Moneymaking Backlash: The Profitability of American Newsmedia Polarization

Lost in all the chaos is this reality:

Joe Biden’s decision to pull everyone out of Afghanistan remains one of the bravest decisions made by a president in this entire century.

Seriously.

We should have left Afghanistan during Bush’s second term. Should have left during Obama’s two terms. Then during that White Supremacist administration which we barely survived, we should have already left Afghanistan. The ugly truth is it was obvious from the get-go that the Taliban was going to eventually take over, they were going to bide their time and continue recruiting as the war dragged on and civilians were dying at the hands of unnecessary bloody conflicts between terrorist groups, insurgents, guerrilla groups, and the American soldiers alongside the Afghan military being given weapons and resources.

The more time we spent there, the more it was going to feel like a complete waste once this inevitable happened. The more money we spent, the more it would feel like a waste of money and resources once the results would reveal themselves to be nullified. Similar to Vietnam this was a losing battle that was being passed from president to president. In Vietnam War’s case Americans were battling and dying until Nixon pulled back the troops and then Gerald Ford officially shut down U.S. involvement. In the case here, we had Donald Trump create a deal with the Taliban that pretty much established a timeline that Biden had to follow to avoid additional bloodshed and violence.

Lost in all the chaos is the fact that Trump had literally made a deal with the Taliban to start retreating, this was already in the works when that hot potato was passed to the Biden Administration in the midst of the MAGAts still refusing to admit defeat and complicating the transition to historic levels. I’m positive lost in all the controversies, the terrorist attacks, and coup attempts within the months of December and January is the fact that the entire Trump White House was complicating the passing over of vital resources and information.

So of course, why is Biden getting wrecked by the media?

Because the media enjoys chaos, thrives on chaos, and profits off polarizing chaos.

This is what every single president since the war started had been trying to avoid, that disgusting media fallout that was also inevitable, because money matters more than anything else in this country. The media was salivating for those juicy bad news details of what would happen to Afghanistan after the military pullout. We would see an invasion in real-time, would see content usually witnessed in television shows and movies occur in real-world news. And man, the Taliban did not disappoint, they wasted no time in their mission the second it became clear that Afghanistan was theirs for the taking. The president bolted, the Afghan military hardly put up a fight, and the conflict hardly became a conflict but more an invasion that spread faster than the coronavirus.

All those articles about how we should leave Afghanistan are suddenly being replaced with criticism towards leaving. All the pundits criticizing Trump, Obama, and Bush for ongoing Afghanistan involvement are suddenly disappointed in Joe Biden for *checks notes* leaving. Nobody from the past that was always against the war are being interviewed, instead we are seeing interviews of longtime Afghan war supporters discussing about what Biden did was terrible and unforgivable. Its just as predictable as it is pathetic. We’re seeing all the major newspapers suddenly changing their tune, we’re seeing CNN and MSNBC even backtrack a bit from what was a decade of complaining about Afghanistan.

Obama experienced similar backlash of this magnitude because likability in a president is toxic poison for television ratings, and therefore controversies have to pop up somehow, someway. While Obama was undoing some of the damage caused by the Bush Administration and the housing market crash, the Tan Suit, the Iran “payout”, the Grey Poupon incident, the Latte salute, and other minor incidents would be discussed for days by the Republican media (who, let’s be honest, has been one of the primary reasons why the United States is in the situation its in today) and they would inch their way towards other news outlets to create Everests out of anthills. Ironically, many of the actual criticisms that you could attribute to Obama were hidden underneath layers of stupid controversies.

So of course then came Trump, who became a ratings juggernaut which propelled and launched the careers of dozens of journalists and news media people. Every single day Trump was causing chaos, was saying something wild, sharing something wilder, and behaving in ways that kept the MAGAts thrilled and the rest of the planet shocked and reviled. This political theater was bringing in numbers for Fox Ness, for CNN, and other news networks that they never could have foreseen. But while this was good TV, it was tearing the country apart and was causing damage that would bring the country to Civil Rights Era levels of polarizing opinions. Our global standing was falling apart, we had become a global joke. We needed a change in the White House as soon as humanly possible, and that’s the primary reason why Joe Biden won.

Joe Biden is boring, and the news media of this country hates every moment of this.

So if there’s a chance for the media to pounce on anything post-Trump, they would pounce and milk it to the bitter end.

So now we’re back to Afghanistan.

This decision to pull out has -overwhelming- support from the American public. The decision to pull out has -overwhelming- support from the countries around the globe. Enough was enough, and the American public (BOTH parties) had been saying this for many years and multiple presidential terms. So this wild backlash from the media has been astounding, trying to create a controversy where it does not have to exist---especially when in fact we were -already- slowing pulling out thanks to Trump’s deal with the Taliban. As a reminder: Donald Trump and his administration literally made a deal with the Taliban, and even posed for a picture with the man who would eventually take over as the new president of the country.

The media doesn’t care what damage it might cause in the future of American politics, it exists to profit, exists to keep those ratings high, and that’s why Obama avoided pulling out, why Trump didn’t want more negative energy, and why Biden pulling out required an obscene amount of political courage. Then to have a press conference, and back up everything for 20 minutes and refuse to take questions was even gutsier, and not going to lie, far ballsier than what I ever would have anticipated from Biden and his administration.

Biden guaranteeing and delivering on the promise to fully exiting Afghanistan by the end of the year, on the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks that became the catalyst of the Middle East conflicts in the first place, was the right decision, and a damn courageous one. Risking all the positive political clout he has accumulated so far during 2021 to deliver on a promise that was guaranteed to create inevitable dangerous results should go down in history as one of the strongest decisions made by a president in a quarter century.

Too bad the money hungry United States media, to keep their profits flowing, will call it anything but that.