March 9, 2025
Scott J. Lawson
Dear editors of The Atlantic; please change your motto or stop being fake hypocrites.
“Journalism of no party of clique,” The Atlantic has long claimed, “Exploring the American idea since 1857.” Sure, a publication called The Atlantic has been around since 1857, but those putting together the content of the publication bearing this name today are far from the “explorers” of yesterday; they operate more as “sculptors” attempting to refashion the “American idea” into something resembling their warped worldview.
The Atlantic today, far from their illustrious philosophical, poetic, and contemplative beginnings, now essentially operates as a purveyor of half tabloid/half pop news. Publications like this are of course a dime a dozen in this current media market, but what really makes The Atlantic lamentable is that despite their attempts to keep up appearances as some sort of objective and well-rounded news source with high standards and diverse perspectives, it is clear from even a cursory analysis of their articles and author selection that they operate from a perspective that is certainly all-in with a specific “clique” when it comes to political and ideological positioning.
The typical Atlantic article being pumped out by their usual cadre of authors today, especially since the Emerson Collective takeover, usually ranges from 1,000 – 7,000 words. These authors quite often use this short string of words to paint a specific picture of an “ugly American” based on differences with their left-leaning and/or statist-status quo worldviews. It isn’t just that these authors are taking a position from a perspective – that is certainly fair game and encouraged in a free press environment – it is that the means they employ are fallacious and dirty; contradicting the fundamental principles necessary to uphold and promote a well-rounded, informed democratic citizenry that respects one another and consents to operate within a structured, liberty-based system. Perhaps we can partially blame the shorter attention spans of media consumers today for the dominance of short form editorial political/ideological content, but the publishers of such content certainly bear some of the responsibility for the quality of said content as well. Over time, the multitudes of these pithy, narrative-building, emotional appeals take their toll, forming self-reinforcing opinions in the minds of their readers with little actual substantive content backing them up.
There is little intellectual curiosity within the pages of The Atlantic any longer. Authors tend to assume evil intentions in the minds of their political and ideological opponents. The actual arguments their opponents make regarding a given topic are often ignored and straw man arguments are attacked instead. Sweeping and hasty generalizations are rampant, and the particulars and long-term concerns of any given perspective are too often ignored. The sensational aspect of current events and the personality of important actors is favored for discussion over the intrinsic relevance of the situation and complex political dynamics involved. The publication’s target audience, already programmed to think a certain way, is keyed up to assuming the truth of their preconceived conclusions in the premises of every argument made by the authors, and this only creates a perpetual feedback loop of self-confirmation. What is sacrificed in such a journalistic model is constructive dialogue and a proper understanding of issues from different perspectives. And given that there is little promotion of any sort of objectively-derived criteria for judgement on the merits of any important matter, we are not getting exploration of “the American idea,” we are getting subjectively-derived propaganda from positions of power and preference.
Let’s explore a recent article in The Atlantic to illustrate this problem. Anne Applebaum, a frequent Atlantic contributor, just wrote an article titled, “The Rise of the Brutal American.” An accompanying subhead reads, “This is how the bad guys act.” An accompanying picture of American and Ukrainian flags gives a hint to the careful reader precisely what is to follow, given that the buzz at the time of the article (March 5, 2025) was regarding the highly-publicized meeting between President Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and Ukrainian President Zelensky. Without getting too deep into who Anne Applebaum is and what her motivations are, it suffices to say she is very much in favor of continued American support for the specific actions and long-term American/Western strategy that lead up to this point in the war. What follows in her article is nothing short of a masterclass on how not to write an article about public perception and American foreign relations if the goal is to inform the reader of anything in an objective and useful way.
Applebaum starts off, “A book festival in Vilnius, meetings with friends in Warsaw, a dinner in Berlin: I happened to be at gatherings in three European cities over the past several days, and everywhere I went, everyone wanted to talk about the Oval Office performance last Friday. Europeans needed some time to process this event, not just because of what it told them about the war in Ukraine, but because of what it told them about America, a country they thought they knew well.”
Oh yes, dear readers of The Atlantic, Anne Applebaum, over in Europe socializing within her established elitist/entrenched political circles, is going to inform you precisely what all of Europe thinks of the current situation regarding the war in Ukraine and the possibility of a change in American strategy. And to do this, she is going to focus on their reactions to one particularly sensational meeting, itself a massive distraction from the substantive discussion about the merits of the policy and proposed future actions. She continues to set up the article in a biased fashion by literally creating and imposing a new stereotype for America based on her and her comrade’s opinions,
“In just a few minutes, the behavior of Donald Trump and J. D. Vance created a brand-new stereotype for America: not the quiet American, not the ugly American, but the brutal American. Whatever illusions Europeans ever had about Americans—whatever images lingered from old American movies, the ones where the good guys win, the bad guys lose, and honor defeats treachery—those are shattered. Whatever fond memories remain of the smiling GIs who marched into European cities in 1945, of the speeches that John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan made at the Berlin Wall, or of the crowds that once welcomed Barack Obama, those are also fading fast.”
Wow. Did you get that dear readers? Europeans, apparently as fickle and gullible as Applebaum’s base, were quick to disregard everything they thought about Americans in the past, including equally ridiculous stereotypes, based off of one interaction between Trump, JD Vance, and Zelensky. I don’t know what is worse, the gall of Applebaum to even make such a fallacious claim, or the apparent lack of respect for the ability of her readers and Europeans in general to make valid determinations absent emotion.
Applebaum continues, “Quite apart from their politics, Trump and Vance are rude. They are cruel. They berated and mistreated a guest on camera, and then boasted about it afterward, as if their ugly behavior achieved some kind of macho “win.” They announced that they would halt transfers of military equipment to Ukraine, and hinted at ending sanctions on Russia, the aggressor state. In his speech to Congress last night, Trump once again declared that America would “get” Greenland, which is a part of Denmark—a sign that he intends to run roughshod over other allies too.”
In this paragraph Applebaum opts to shift away from any constructive and valid criticism of the behavior in the meeting itself, being content to just assert it. She then immediately shifts to a biased and simplistic assertion of mistaken American policy regarding Ukraine (from her perspective) and even statements regarding Greenland, hinting that the behavior in the meeting is sufficient to frame even the most remote of policies and positions as “cruel, rude, and ugly.” A reader that flunked Logic 101 should be able to identify the fallacious reasoning in this rhetoric. Applebaum hopes to use emotions to sway readers towards a preferred position rather than considering these policies on the merits.
Applebaum then attempts to double-down on her villainous framing, ties it to all US Republicans, and cites the opinion of an anonymous friend as evidence of support. “These are the actions not of the good guys in old Hollywood movies, but of the bad guys. If Reagan was a white-hatted cowboy, Trump and Vance are Mafia dons. The chorus of Republican political leaders defending them seems both sinister and surprising to Europeans too. “I never thought Americans would kowtow like that,” one friend told me, marveling.”
Next Applebaum seeks to frame her perspective on all things Ukraine as the norm while anyone that thinks differently is operating in an “alternative reality.” She writes, “The Oval Office meeting, the subsequent announcements, and the speech to Congress also clarified something else: Trump, Vance, and many of the people around them now fully inhabit an alternative reality, one composed entirely of things they see and hear in the ether. Part of the Oval Office altercation was provoked by Zelensky’s insistence on telling the truth, as the full video clearly shows. His mistake was to point out that Russia and Ukraine have reached many cease-fires and made many agreements since 2014, and that Vladimir Putin has broken most of them, including during Trump’s first term.” I don’t know how ignorant one has to be of the events of the last decade or more to accept this simplistic summary Applebaum offered as sufficient to represent a strong enough norm to qualify any other information or perspective as an “alternate reality.” Without even getting into it here, such a statement ought to be considered absurd in itself to any objectively-minded observer.
Applebaum then lists a couple of good questions that ought to be explored more in depth, but of course she doesn’t do it in her article. She writes, “It’s precisely because they remember these broken truces that the Ukrainians keep asking what happens after a cease-fire, what kind of security guarantees will be put in place, how Trump plans to prevent Putin from breaking them once more and, above all, what price the Russians are willing to pay for peace in Ukraine. Will they even give up their claims to territory they don’t control? Will they agree that Ukraine can be a sovereign democracy?” Instead of exploring these questions honestly and considering other perspectives, Applebaum simply again asserts with no real evidence that Trump and Vance are just wrong and operating from ignorance. Applebaum writes,
“But Trump and Vance are not interested in the truth about the war in Ukraine. Trump seemed angered by the suggestion that Putin might break deals with him, refused to acknowledge that it’s happened before, falsely insisted, again, that the U.S. had given Ukraine $350 billion. Vance—who had refused to meet Zelensky when offered the opportunity before the election last year—told the Ukrainian president that he didn’t need to go to Ukraine to understand what is going on in his country: “I’ve actually watched and seen the stories,” he said, meaning that he has seen the “stories” curated for him by the people he follows on YouTube or X.” Applebaum’s last sentence is nothing but ironic, given she is criticizing Vance for supposedly doing precisely what she is doing for her readers; curating content and perspective for her followers.
Next, Applebaum makes the inevitable claim that any and all perspectives contrary to her position are merely Russian propaganda. Again, the fallacy of this tactic should be clear as day to any competent reader and it is amazing that someone writing for a supposedly reputable publication is able to get away with it so blatantly. She writes, “Europeans can also see that this alternative reality is directly and profoundly shaped by Russian propaganda. I don’t know whether the American president absorbs Russian narratives online, from proxies, or from Putin himself. Either way, he has thoroughly adopted the Russian view of the world, as has Vance. This is not new. Back in 2016, at the height of the election campaign, Trump frequently repeated false stories launched by Russia’s Sputnik news agency, declaring that Hillary Clinton and Obama had “founded ISIS,” or that “the Google search engine is suppressing the bad news about Hillary Clinton.” At the time, Trump also imitated Russian talk about Clinton starting World War III, another Russian meme. He produced a new version of that in the Oval Office on Friday. “You’re gambling with World War III. You’re gambling with World War III,” he shouted at Zelensky.” Applebaum is off her rocker inserting these statements in this context within this article; first because they do absolutely nothing to bolster her argument, but second because the general examples she gave, if considered properly, would actually hurt her position more than it helps! One has to wonder if Applebaum and The Atlantic are even trying at this point. Are these articles thrown together in twenty minutes for pure filler and headline shock value? It appears so.
What Americans and Europeans need is substantive content regarding the cause of this war and the possibilities for ending it. The same is true for all ideological discussions and disagreements in the political sphere today. We do not get that with writers like Applebaum. What we get is biased and partisan content that demonizes dissent and assumes evil motives in the opposition so that the preferred and promoted narrative is not only unchallenged, but is considered the only moral option. Applebaum writes, “But what was ominous in 2016 is dangerous in 2025, especially in Europe. Russian military aggression is more damaging, Russian sabotage across Europe more frequent, and Russian cyberattacks almost constant. In truth, it is Putin, not Zelensky, who started this conflict, Putin who has brought North Korean troops and Iranian drones to Europe, Putin who instructs his propagandists to talk about nuking London, Putin who keeps raising the stakes and scope of the war. Most Europeans live in this reality, not in the fictional world inhabited by Trump, and the contrast is making them think differently about Americans. According to pollsters, nearly three-quarters of French people now think that the U.S. is not an ally of France. A majority in Britain and a very large majority in Denmark, both historically pro-American countries, now have unfavorable views of the U.S. as well.” Why might people in Europe even have a negative view of America now as Applebaum suggests? Perhaps it is because the dominant narratives have crafted it that way in the first place. Europeans, like Americans, are susceptible to the same media shortcomings, the same fallacious tactics, the same narrative building and improper analysis. So Applebaum’s citation of European public opinion may really just be another version of the circular argument and disregard for the substantive debate in the first place. I also must point out, given she is citing these polls which clearly were conducted before the Trump/Vance/Zelensky meeting, they do not bolster her claim that the meeting itself is responsible for a shift in European thinking about America and the “new stereotype” she created in her own mind.
Applebaum closes her article with yet another series of statements meant to apply a standard of cruelty to the rationale for actions she does not like. “In reality, the Russians have said nothing publicly about leaving Ukrainian territory or stopping the war. In reality, they have spent the past decade building a cult of cruelty at home. Now they have exported that cult not just to Europe, not just to Africa, but to Washington too. This administration abruptly canceled billions of dollars of food aid and health-care programs for the poorest people on the planet, a vicious act that the president and vice president have not acknowledged but that millions of people can see. Their use of tariffs as random punishment, not for enemies but for allies, seems not just brutal but inexplicable. And in the Oval Office, Trump and Vance behaved like imperial rulers chastising a subjugated colony, vocalizing the same disgust and disdain that Russian propagandists use when they talk about Ukraine. Europeans know, everyone knows, that if Trump and Vance can talk that way to the president of Ukraine, then they might eventually talk that way to their country’s leader next.” None of this of course really means anything. A reader that already agrees with Applebaum will simply nod in agreement and a reader than disagrees will shake their head in disgust.
So what is the point of articles like Applebaum’s in The Atlantic today? Her article discussed above provided zero worth to anyone that read it beyond existing belief confirmation. Her overall point was not even well supported, she provided no new information, and did not conduct any proper analysis. The answer is that the article helps bolster the positions of “the clique” The Atlantic pretends not to claim. Readers of The Atlantic should stop fooling themselves and just admit the publication is as biased and empty as any of the ones on the opposite side of the political spectrum they so often criticize. The Atlantic editors ought to adopt the same and cut the pretense they are operating in a fashion in any way similar to that of the publications admirable beginnings. Or better yet, they ought to drop their current approach and revert to the more respectable journalism of their past.
