emirates, and 30 from Egypt. The mistreatment and expulsion of Jews has served as a template for the persecution and displacement of other religious minorities: Christians, Yazidis, the Baha’ i.

Hatred of Israel and Jews has also deprived the Arab world of both the resources and the example of its neighbor. Israel quietly supplies water to Jordan, helping to ease the burden of Syrian refugees, and quietly provides surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities to Egypt to fight ISIS in the Sinai. But this is largely unknown among Arabs, for whom the only permissible image of Israel is an Israeli soldier in riot gear, abusing a Palestinian.

Successful nations make a point of trying to learn from their neighbors. The Arab world has been taught over generations only to hate theirs.

This may be starting to change. In the past five years the Arab world has been forced to face up to its own failings in ways it cannot easily blame on Israel. The change can be seen in the budding rapprochement between Jerusalem and Cairo, Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, which might yet yield tactical and strategic advantages on both sides, particularly against common enemies such as ISIS and Iran.

That’s not enough. So long as an Arab athlete can’t pay his Israeli opposite the courtesy of a handshake, the disease of the Arab mind and the misfortunes of its world will continue. For Israel, this is a pity. For the Arabs, it’s a calamity. The hater always suffers more than the object of his hatred.

Write bstephens@wsj.com.

Bret Stephens rejects the dangerous irrationalism of anti-Semitism.

His psychological and historical exploration of this topic is informed and precise.

And yet ... he is a NeverTrump conservative (?) who still would have preferred Hillary Clinton as our next President.

He had declared that the country couldn't survive Trump, but could survive Hillary.

Trump did win, and the country has survived.

With Stephens, I beg to differ: this country could NOT have survived Hillary Clinton, because she was so corrupt.

Stephens has diminished Trump's interest in "America First" as nativism. He refers to his brand of leadership as "Sovereign democracy". To compare Trump and Putin as ideological allies is quite suspect. It's simply untrue that Trump does not support classical liberalism, i.e. free markets, free enterprise, free speech.

But Stephens is still opposing Trump.

Why?

Why I’m Still a NeverTrumper

Tax cuts. Deregulation. More for the military; less for the United Nations. The Islamic State crushed in its heartland. Assad hit with cruise missiles. Troops to Afghanistan. Arms for Ukraine. A tougher approach to North Korea. Jerusalem recognized as Israel’s capital. The Iran deal decertified. Title IX kangaroo courts on campus condemned. Yes to Keystone. No to Paris [Climate Accords]. Wall Street roaring and consumer confidence high.

This is an excellent yet incomplete list of Trump and the Republican Congress' accomplishments in the last year and a half.

And, of course, Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court. What, for a conservative, is there to dislike about this policy record as the Trump administration rounds out its first year in office?

In one word: nothing.

And yet ...

That’s the question I keep hearing from old friends on the right who voted with misgiving for Donald Trump last year and now find reasons to like him. I admit it gives me pause. I agree with every one of the policy decisions mentioned above. But I still wish Hillary Clinton were president.

How does that make sense? Can I still call myself conservative?

You really can't, Bret, or at least you need to be honest about the ulterior motive for disparaging Trump.

How can this conservative intellect justify this argument?

The answer depends on your definition. Here’s one I’ve always liked: “The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society,” said the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan. To which he added: “The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself.”

Conservatives used to believe in their truth. Want to “solve” poverty? All the welfare dollars in the world won’t help if two-parent families aren’t intact. Want to foster democracy abroad? It’s going to be rough going if too many voters reject the foundational concept of minority rights.

And want to preserve your own republican institutions? Then pay attention to the character of your leaders, the culture of governance and the political health of the public. It matters a lot more than lowering the top marginal income tax rate by a couple of percentage points.

So he doesn't like how Trump behaves before the public. He doesn't like the direct, striking remarks which he makes against world leaders. He doesn't like that Trump is not essentially, extensively, perhaps excessively diplomatic.

This is the fatal mistake of conservatives who’ve decided the best way to deal with Trump’s personality — the lying, narcissism, bullying, bigotry, crassness, name calling, ignorance, paranoia, incompetence and pettiness — is to pretend it doesn’t matter. “Character Doesn’t Count” has become a de facto G.O.P. motto. “Virtue Doesn’t Matter” might be another.

The fact that Stephens writes "G.O.P." instead of "GOP" indicates his writing platform: the New York Times. I suspect that like many columnists, Stephens would be out of a job if he spoke favorably of President Trump.

But character does count, and virtue does matter, and Trump’s shortcomings prove it daily.

Maybe you think the Russia investigation is much ado about nothing. Yet Trump brought it on himself every step of the way, from firing James Comey after the former F.B.I. director wouldn’t swear fealty, to (potentially) admitting to obstruction of justice with that tweet about Mike Flynn’s firing. Or maybe you regret the failure to repeal Obamacare. But that had something to do with the grotesque insults Trump lobbed at John McCain, the man whose “nay” vote sank repeal.

No, it had to do with the fact that John McCain is a thin-skinned child in an adult body who doesn't like the fact that his budget-busting internationalism is no longer in vogue, much like the neoconservative agenda attributed to Bill Kristol, Bret Stephens, Charles Krauthammer, and the like.

Look at every other administration embarrassment (Scaramucci) or failure (the wall, and Mexico paying for it) or disgrace (the Charlottesville equivocation). Responsibility invariably lies with the president’s intemperance and dishonesty. That puts Republican control of Congress in play. It also risks permanently alienating a millennial generation for which the G.O.P. will forever be the party of the child-molesting sore loser and the president who endorsed him.

The fact that Stephens lost his poise over Charlottesville shows that like main editorial elites, he is more interested in being liked by the rest of the Chattering Beltway class than caring about what is best for the rest of the country. He then leads unfounded credence to the lie that Judge Roy Moore was a child molester. There is simply no truth to those frauds. None. In fact, one of the accusers even admitted that she forged his signature (the date next to it specifically) in her yearbook.

These would-be accusers were beyond shameless. Since Moore's unprecedented loss last December, he has filed lawsuits against the accusers for defamation of character. Stephens, Mona Charen, and other "conservative" editorial writers haven't been able to shake this fundamental snobbism, this need to be liked by the glitterati.

Now look at the culture of governance. Trump demands testimonials from his cabinet, servility from Republican politicians and worship from conservative media. To serve in this White House isn’t to be elevated to public service. It’s to be debased into toadyism, which probably explains the record-setting staff turnover of 34 percent, according to an analysis from the Brookings Institution.

Trump doesn't demand much of anything from the conservative press. They offer it to the President gladly because he is governing in a conservative manner. Trump isn't interested in getting nice headlines. He is interesting in accomplishing conservative goals--and he has gotten more done. The elitist journalists like Stephens can't handle the fact that Trump, who is not "one of them", has gotten more done on their list of goals.

In place of presidential addresses, stump speeches or town halls, we have Trump’s demagogic mass rallies. In place of the usual jousting between the administration and the press, we have a president who fantasizes on Twitter about physically assaulting CNN. In place of a president who defends the honor and integrity of his own officers and agencies, we have one who humiliates his attorney general, denigrates the F.B.I. and compares our intelligence agencies to the Gestapo.

What universe does these people live in?

Stephens has "Anti-Trumpism", another highly infectious disease which overtakes dispossessed intellectuals who still want to think that they are "better than others" and are just "more educated" than the rest of us little people.

It's too bad that Stephens has descended into this myopic hatred of the President. For all the thinks for which he faults the President, he sure carries on with similar behaviors himself.

Trump is normalizing all this; he is, to borrow another Moynihan phrase, “defining deviancy down.” A president who supposedly wants to put a wall between the U.S. and Latin America has imported a style of politics reminiscent of the cults of Juan Perón and Hugo Chávez.

Is communism on the rise? Has he shut down the press? Has he locked up opponents? What has not occurred to many of these second-hand intelligentsia is that the everyday people across the country, the ones who don't spend their days filling up the press corps and fulfilling the inane wishes of wannabe conservative academia.

Conservatives may suppose that they can pocket policy gains from a Trump administration while the stain of his person will eventually wash away. But as a (pro-Trump) friend wrote me the other day, “presidents empower cultures.” Trump is empowering a conservative political culture that celebrates everything that patriotic Americans should fear: the cult of strength, open disdain for truthfulness, violent contempt for the Fourth Estate, hostility toward high culture and other types of “elitism,” a penchant for conspiracy theories and, most dangerously, white-identity politics.

The contempt for the Fourth Estate is embodied in that very phrase "estate". The corporate media has viewed itself as the final arbiter of truth, of what constitutes news and what does not. The press corps has routinely gotten world events wrong. They predicted a Hillary win, but Trump took the Electoral College on Election Day.

The liberal media have filters that insist on how the world should work, and write stories which reflect this bias. The work-a-day readers, consumers of news are starting to realize how much is narrative, spin, and fraud. The so-called Fourth Estate which Stephens esteems has become despised, descending into anti-Trump self-parody.

This won’t end with Trump. It may have only begun with him. And Trump’s supporters may wind up proving both sides of Moynihan’s contention: not just that culture is what matters most, but that politics can still change it — in this case, much for the worse.

Politics is downwind from culture.

The culture is changing, though, as more people have stopped reading the New York Times and have started reading Breitbart and watching other Independent media sources. The more that that individual readers realize that the mainstream media has not been honest, that they have no right to claim the perfect mantle of objective, the more that they struggle and attack the President.

The press, the corporate media for which Stephens works, does not want to learn from their mistakes. They want the world, the stability of their narrative, to stay the same. That's just not going to happen anymore.

And that's what drives these elites crazy. That is the source of Anti-Trumpism.