Pondering the Pundits

“Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

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Katrina vanden Heuvel: Will Trump’s poisonous politics leave lasting damage?

Donald Trump is mainstreaming hate. That was the central message of Hillary Clinton’s speech last week in Reno, Nev., where she detailed Trump’s record of stoking racism and conspiracy theories. “From the start,” she declared, “Donald Trump has built his campaign on prejudice and paranoia.” [..]

While past Republican nominees have flirted with extremists, none has embraced or encouraged them so openly. As Clinton pointed out, Trump has brought out of the online shadows an emerging movement known as the “alt-right.” Despite lacking clear leaders or a cohesive ideology, the alt-right “is bound together by common enemies: women, minorities, immigrants and national institutions that, by their worldview, threaten the freedom of white men with the toxic sword of political correctness,” Jack Smith IV writes. Notably, in his former role as the chairman of Breitbart Media, Trump’s new campaign chief executive Stephen Bannon boasted, “We’re the platform for the alt-right.”

Trump has not merely given voice to the visceral hatred in our midst. With his brazen lies and his childish taunts, Trump has also effectively given permission for people to say virtually anything in public without regard for facts or fear of repercussions. This could have a lasting impact on our public discourse regardless of how Trump fares in November.

Geraldine Downey and Frances Negrón-Muntaner: Jailing Old Folks Makes No Sense

Many incarcerated people would be the first to acknowledge the pain and loss their crimes caused. But if prisoners older than 50 have served decades-long sentences and have shown evidence of rehabilitation, the only rationale for holding them appears to be endless punishment and retribution.

The problem is growing as the American prison population gets grayer. By 2012, there were almost 125,000 inmates age 55 and older out of a total population of 2.3 million. Even as the overall prison population continues to decrease, it is estimated that by 2030, there will be more than 400,000 over 55s — a staggering increase from 1981, when there were only 8,853.

The numbers are rising despite recognition that continuing to lock up older prisoners not only does nothing to reduce crime, but is also expensive and inhumane. More and more aging people are becoming seriously ill and dying in prison. Prisons are not equipped to be nursing homes.

Jesica Valenti: A vote for Trump is also a vote for the bigoted company he keeps

Sometimes we don’t have a choice about the people in our lives. Plenty of Americans know what it’s like to have a family member who is racist or sexist, and most of us don’t have the privilege of choosing who we work with or for. Still, who we choose to surround ourselves with matters. And for those with power, these personal and professional decisions hold even more weight.

Donald Trump chose Stephen Bannon to lead his campaign – a man accused of domestic violence and making antisemitic comments. And he is counting on Roger Ailes to help him with debate prepa man accused of sexual harassment by more than 20 women.

These two men are among the advisers he picked after Corey Lewandowski, charged with assaulting a female reporter, left his campaign. These choices tell us a clear story about who Trump is and what he stands for.

The associations add disturbing detail to the picture we already have of Trump – one he has painted himself, repeatedly, with disdainful comments about Muslims, Mexicans, women and disabled people. For the targets of Trump’s ire, the bigotry is obvious: polls show women, Latino and African American voters are overwhelmingly adverse to voting for Trump, and that is not likely to change before the November election.

Heather Digby Parton: If you can’t beat ’em, malign ’em: Trump’s strategy has shifted to sabotaging Clinton’s eventual presidency

The latest beltway gossip (aside from Anthony Weiner’s latest sexcapade) is that Trump and his Trumpettes have shifted their focus from trying to win the presidency to making sure that a Hillary Clinton presidency is a total disaster. [..]

It’s already happening with the State Department emails which have been gathered by right-wing organizations for the express purpose of feeding the scandal machine. You can see the outlines of how the mutually reinforcing feedback loops works from Sunday’s “Face the Nation” in which Rep. Jason Chaffetz cites a discredited AP report about the Clinton Foundation as proof of corruption and promises thorough investigations in the next congress. Likewise, on “Meet the Press,” in which Clinton’s speech condemning Trump’s incestuous relationship with the alt-right was presented as equivalent to Trump’s incestuous relationship with the alt-right and characterized it as a “race to the bottom.”

There is a bigger concern, however, and one that gets more acute every time this happens. This cynical delegitimizing of the duly elected president ends up delegitimizing our democracy in general. And it’s getting downright dangerous. Trump’s “second amendment” remedy talk and the incessant demands to “lock her up” are taking this way beyond even the political trench warfare of the 1990s and the gridlock of the last eight years. These are barely disguised calls for violence. The political media should be very wary of being used as couriers for that message.

Amanda Marcotte: Porn addiction: The Christian right’s latest quack crusade is no excuse for trading in child pornography

It’s easy to see why Christian conservatives would be drawn to this idea of pornography as an addictive substance like cocaine or alcohol. While the Christian right has no real compunction about controlling female sexuality through punitive means — see attacks on legal abortion and affordable contraception — when it comes to controlling male sexuality, things get a little stickier. It’s hard to police male sexuality without threatening male privilege, after all.

That’s where the notion of porn “addiction” becomes useful. By taking a medicalized approach, religious conservatives can discourage porn use while still letting men off the hook, painting them as not entirely responsible for their own sexual decisions. It preserves the notion of male virility as a force that can’t quite be contained, while still maintaining social disapproval of the behavior. No wonder up to half of conservative Christian men describe themselves as porn addicts, or that there’s a strong link between religiosity and believing that porn addiction is real.

In recent years, there’s been an effort in conservative circles to claim scientific evidence for the porn addiction theory. [..]

The problem, as the Hine case shows, is that once you start regarding normal sexual behavior as dysfunctional, that allows people who are engaged in genuinely deviant and harmful behavior (like child porn) to, perversely, recast themselves as normal. That person is just a porn addict, like so many others! Such a false or dubious diagnosis simultaneously stigmatizes non-harmful behavior like sexual fantasy and masturbation while minimizing genuinely harmful behavior.