- How Fox News denies reality, because that’s what their fans want to hear;
- NYT on Trump and the condemnations by those who’ve known him;
- How Trump’s promise to round up immigrants echoes what Putin is doing;
- Adam Lee on historical morality and what the future will bring.
Tribal solidarity trumps acknowledgement of the real world, and I’ve often pointed out — especially if acknowledging that reality would give credit to the ‘other’ tribe.
Media Matters, Zachary Pleat: Fox is in denial of reality just weeks before the election, subtitled “Fox personalities have rejected data showing a reduction in violent crime, record energy production, plummeting inflation, and fewer unauthorized border crossings”
In recent weeks, multiple Fox personalities have been in denial of objective reality that under the Biden-Harris administration, especially in recent months, violent crime has declined, inflation is steadily declining, oil and natural gas production are at record highs, and unauthorized border crossings have plummeted.
With a dozen specific citations grouped under these headings:
- Statistics show violent crime has dropped under the Biden-Harris administration, but Fox is rejecting this data and claiming the opposite
- Inflation has plummeted from its peak more than two years ago, yet Fox claims it’s at “record highs”
- Data shows record-high oil and natural gas production under Biden-Harris, but Fox is telling you not to believe it
- Data shows fewer unauthorized border crossings, yet Fox is using legal immigration numbers to reject it
It’s not just that Fox is lying; it’s that there’s apparently a substantial audience of viewers out there who will believe lies if it makes the other party look bad.
Also on this site are a couple adjacent stories: Fox News sticks with Trump’s disastrous plans for the economy after hundreds of economists voice support for Harris, subtitled “A new study detailed how Trump’s economic agenda would lead to weaker growth, higher inflation, and job losses”; and Right-wing media are pretending violent crime is out of control despite FBI data showing otherwise.
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NY Times has two long pieces today by the editorial board. But extremely few Trump fans are likely to read the NYT.
and
The Dangers of Donald Trump, From Those Who Know Him
The latter is a collection of quotes from nearly 100 administration insiders, Trumps & Trump Inc., Republican politicians, conservative voices, and world leaders.
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It’s worth clicking that link in the byline about The New York Times Editorial Board. Who are these people? There’s a list, with thumbnail bios. And a statement:
The board argues for a world that is both free and fair, believing that societies must struggle to reconcile these values in order to succeed. It has long supported a liberal order of nations in which freedom and progress advance through democracy and capitalism. But it has also sought to guard against the excesses of those systems by promoting honest governance, civil rights, equality of opportunity, a healthy planet and a good life for society’s most vulnerable members.
Since its founding in 1896, the board has, above all, championed what Adolph Ochs called “the free exercise of a sound conscience,” believing that the fearless exchange of information and ideas is the surest means of resisting tyranny and realizing human potential.
Who would disagree? Plenty of people, apparently.
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Meanwhile.
Salon, commentary by Chauncey DeVega: The mission creep of hate: Trump’s dehumanization targets beyond immigrants, subtitled “His stormtroopers will round up anyone they decide does not belong in this country, whether they’re citizens or not”
Opening and closing paras (omitting all the incendiary Trump quotes in between):
Donald Trump and his surrogates are continuing to channel and amplify Nazism and Adolf Hitler. This is not random or happenstance. It is part of a strategy. “Feral politics” made even more explosive and toxic by adding blatant white supremacy, racism, and antisemitism. Occam’s razor, as it often does, provides the most simple and compelling proof of how Trump and his campaign’s feral hate politics strategy is very intentional: He and they have increased their antisemitism, racism, and white supremacy (and misogyny and hostile sexism) greatly in the last few weeks as the polls and other metrics show him tied with if not behind Kamala Harris, a Black South Asian woman, in the presidential election.
Adolf Hitler is one of the most evil leaders in recorded human history. Hitler and his Nazi regime are responsible for the systematic, industrial-scale mass murder of six million Jewish people and millions of others (including Black Germans). World War II, the deadliest in human history, resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of people around the world (estimates range from 50 million to 70 million or more). Almost 80 years after the end of World War II, Nazism and the various forms of racial fascism, and the other antidemocratic and illiberal political belief systems and ideologies in its orbit have not been fully vanquished. They are resurgent in the form of Trumpism, American fascism, and the larger global antidemocracy movement.
…
The 2024 election is a referendum on democracy and a test of the American people’s character, morality, intelligence, and courage. As I often ask here at Salon, who are we, “the Americans?” I hope that Roth is correct and that the American people rise to the challenge of vanquishing Trumpism. Unfortunately, I have a deep and foreboding fear that he will be proven wrong.
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Not exactly the same, but similar. Authoritarians round up people they don’t like. And the masses don’t notice, or care.
NY Times, guest essay by Lilia Yapparova, 23 Sep 2024: Putin Is Doing Something Almost Nobody Is Noticing
It’s a terrifying thing: The Kremlin is hunting down ordinary people across the world, and nobody seems to care.
I’ve been gathering information about Russia’s targeting of exiles since the start of the war in Ukraine. My sources range from people who survived abductions and surveillance to the leaders of Russian diasporas and the few human rights activists helping them. Many spoke to me on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss Russian repression without fear of reprisal. The Kremlin, of course, denies any involvement, mostly saying that it cannot comment on what is happening to people in other countries. But the evidence is piling up.
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Adam Lee at Only Sky: Be an average citizen of the future, now, subtitled “Why not get ahead of the curve?”
What could this be about? At first, it’s a scenario about a modern person being thrust into the past. Never mind technology; consider the moral angle.
The past wasn’t a nice place. You’d almost certainly miss the freedoms we enjoy today. Depending on how far back you traveled, you might find yourself in a time when absolute monarchy was the standard form of government and the church mandated people’s religious beliefs, with dissenters facing torture and execution. It’s very likely that freedom of speech would be nonexistent and books would be heavily censored or banned.
…
The point is, the basic package of moral beliefs that most of us hold today—democracy, free speech, freedom of conscience, women’s rights, racial equality—would have been shocking and radical by the standards of almost every past era. It’s only because these causes succeeded, and became foundational parts of our ethical outlook, that we forget how controversial they once were.
I would add: even today’s conservatives would be shocked by the moral standards of the past. They don’t realize how much “progress” has been made, and how much they take it for granted. Conservatives are always niggling at the edges of the *next* wave of progress. (I read that Prothero book on this theme and will write it up here shortly.)
Then Lee looks to the future.
Now slide it forward. What would a person from the future do in our era?
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They’d almost certainly judge us for the way we’ve treated the planet: spewing carbon pollution into the air, littering the oceans with plastic trash, bulldozing ecosystems and driving species to extinction. Since they’d be the ones living with the consequences of climate change and resource depletion, they’d have every right to curse us for causing it.
Followed by speculation about wealth and inequality, the excesses of capitalism, and the prospect of open borders. This is all fairly mundane by science fictional standards, yet it’s mind-blowing to many people, especially conservatives who have not paid attention to the arc of past history. Lee concludes,
All the more reason, then, for us who are alive now to get rid of those prejudiced blinders and not wait for the future to come along and do it for us. In all things, we should try to think and act like an average citizen of the future. Let’s live as if that better world is here already, and by so doing, we can pull forward the time when it comes into existence.
Don’t act is if you’re living in a doomed society; you’re not. Act instead as if you’re living in the early days of a better, future nation. And help to make it happen.
