"But this week, shit started to feel Orwellian, or apocalyptic, or just very early-to-mid-century German. "
- Only if you believe Trump, but who believes Trump? Felt like a normal week to me in terms of delivery... even the content, sending republicans into an even more vicious tailspin, hardly seemed surprising.

You know who was in that Cincy crowd booing the 1st amendment?

My aunt, my uncle, my cousin, her husband, and their 2 teenage daughters. 3 generations of conservative Irish/German Catholic suburbanites, cheering on a fascist. Not feeling the family pride today.

I'm still surprised anyone would think that any of this news would sway Trump's base supporters. They're totally ok with curtailing press freedoms, banning religions, tossing out the rule of law, just so long as they're the ones doing it. Dictatorship would sit well with them, so long as it's their dictator. Their concept of patriotism is not rooted in the constitution or freedom or what is right, but simply of tribal identity and absolute loyalty...two of the key ingredients of an autocracy.

"Popular criticism of the "lamestream media" has morphed into an open distrust of journalism. "

There is a reason why journalists are distrusted. Hated even. It's much the same reason politicians are distrusted and hated - many of them lie. Both engage in misrepresentation. Distortion. Both dissemble and mislead, usually to further an agenda but sometimes just because they can't be arsed to get it right. Two sources of equally low integrity, Huffington Post and Breitbart, are considered news sources just as your aforementioned NYT and WaPO. When terrible news sources like the former are compared to the latter and all are called journalism, you know the profession is screwed.

Good on the NYT for calling a fascist spade a fascist spade. As SPG notes, this of course has no bearing on Trump's mouth-breathing base, but that doesn't mean it doesn't need to be said.

@6: Aw Christ, you're probably right. Palin and Huckabee will seem positively enjoyable compared to watching "The White Power Hour with Donald Trump."

@10 in journalistic integrity. Lol, yes.

@12: its not a new sitch, but thanks. at least my dad didn't go.

@8:

All of which is very ironic considering a mere handful of multi-national corporations own 90% of all media outlets. General Electric owns NBC, CNBC, and MSNBC, among others; Westinghouse owns CBS; Disney owns ABC; Time Warner owns CNN; and News Corp owns FOX & FOX News. These giant conglomerates are hardly bastions of "liberalism", putting the lie to the conservative claim of "liberal media bias". In fact there is no such thing. If there's any bias it's in the direction of what will generate the most profit for the parent company.

@14 And money picks a candidate it thinks will win corporations the most profit. That machine has chosen Hillary. So the bias is kind of true for Trump supporters, which just makes their paranoia worse.