The New York Times again both-sides fascist extremism, balancing Harris 'tax cuts' against Trump's mass deportations

The newest attempt at doing a Political Journalism from The New York Times is making waves, and with it I'd like to pose a question. Is the United States on the potential cusp of an autocratic, fascist-premised takeover because one party has descended into extremism? Or is it because the "political press" in the United States, the supposed watchdogs against corruption and extremism, became so spectacularly incompetent at their jobs, so up-the-asses of themselves and the charlatans they are tasked with policing, so vapid and immoral and just gawdawful ignorant of every last damn policy and issue and political debate they might accidentally brush up against, that a descent into authoritarian extremism was inevitable?

This feels like a question for Dana Bash, actually. This feels like an interview question that somebody should ask Dana Bash. But in the meantime: The Actual Damn New York Times, everyone:

America’s gaping shortage of affordable housing has rocketed to the top of voter worry lists and to the forefront of campaign promises, as both the Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, and the Republican candidate, Donald J. Trump, promise to fix the problem if they are elected.

Their two visions of how to solve America’s affordable housing shortage have little in common, and Ms. Harris’s plan is far more detailed. But they do share one quality: Both have drawn skepticism from outside economists.

Solid opening there. Vapid framing of an issue that leaps right into literal "both" sides framing to suggest that Opinions Differ on which of two proposed plans might be better. Go on.

Ms. Harris is promising a cocktail of tax cuts meant to spur home construction — which several economists said could help create supply. But she is also floating a $25,000 benefit to help first-time buyers break into the market, which many economists worry could boost demand too much, pushing home prices even higher. And both sets of policies would need to pass in Congress, which would influence their design and feasibility.

Mr. Trump’s plan is garnering even more doubt. He pledges to deport undocumented immigrants, which could cut back temporarily on housing demand but would also most likely cut into the construction work force and eventually limit new housing supply. His other ideas include lowering interest rates, something that he has no direct control over and that is poised to happen anyway.

What. I mean ... I'm sorry, but what? So on one side you've got a concrete policy plan of "tax cuts" that's so well within the mainstream of what politicians and economists usually reach for in these situations that you couldn't, without naming the source of the plan, tell which party was proposing it.

And on the other side we have "Mr. Trump's" offered plan, which is to a stage a Holocaust-scaled roundup of undocumented immigrants, putting them on trains and busses and shoving them across the border or putting them in internment camps if our neighbors can't handle the mass of now-impoverished refugees all at once, and this will likely include American-born children because his close advisers have announced that from now on those children won't be considered to have citizenship because screw them, that's why, and it will definitely cause widespread chaos as entire sectors of the U.S. economy are thrown into disarray, especially when it comes to food production, home construction, and other labor-intensive work, and there is broad consensus among economists that "deport a bunch of people" doesn't even amount to toenail clippings of a serious "housing" plan, and again all of this is premised on a Holocaust-scale hunt for, capture, imprisonment and deportation of anyone who can't immediately produce whatever paperwork Trump's personal collection loud white nationalists demand they show and will then challenge.

That's the Both Sides you're gonna do on us today. One side proposes a bog standard tax cut. Aaaand the other side proposes a white nationalism-premised pogrom that doesn't have a think to do with "housing policy" except that when pressured for justification some f--kwit at the Institute of Fascist Ideas thought back to America's internment camps for Japanese Americans and offered "and if we put them in camps, we can take their homes!"

How about everyone in the New York Times offices take a moment, take a deep breath, and then maybe curl up into a ball, roll away, and never bother us again with this.

It's hard to come up with a better example of enforced amorality in the face of extremism. It's very nearly Jonathan Swift territory, except Jonathan Swift was using it to mock the appalling inhumanity of the ruling class. He was just pretending. The New York Times, on the other hand, is not.

So this is what I mean, when I propose that maybe it's not that the Republican Party descended into overt fascism because something-something demographic changes in America or due to Sudden Onset Economic Anxiety the moment anyone other than a glowingly white dude was given the keys to the Oval Office. Maybe the Republican Party has been that way for a great many decades now, but in past decades we had editors at our nation's top newspapers and in television studios who had the Bare Fucking Decency to treat such extremism as scandalous, outrageous, and inherently corrupt—and now we don't.

Now, in fact, we have the exact opposite. This version of "journalism" considers "tax cuts" and "authoritarianism-premised attempted coup" as the both sides of our political debate, because some absolutely boneheaded, incompetent, and amoral lout sitting behind a desk that cost twice as much as your car determined that not passing judgment on whether or not the end of democracy and a spiral into white nationalism was now the pinnacle of Jourmalistic Professiondoing, and the entire industry clamored to fall in line with that so that preening talking heads and op-ed writers wouldn't have to feel bad about licking the boots of any such monster that came along so that they would Give Them A Quote.

Donald Trump attempted to overthrow the duly elected United States government, you know. It caused deaths inside the U.S. Capitol. Lawmakers had to run for their lives. It is perfectly acceptable, and even a moral requirement among decent people and those who profess to be patriots themselves, to treat such a man as not a serious policy thinker but a criminal menace. He is an adjudicated rapist, a tax cheat, a documented hyper-liar, a felon, the would-be benefactor of a violent attempted insurrection, and is proposing a plan that amounts to the fascist reimagining of the nation into one in which members of the opposing party are barred from government, educators and authors and librarians who distribute information contrary to party orthodoxy may face prison, and a nationwide manhunt will be conducted for the other in our midst.

If you are not willing to differentiate between policies centered on "tax cuts" and that stew of authoritarian atrocities, you are not an actual journalist—and you are a bad person. Full. Stop.