Chris Hedges and Matt Taibbi are both what would, until very recently, be considered mainstream journalists. Now they see themselves on the outside of a monolithic system where information has been completely politicized to the point of it being, in Taibbi's words, "a one-party media environment." I rather doubt that either of them are Trump supporters, but they realize that if Trump loses, things will get even worse. Self-censorship, which is undoubtedly already high, will increase as lines that cannot be crossed without ending one's career touch on ever more subjects. They compare the situation to the Soviet Union where everyone knew that the official media could not be trusted, but underground Samizdat documents were treasured. I can't help thinking we are already there in the sense that people like me are forced to turn to podcasts and websites that are well outside the mainstream, in a situation of constant deplatforming by financial companies and media companies like YouTube.

Taibbi notes that there was a sea change after the 2016 election where basically organizations like the NYTimes had a "come to Jesus" moment" when they asked themselves how could we let this happen and decided to become overtly political, throwing a sop to conservatives by hiring someone like neocon Bret Stephens to appease conservatives while at the same time promoting the Trump-Russia collusion hoax and ginning up the White guilt narrative with the 1619 Project, while completely suppressing the Hunter Biden-Joe Biden scandal, the evidence for which, in my opinion, is overwhelming. At the same time they ignored the real reasons why Trump won—Taibbi mentions neoliberal economics (implying replacement-level immigration and outsourcing American jobs) and economically struggling and poor Americans. But left unmentioned is the feeling of unease by a broad swathe of White Americans that their country is being taken away from them and that it's increasingly unrecognizable from the country they grew up in. Unmentioned also is that a great many Whites are feeling racially dispossessed by the replacement-level immigration that has occurred, and they are increasingly aware that they are hated by our liberal-left hostile elite.