Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.'s Business World column anchored on a federal indictment last week of the Southern Poverty Law Center, accused of channeling money to a right-wing "informant" who helped organize the 2017 Charlottesville melee. Jenkins frames the disclosure as the latest cherry on a pseudo-event that has, for nine years, been used to manufacture media narratives.
The column re-litigates the "very fine people" quote — on the record at whitehouse.gov, on video, in transcript form on news-outlet websites — and walks through the chain: an Atlantic article days before the riot foreshadowed exactly what would happen; left-wing extremists and right-wing extremists were "unlikeliest allies" in manufacturing media episodes; the city deliberately stood back; the state police declared an unlawful assembly; the press subsequently misreported what Trump said for years.
The Cynicism Critique
Jenkins is one of the few business columnists who has consistently argued that Trump's defining political trait is "bottomless cynicism" about the political game and the people who play it — and that this is precisely why a cynical electorate, exhausted by what it views as a manipulative national press, validates him. The 2022-24 campaign cycle in his telling was a deliberate, premeditated push by the Biden campaign to frame Trump along the path back to the White House. Cynicism begets cynicism.
The column ends pointedly: an authoritative news media, defiantly standing as the guardian of public space against provable, demonstrable lies, can be a check against political cynicism. What plays that role today — the column hopes — might be artificial intelligence.
Why this matters to a portfolio
Jenkins is essential reading for the macro investor because his cynicism critique tracks closely with how voters and consumers actually behave. When the median voter believes both sides are gaming the press, they vote on tangible things — gas prices, rents, jobs — over abstractions. That puts a ceiling on how long a political headline can move markets, and a floor under cyclical-trade narratives that align with kitchen-table economics. Read alongside today's Renaissance Macro durable-goods chart, the implication is that the upper-middle consumer is starting to vote with their wallets — durable-goods spend down where prices are up — and that's the real signal investors should track, not the next viral political clip.
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