News and commentary for understanding and coping with the years ahead...
Turning universities into right-wing propaganda factories
The authoritarian parallels
A compendium of the best reporting and commentary surrounding the pivotal 2024 elections in the United States. You will rarely find horse race coverage here, or the standard "both sides" BS that passes so often for political journalism. What you will find are links, with brief commentary, to work that I believe advances the conversation we should be having about America's – and the world's – future. Remember: Everything is at stake this year. (Unfortunately, some of the work I point to is behind paywalls.)
An unsurprising endorsement
The Atlantic's endorsement of Kamala Harris is no shock. It's worth reading, anyway, as it sums up many of the reasons why this election shouldn't even be close (but is).
A tale of tariffs
The economics of this clearly did not shake out positively; consumers spent years paying higher prices for inferior products to support a domestic industry that remains no stronger or more efficient than it was a decade ago.
This Washington Post article, by a data journalist who understands economics, takes us through the years when the U.S. put a stiff tariff on washing machines – a small preview of what Trump says he will impose on essentially everything coming into the U.S. The bottom line was bad news for Americans. This is an example of how to bring context to broad issues.
“His own vice president is not supporting him,” Farah Griffin said. “Multiple chiefs of staff. Former national security advisors. Multiple former Department of Defense heads. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. His White House comms director. Deputy press secretary. Another White House comms director. The list goes on. All of us who saw him up close and personal as president, some of the senior-most roles and the most consequential roles, are the people saying he should be nowhere near the Oval Office.”
The list of former Trump associates and appointees who have taken to warning us about him grows longer by the minute, it seems. Are they having any impact? One school of thought holds that the Harris-Walz campaign's constant trotting out of reformed Trumpists is a boost, because it may incline some morally tortured Republicans to jump off the fence in favor of Harris. But another school holds that the more Harris does this, the more she's annoying the seriously liberal base of the Democratic coalition. That second group wants her to tout her genuinely progressive stances much more loudly. I hope she'll do both.
Since former President Donald J. Trump announced his 2024 candidacy, his campaign has promoted dozens of contests for supporters to win signed merchandise or “V.I.P.” trips to meet Mr. Trump. It has offered adherents myriad “exclusive” opportunities to join clubs to give counsel to Mr. Trump, and it has repeatedly claimed that Mr. Trump is personally reviewing lists of small donors. But most of the contests seem to have no winners, and the campaign did not confirm or provide evidence that the club members have had any opportunity to advise the former president or that Mr. Trump is paying any attention to small donor rosters.
The NY Times has done a great job of collecting and analyzing thousands of Trump campaign fundraising emails. Among the notable features in these hard-sell missives are promises made but – in keeping with Trump's longstanding way of doing things – not kept. Given that campaign finance laws have been pretty much ignored by the Federal Election Commission, it's no surprise that the FEC is doing nothing to police this kind of abuse. It's less clear why this activity isn't outright fraud. You would imagine that federal law enforcers might be interested in that, but again there's no sign of that, either. This story, by the way, is getting no push from the Times, either. So yet another example of the corruption that pervades Trump world will probably sink without much of a trace.
I don't think Trump is a literal Nazi, despite his imagery and rhetoric, his virulent racism, his contempt for democracy, and all the rest of his dangerous traits and views. He is, however, a fascist – a truth so obvious that to deny it is just absurd. The rally he's planning at Madison Square Garden later this month is right out of the fascism playbook. His extreme followers won't be decked out in the cartoonishly evil ways that Hitler's were in 1939. But they may be equally willing to use violence. Watch the video. Pay attention. It really can happen here, and it may unless we do everything possible to keep our democracy and rebuild it.
Voting is just part of democracy, but it's the essential place to start. Make sure you're registered. Doublecheck in the fall, well before Election Day, because in some states Republican officials are removing people, mostly those who tend to vote for Democrats, from voting rolls.
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William Kristol
Edward Helmore
