“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.
Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Pondering the Pundits”.
Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt
Paul Krugman: Both Sides Now?
When Donald Trump began his run for the White House, many people treated it as a joke. Nothing he has done or said since makes him look better. On the contrary, his policy ignorance has become even more striking, his positions more extreme, the flaws in his character more obvious, and he has repeatedly demonstrated a level of contempt for the truth that is unprecedented in American politics.
Yet while most polls suggest that he’s running behind in the general election, the margin isn’t overwhelming, and there’s still a real chance that he might win. How is that possible? Part of the answer, I’d argue, is that voters don’t fully appreciate his awfulness. And the reason is that too much of the news media still can’t break with bothsidesism — the almost pathological determination to portray politicians and their programs as being equally good or equally bad, no matter how ludicrous that pretense becomes.
Just to be clear, I’m not arguing that distorted news coverage is the whole story, that nobody would support Trumpism if the media were doing their job. The presumptive Republican nominee wouldn’t have gotten this far if he weren’t tapping into some deep resentments. Furthermore, America is a deeply divided country, at least in its political life, and the great majority of Republicans will support their party’s nominee no matter what. Still, the fact is that voters who don’t have the time or inclination to do their own research, who get their news analysis from TV or regular news pages, are fed a daily diet of false equivalence.
Leo W. Gerard: Donald Trump: The Divider
The man Republicans will nominate this week as their presidential candidate sees himself as a U.S. generalissimo. Donald Trump would be, he said last week, the law-and-order president. He’d be a tough guy at a time when crime is down. He’d strong arm at a time when reconciliation is required.
What Trump didn’t say, because he lacks the insight to know it, is that he’d also be the nation’s most self-involved, egotistical president ever. Rather than bearing the important mantle of consoler-in-chief after tragedies like those in Orlando, Dallas and Baton Rouge, a President Trump would be Tweeter-in-chief, bragging about how he, and only he, had predicted it would happen.
Precious few Americans want a bully as a leader, someone who barks, “You’re fired,” who calls people names, ridicules the physically handicapped, and builds walls between races. They want a president who brings people together, who inspires, who offers hope and who can give solace to the nation in times of crisis. All of that was missing from Trump’s responses to national shocks like the gunning down of 49 people at the LGBT club in Orlando, the massacre of five police officers in Dallas, and the killings by police officers of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. Trump’s reactions showed he’s a businessman with a heart of stone, a man who would widen the divides of this country.
Steven W. Thrasher:: Obama condemns Baton Rouge, but what about the victims of police violence?
I had been out of the country as the anger regarding Alton Sterling and Philando Castile had risen, and that seemed to have changed nothing. Even the horrifying death of the latter on live video did not stop American police from killing about two dozen more people since. Will the violence police are facing themselves make them act more peacefully, or just lead to more violence? [..]
Certainly nothing has changed with how president Barack Obama has approached police violence. While I waited in the passport control line, I found it jarring that Obama was on one TV greeting visitors to the US with a recorded welcome message; at the same time, he was on a CNN monitor just a few feet away, scaring the hell out of visitors as he addressed the latest American mass shooting and declared: “Attacks on police are an attack on all of us and the rule of law that makes society possible.”
What made me especially sad was that Obama won’t also say that attacks by the police on black people are also “an attack on all of us and on the rule of law that makes society possible”. He certainly doesn’t seem to have changed much on this over the course of his presidency. I was also out of the country during the “beer summit” of 2009, when Obama had Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates and the white cop who’d arrested him outside Gates’ own home to the White House for drinks. At the time I thought this PR stunt was cheapening the serious issue of racial profiling by police.
Lucia Graves: The Donald and Mike show has begun – 60 Minutes was the first installment
In his awkward, halting joint interview with his new running mate, Mike Pence, Sunday night, Donald Trump offered a preview of what could be a very uncomfortable week in Cleveland for Republican standard bearers.
Trump has tried to obfuscate the lack of political star power in the convention lineup by putting his progeny in speaker seats usually occupied by the likes of past Republican presidents (the only ones living refuse to attend). But he’ll need more than blood relatives to spare him the indignity of being left at the altar by party insiders.
If there was anything redeeming in the 60 Minutes interview, it was the hope that Pence can translate Trump’s racially tinged blather into something more palatable to party operatives.
Heading into the convention starting Monday in Cleveland, where each day will have a “Make America ____ Again” theme (perhaps the most ironic of which is “Make America One Again”), Pence will have his work cut out for him when it comes to converting the Republican luminaries to Trump’s cause.
Barrett Holmes Pittner: Another deadly day in Baton Rouge. Will we heed the warning?
The frequency of senseless gun-related deaths in America continues unabated. Despite countless pleas for calm and unity, three Baton Rouge police officers have been killed by an assailant armed with deadly weapons.
The Republican national convention is about to open, followed by its Democratic counterpart. America needs its political leaders to present peaceful, unifying solutions to this tragic violence, and not make statements that further division and increase national tension.
Based upon the list of speakers lined up to address the Republican convention in Cleveland, which includes former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani and others who have demonized the Black Lives Matter movement, it is not hard to envision a week filled with divisive rhetoric. [..]
There are seismic flaws in America’s ideological foundations, and the increased agency of black Americans has made it far harder to paper over these cracks. BLM and black activists point out the unjust and oppressive structures in our society. They can no longer be ignored. It seems that the process of coming to terms with them, if the past few weeks are a guide, will be beset by violence. There is some hope that this won’t be the case.
Recent Comments