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.)
The Two Minutes Hate was a famous feature of Orwell’s portrayal of Oceania in 1984. The Two Months of Hate is now a notable feature of the 2024 U.S. presidential contest. Donald Trump and his allies are closing this campaign with two months of hate in a way we’ve never seen before. And it could work. The September 10 presidential debate taught Trump and his campaign that they could not win if the campaign were . . . a debate. So Trump is refusing to participate in a second debate, or for that matter in any interview that might be a simulacrum of a debate. More fundamentally, Trump has abandoned any pretense of having to debate real issues or having to put forth any serious programs. Of course, Trump’s heart has always been in authoritarian demagoguery, not in democratic and civic debate. But in the closing weeks of this campaign, any mask of democratic normalcy and civic decency has been tossed aside.
America's major media organizations have so thoroughly normalized Trump's burgeoning extremism – and refused to take seriously his louder and louder fascism – that we need as many pieces like this one as possible to remind people that we could be on the verge of a the end of democracy and an era of vicious right-wing rule. I'm sorry if I'm a broken record on all of this, but we are in the most important election in my, and probably your, lifetime. I beg you to do whatever you can to get people to the polls, recognizing that turnout will decide this. America needs your help as never before.
“At best, Tom Barrett and his Campaign have committed a shocking oversight which will undoubtedly lead to confusion by Black voters in Lansing,” Anthony and Geiss wrote in the complaint. “And, at worst, this ad could be part of an intentional strategy to “deter” Black voters by deceiving them into showing up to vote on the day after the 2024 election.”
This may or may not be a dirty trick, but Occam's Razor suggests that it is. There's a long history of voter suppression via misinformation, and the Republicans have often aimed it at minority communities. In this case, the excuses don't pass the smell test. As the Detroit Free Press article above notes, "The fact that the correct version of a similar ad was placed in a newspaper not read by predominantly Black voters within the same week of the inaccurate flier 'strains credulity that this was a simple mistake.'" The Republicans – suppressing minority voting across the nation – don't begin to deserve the benefit of the doubt this time, or ever.
If Trump wins again, he could solidify right-wing control of the Supreme Court for decades. By next January, four of the nine current justices will be in their 70s, and the next president may have the opportunity to appoint some or all of their replacements. Trump has made it clear he’ll make sure those replacements are there as long as possible, acknowledging that “we like people in their 30s, so they’re there for 50 years.” The justices appointed by Trump would be the ones deciding cases concerning abortion, birth control, marriage equality, gun safety, the climate crisis and voting rights. That’s not something I’m willing to accept for myself, my daughter or any other family in America.
This commentary in Democracy Docket is a reminder of how much would still be at stake even if Trump wasn't planning to run a dictatorship. His – and previous Republican presidents' – Supreme Court picks have pushed the law so far to the extremist right that it's hard to see how it could go much further. So, even if Trump was planning to run a "normal" administration, he would be working to ensure that the right-wing majority stayed that way for decades. Harris is our last hope of bringing some balance back to a court that has arrogated powers beyond anything we've seen before.
“I often talk about these missions as modern cathedrals—they are generational quests,” said Laurie Leshin, director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which led the construction of Europa Clipper, during a prelaunch briefing. “I’m really proud that as humanity, we choose to undertake these difficult and long-term goals, things like exploring the unknown out at Jupiter.”
We obsess on the short term in America, often for good reasons. In pointing to this great piece in Scientific American, I urge you to think about the longer term. Our space missions – in particular the robotic explorers (e.g. Voyager, Perseverance) and space telescopes (Hubble, Webb) – strike me as humanity at our finest. These "generational quests" are indeed worth the time, money, and difficulty. They give us insight into our universe and ultimately, since we are all made from space dust, our home and ourselves. What makes this political is that none of these missions would have happened without politics, with bipartisan agreement to do, as JFK once said, "the hard things" that deserve our support. I hope, a decade from now, we will still have it in us to try. Right now, I'm celebrating that we do.
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
Samuel J. Robinson, Detroit Free Press
Opinion
Nadia Drake
