WaPo | Lawrence Lessig is a professor at Harvard Law School and the author of “Republic, Lost: Version 2.0.” In 2015, he was a candidate in the Democratic presidential primary.
Conventional wisdom tells us that the electoral college requires that the person who lost the popular vote this year must nonetheless become our president. That view is an insult to our framers. It is compelled by nothing in our Constitution. It should be rejected by anyone with any understanding of our democratic traditions — most important, the electors themselves.
The framers believed, asAlexander Hamilton put it, that “the sense of the people should operate in the choice of the [president].” But no nation had ever tried that idea before. So the framers created a safety valve on the people’s choice. Like a judge reviewing a jury verdict, where the people voted, the electoral college was intended to confirm — or not — the people’s choice. Electors were to apply, in Hamilton’s words, “a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice” — and then decide. The Constitution says nothing about “winner take all.” It says nothing to suggest that electors’ freedom should be constrained in any way. Instead, their wisdom — about whether to overrule “the people” or not — was to be free of political control yet guided by democratic values. They were to be citizens exercising judgment, not cogs turning a wheel.
But the question today is which precedent should govern today — Tammany Hall andBush v. Gore, or one person, one vote?
The framers left the electors free to choose. They should exercise that choice by leaving the election as the people decided it: in Clinton’s favor.
thefederalist | I have to admit, I was surprised to read this particular rant by Paul Krugman, the Nobel-winning economist and columnist for the New York Times (he won the Nobel for his work on economics, not his writing). Having read a New York Magazine piece
that theorizes that some state election machines may have been
“hacked,” thereby costing Clinton the election, Krugman declared:
[N]ow
that it’s out there, I’d say that an independent investigation is
called for…Without an investigation, the suspicion of a hacked election
will never go away.
Really: “never?” Well. Krugman quickly backed off after Nate Cohn challenged this thesis (so much for “never”), but a number of hours later he shared a Vox piece: “The election probably wasn’t hacked. But Clinton should request recounts just in case.” Just in case!
It
might be fair to say that Trump’s election kind of broke the brains of
many people both left, right and center: nobody expected it and a great
many people really didn’t want it to happen. But the Left seems to be
taking it the hardest, and this is perfectly exemplified by Paul
Krugman, a genuinely brilliant fellow who has started to sound like a
tinfoil-hat-wearing neighborhood crank.
Just so
we’re clear, the “suspicion of a hacked election” that Krugman latched
onto—the one that “will never go away”—was spelled out this way:
While it’s important to note [the Center for Computer Security and Society] has not found proof of hacking or manipulation, they
are arguing to the campaign that the suspicious pattern merits an
independent review — especially in light of the fact that the Obama
White House has accused the Russian government of hacking the Democratic
National Committee.
Yes, it is
surely “important to note” that there has been no “proof of hacking or
manipulation.” But that doesn’t go far enough by half: there isn’t even
any evidence of such, except for some voting patterns that, as Nate Cohn points out, vanish when you control for certain variables. Gabriel Sherman mixes up the cause and effect: proof is demonstrated after an investigation, the latter of which is undertaken only on the basis of strong-enough evidence—which doesn’t exist here (unless you’re an aggrieved liberal pundit, I guess).
quillette | The difference between the specifics of BillC-16 and the actual sweep of control it exerts over language is worrisome, especially now, when subjectivity rules and the definition of a hate crime can be decided by anyone who says they are a victim. If the past is any indication of the future, special interest groups — like those Cossman and Bryson support — will use that sweep, and the mob power behind it, either to expand the scope of the law or to make its words mean exactly what they want. This is what Peterson has been saying: not using the correct gender pronouns, especially in a government run institution like a university,can (and likely will) be classified as a hate crime, whether that crime is handled by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal, which is expensive and can result in financial ruin, or the criminal courts, which can result in a criminal record and jail time.
Cossman’s dissembling over these dangers is part of an established pattern of dissembling that many professors of Women Studies believe is necessary. For them, creative lying is compensation for the injustices women have endured for centuries. It’s a shady brand of feminism that gained momentum in the late 80s and receded in the 90s. However, judging by the vigour and confusion of the protesters supporting it now, it’s made a very successful, if malignant, comeback.
The real tragedy? Minority rights are worth protecting, but the configuration of suffering put forth by professors Cossman and Bryson is idiosyncratic, belonging to an incestuous academic sphere spinning on its own nepotism. When Bryson tries to refute decades of empirical data with her unfalsifiable social-constructionist theories it is a sign the incest has gone too far. A “body of work” may indeed suggest that biological sex isn’t an accurate reflection of everyone’s reality. But the real question is, is this body of work actually worth anything?
oftwominds |The Credibility Gap: The Mainstream Media lauds itself and a self-serving, failing elite: check.
The Partnerships That Failed: the SillyCon Valley tech titans were supposed to "save" the neoliberal elite by managing social media the way the MSM managed broadcast propaganda/"news": check.
The Groups That Opted Out: nobody "important" noticed those who opted out of the neoliberal Kool-Aid: check.
The Undermining of Effort: if I don't get my way, I'll block yours. There is no common ground left.
Historian Peter Turchin explores the dynamic of social disintegration in his new book Ages of Discord. The cycle of social disintegration and integration is essentially universal to complex societies--a reality I recently discussed in Ungovernable Nation, Ungovernable Economy (October 11, 2016)
The globalist, neoliberal, neoconservative consensus in the Ruling Elite has splintered, a reality I have described as a splintering of the Deep State, the unelected government that continues on regardless of which party or elected politico is currently in office.
What few in the pundit class see is that significant segments of the Deep State view the neo-con neoliberal strategy as an irredeemable failure. But the camp of neoliberals and globalists will not concede defeat and relinquish their hubris-soaked power without a fight.
Indeed, it is clear that this fading sector of the Deep State is now throwing everything in its power at Trump, his appointees, and anyone who dares question the fake-progressive neoliberal neocon narrative.
Independent | World leaders have called for an end to the criminalisation of drugs.
The Global Commission on Drug Policy's annual report advocates the removal of both civil and criminal penalties for drug use and possession.
Prohibition of drugs has had "little or no impact" on the rate of
drug use, the report says, with the number of drug users increasing by
almost 20 per cent between 2006 and 2013 to 246 million people.
The Global Commission on Drug Policy panel includes former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan, British businessman Richard Branson and the former presidents of Switzerland, Colombia, Mexico and Brazil.
The report warns prohibition of drugs fuels mass incarceration and
executions in contravention of international law and drives human rights
abuses by those who supply drugs.
It cites examples of successful decriminalisation policies, offering
Portugal as the best example, which replaced criminal sanctions for drug
use with civil penalties and health interventions 15 years ago.
The Committee also denounces the "barbaric actions" of Philippino
President Rodrigo Duterte, who calls on the public to execute those
involved in the drugs trade. More than 3,600 people were killed during Mr Duterte's first 100 days in office as part of his brutal crackdown on drugs. Fist tap Big Don.
geneticsandsociety | George Church hit a nerve when he recently discussed re-creating Neanderthals with an "adventurous human female" surrogate, in Der Spiegel. The media attention rapidly became fierce, with dozens of outlets carrying the remarks. Yesterday, Church told the Boston Herald that the whole kerfuffle was based on "poor translation."
As for cloning a Neanderthal, he said, "I'm certainly not advocating it
… I'm saying, if it is technically possible someday, we need to start
talking about it today."
It's good to hear Church disavowing the idea of using genetic
engineering, synthetic biology and human surrogates to create a
Neanderthal clone baby, at least for the time being. But it's
disingenuous of him to shift all the blame onto the translation process.
The phrase that clearly got the most attention was "adventurous female
human" — and that comes straight from the prologue of his own recent book, Regenesis: How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves (co-authored with Ed Regis, published in October 2012):
If society becomes comfortable with cloning and sees value in
true human diversity, then the whole Neanderthal creature itself could
be cloned by a surrogate mother chimp — or by an extremely adventurous
female human.
Is Church personally looking for a human surrogate to gestate a
Neanderthal clone, right this minute? No. Is he willing to openly
advocate for the scenario that he describes in some technical detail?
Not forthrightly, and both in his book and in the interview that sparked
the recent furor, he includes "ifs" and caveats. Does he think that the
process will be technically feasible in the foreseeable future?
Emphatically yes. He's been talking about this and similar projects for
several years. For example:
New York Times, 2008, discussing the recreation of Neanderthals:
Dr. Church said there might be an alternative approach that would
"alarm a minimal number of people." The workaround would be to modify
not a human genome but that of the chimpanzee, which is some 98 percent
similar to that of people. The chimp's genome would be progressively
modified until close enough to that of Neanderthals, and the embryo
brought to term in a chimpanzee.
"The big issue would be whether enough people felt that a
chimp-Neanderthal hybrid would be acceptable, and that would be broadly
discussed before anyone started to work on it," Dr. Church said.
Church proposes to use the MAGE technique to alter a stem cell's
DNA to match the Neanderthal genome. That stem cell would be left to
reproduce, creating a colony of cells that could be programmed to become
any type of cell that existed in the Neanderthal's body. Colonies of
heart, brain, and liver cells, or possibly entire organs, could be grown
for research purposes.
This technique could also be used to create a person. A stem cell
with Neanderthal DNA could be implanted in a human blastocyst — a
cluster of cells in the process of developing into an embryo. Then, all
of the non-Neanderthal cells could be kept from growing. The individual
who developed from that blastocyst would be entirely the result of
Neanderthal genes. In effect, it would be a cloned Neanderthal.
… "We could learn a lot more from a living adult Neanderthal than
we could from cell cultures," says Church. Special arrangements would
have to be made to create a place for a cloned Neanderthal to live and
pursue the life he or she would want, he says. The clone would also have
to have a peer group, which would mean creating several clones, if not a
whole colony. According to Church, studying those Neanderthals, with
their consent, would have the potential to cure diseases and save lives.
Are you playing god, sir? Because you have the beard for it.
We're engineers, we're fixing only things that are broken. …
Can you bring things back from the dead? ...
We can make copies of things that have elements of animals or bacteria and so forth that were extinct.
You guys are working on the wooly mammoth, right?
It's a possibility.
Church has tests running in the lab around Neanderthal cells as
he tries to determine what this species might have looked and acted
like. ... "We have lots of Neanderthal parts around the lab. We are
creating Neanderthal cells. Let's say someone has a healthy, normal
Neanderthal baby. Well, then, everyone will want to have a Neanderthal
kid. Were they superstrong or supersmart? Who knows? But there's one way
to find out."
... How far off is this brave new world? Well, according to
Church, probably not far at all. "The cheap human genome was supposed to
arrive 50 years from now," he says. "It arrived this year. What if a
cheap Neanderthal or mammoth arrives 50 years ahead of time?"
io9 | Over the past several decades, biologists have refined their
transgenic techniques, including the introduction of DNA microinjection,
embryonic stem cell-mediated gene transfer, and retrovirus-mediated
gene transfer.
More recently, scientists have figured out how to modify the DNA of
plants and animals to much greater degrees of precision. While
techniques using bacterial and viral DNA enabled scientists to transport
genes into the chromosomes of various organisms, the precise target for
where the transgene was to eventually land could not be controlled. The
CRISPR/Cas9 system,
which normally allows the bacterial immune system to store DNA
'fingerprints' of viruses, now enables scientists to choose a specific
region of the genome for either gene disruption (a gene knockout) or
insertion (creating a more-precise transgenic organism).
This
technology is extremely powerful because the original genes of an
organism (its endogenous genes) provide a direct entryway for scientists
to control, or edit, an organism's biology. For instance, if someone
has a mutation that causes a disease in a particular type of cell, using
CRISPR/Cas9 to replace the mutant gene with a normal gene could
theoretically cure that disease. Likewise, it could be used to introduce
a foreign transgene.
Today, transgenic organisms are used for a number of purposes, from
toxicology and the improvement of plants and livestock to the creation
of animals that simulate human diseases. They can be divided into three
major functions:
To obtain information on gene function and regulation as well as on human diseases
To
obtain high value products (recombinant pharmaceutical proteins and
xeno-organs and xeno-tissues for humans) to be used for human therapy
To improve animal products for human consumption.
As noted by Emily Anthes , author of Frankenstein's Cat, genetically engineered animals could do real good for the world. As she notes in The New York Times,
scientists have created transgenic salmon that can reach their adult
size in a year and a half, rather than three years. There's also the
famous "spider goats" — hybrid goats that secrete exceptionally strong strands of spider's silk, and transgenic glow-in-the-dark pigs and rabbits that use jellyfish DNA (the point of which kind of eludes me).
thesaker | While the word was focused in rapt attention on the outcome of the US Presidential election, Vladimir Putin did something quite amazing – he arrested Alexei Uliukaev, Minister of the Economy of the Medvedev government, on charges of extortion and corruption. Uliukaev, whose telephone had been tapped by the Russian Security Services since this summer, was arrested in the middle of the night in possession of 2 million US dollars. Putin officially fired him the next morning.
Russian official sources say that Uliukaev extorted a $2 million bribe for an assessment that led to the acquisition by Rosneft (a state run Russian oil giant) of a 50% stake in Bashneft (another oil giant). Apparently, Uliukaev tried to threaten Igor Sechin, the President of Rosneft and a person considered close to Vladimir Putin and the Russian security and intelligence services.
Yes, you read that right: according to the official version, a state-owned company gave a bribe to a member of the government. Does that make sense to you? How about a senior member of the government who had his telephone tapped and who has been under close surveillance by the Federal Security Service for over a year – does that make sense to you?
This makes no sense at all and the Russian authorities fully realize that. But that is the official version. So what is going on here? Do you think that there is a message from Putin here?
unz | Events following Trump’s victory should remove all doubt that
American elections—and perhaps American life more generally—are
increasingly being feminized. Hissy fits, snarky gossip and claims of
dog-whistle hate are now major political weapons and millions in the
Democratic coalition—women, blacks, gays, the campus-based cupcake
nation—are desperately seeking sanctuaries. It would be hard to
exaggerate this transformation. Try to imagine old-fashioned pols,
typically males, hugging and crying as their candidate went down to
defeat. Would Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daily “get the vapors”
and tearfully whine about a Republican in the White House and with his
ward-heeler cronies retreat to a safe space with cuddly puppies, playdough,
and coloring books to begin the process of healing? Clearly, if such a
response occurred post Nixon’s 1968 victory, the Mayor’s career would be
over. Not even the dutiful Democratic Blessed Sisters of the Poor in
his own parish could respect such a girly man and would demand that “Hiz
Honor” take it like a man, down a few stiff ones with “the boys,” stop
complaining and get busy stealing the next election.
As the onward march of feminization transforms losing an election
into a psychological trauma requiring therapy, what’s next”? Perhaps an
officially organized post-election “healing” with a pseudo scientific
name—Post-Election Defeat Traumatic Stress Disorder—so therapists can
try to bill insurance companies for its treatment.
WaPo | In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter, incoming White House chief
strategist Stephen K. Bannon advances another view. “The media bubble is
the ultimate symbol of what’s wrong with this country,” Bannon told Michael Wolff.
“It’s just a circle of people talking to themselves who have no f—ing
idea what’s going on. If The New York Times didn’t exist, CNN and MSNBC
would be a test pattern. The Huffington Post and everything else is
predicated on The New York Times. It’s a closed circle of information
from which Hillary Clinton got all her information — and her confidence.
That was our opening.”
unz | Newly elected presidents are frequently afforded what is described as
a “honeymoon period” in which the criticism of their campaign positions
diminishes sharply as the public and media stand by to see what
actually will develop as an administration takes shape. The honeymoon
can sometimes extend well into the post-inauguration time frame, as it
did with President Barack Obama, and it provides for a breathing space
during which the new arrivals in the White House can set an agenda and
learn how the government actually works.
Unfortunately, President-elect Donald Trump will apparently not enjoy
such a courtesy, at least as far as the media is concerned. The
mainstream media was unrelentingly hostile to Trump both during the
Republican primaries and the presidential campaign itself. The
assertions emanating from media apologists contending that Trump
actually benefitted from the massive press coverage that he did receive
ignores the fact that the reporting was almost always negative. If Trump
benefited at all it was only because the public, seeing the outpouring
of sheer hatred from a media that it already distrusted, came to believe
that someone so vilified by a source so questionable must actually
represent something worth supporting.
The rage of the media towards Trump continues unabated. The Washington Post,
a scurrilous rag emanating out of the District of Columbia that claims
to be a national “newspaper of record,” has a neocon editorial page that
has never seen a war that it dislikes coupled with domestic and local
reporting that is multicultural, inclusive and diverse to a fault. Its
globalist agenda driven hacks seamlessly churn out news stories that are
more editorials for a certain world view than they are reporting of
actual events. It is “invade the world-invite the world” at its finest
and reminds one of Hillary Clinton at her most effusive.
Vox | The film’s premise hinges on the idea, shared by many
linguists and philosophers of language, that we do not all experience
the same reality. The pieces of it are the same — we live on the same
planet, breathe the same air — but our perceptions of those pieces shift
and change based on the words and grammar we use to describe them to
ourselves and each other.
For instance, there is substantial evidence
that a person doesn’t really see (or perhaps "perceive") a color until
their vocabulary contains a word, attached to meaning, that
distinguishes it from other colors. All yellows are not alike, but
without the need to distinguish between yellows and the linguistic tools
to do so, people just see yellow. A color specialist at a paint
manufacturer, however, can distinguish between virtually hundreds of
colors of white. (Go check out the paint chip aisle at Home Depot if
you’re skeptical.)
Or consider the phenomenon of words in other languages that describe universal feelings,
but can only be articulated precisely in some culture. We might
intuitively "feel" the emotion, but without the word to describe it
we’re inclined to lump the emotion in with another under the same
heading. Once we develop the linguistic term for it, though, we can
describe it and feel it as distinct from other shades of adjacent
emotions.
HBR | Michèle Lamont, in The Dignity of Working Men,
also found resentment of professionals — but not of the rich. “[I]
can’t knock anyone for succeeding,” a laborer told her. “There’s a lot
of people out there who are wealthy and I’m sure they worked darned hard
for every cent they have,” chimed in a receiving clerk. Why the
difference? For one thing, most blue-collar workers have little direct
contact with the rich outside of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.
But professionals order them around every day. The dream is not to
become upper-middle-class, with its different food, family, and
friendship patterns; the dream is to live in your own class milieu,
where you feel comfortable — just with more money. “The main thing is to
be independent and give your own orders and not have to take them from
anybody else,” a machine operator told Lamont. Owning one’s own business
— that’s the goal. That’s another part of Trump’s appeal.
Hillary Clinton, by contrast, epitomizes the dorky arrogance and
smugness of the professional elite. The dorkiness: the pantsuits. The
arrogance: the email server. The smugness: the basket of deplorables.
Worse, her mere presence rubs it in that even women from her
class can treat working-class men with disrespect. Look at how she
condescends to Trump as unfit to hold the office of the presidency and
dismisses his supporters as racist, sexist, homophobic, or xenophobic.
Trump’s blunt talk taps into another blue-collar value: straight
talk. “Directness is a working-class norm,” notes Lubrano. As one
blue-collar guy told him, “If you have a problem with me, come talk to
me. If you have a way you want something done, come talk to me. I don’t
like people who play these two-faced games.” Straight talk is seen as
requiring manly courage, not being “a total wuss and a wimp,” an
electronics technician told Lamont. Of course Trump appeals. Clinton’s
clunky admission that she talks one way in public and another in private? Further proof she’s a two-faced phony.
WaPo | A doctoral dissertation at the University of California at Santa Barbara uses “feminist methodologies” to understand how Girl Scout cookie sales “reproduce hegemonic gender roles.” The journal GeoHumanities explores how pumpkins reveal “racial and class coding of rural versus urban places.” Another journal’s article analyzes “the relationships among gender, science, and glaciers.” A Vassar College lecture
“theorizes oscillating relations between disciplinary, pre-emptive and
increasingly prehensive forms of power that shape human and non-human
materialities in Palestine.”
Even professors’ books from serious publishers are clotted with
pretentious jargon. To pick just one from innumerable examples, a recent
history of the Spanish Civil War, published by the Oxford University
Press, says that Franco’s Spain was as “hierarchizing” as Hitler’s
Germany, that Catholicism “problematized” relations between Spain and
the Third Reich, and that liberalism and democracy are concepts that
must be “interrogated.” Only the highly educated write so badly. Indeed,
the point of such ludicrous prose is to signal membership in a closed
clerisy that possesses a private language.
Institutions of supposedly higher education are awash with hysteria,
authoritarianism, obscurantism, philistinism and charlatanry. Which must
have something to do with the tone and substance of the presidential
election, which took the nation’s temperature.
counterpunch | Already we have seen how the Fed’s determination to enrich its constituents has resulted in one titanic asset-price bubble after the other. Imagine if that power was entrusted to just one individual who could be tempted to use that authority to shape economic events in a way that enhanced and perpetuated his own political power. Even so, after seven years of a policy-induced Depression that has increased inequality to levels not seen since the Gilded Age, we think it is high-time that the president use his power to choose the members who will bring the bank back under government control. Here’s more background from the LA Times:
“Donald Trump leveled unprecedented criticism at the Federal Reserve during the campaign. As president, he could get to quickly reshape it … Trump will have the opportunity to appoint as many as five new members to the seven-person Fed Board of Governors during his first year and a half in office. That includes a new chairperson to replace Janet L. Yellen, whose term expires in early 2018…
Trump hammered Yellen in the final months of the (presidential) campaign, accusing her of keeping the benchmark rate “artificially low” to help fellow Democrats President Obama and Hillary Clinton.
“I think she is very political and to a certain extent, I think she should be ashamed of herself.” Trump told CNBC in mid-September. At the first presidential debate two weeks later, he declared that “the Fed is being more political than Hillary Clinton.”
And Trump’s final campaign video included images of the Fed and Yellen, casting her has part of the “political establishment” that has “bled our country dry.”…
“Never before have we had an incoming president not just criticize how Fed policy has been executed … but accuse the Fed chair of undermining the institution by being in political cahoots with his opponent and the White House,” (James) Pethokoukis said. “We’re off the grid into uncharted territory.”… (Trump hammered the Federal Reserve as a candidate. As president, he could quickly reshape it, LA Times)
We can safely assume that the Supreme Court is going to reflect Trump’s corporate-friendly laissez-faire attitude towards big business, the question is: What can we expect from the Central Bank once it becomes the White House’s flunky?
ourfiniteworld | The energy problem behind Trump’s election is not the one people have
been looking for. Instead, it is an energy problem that leads to low
wages for many workers in the US, and high unemployment rates in the
European Union. (The different outcomes reflect different minimum wage
laws. Higher minimum wages tend to lead to higher unemployment rates;
lower minimum wages tend to lead to higher employment, but
unsatisfactory wages levels for many.) The energy problem is also
reflected as low prices of oil and other commodities.
To try to solve the energy problem, we use approaches that involve
increasing complexity, including new technology and globalization. As we
add more and more complexity, these approaches tend to work less and
less well. In fact, they can become a problem in themselves, because
they tend to redistribute wealth toward the top of the employment
hierarchy, and they increase “overhead” for the economy as a whole.
In this material, I explain how inadequate energy supplies can appear as either low wages or as high prices.
Basically, if energy supplies are inadequate, workers tend to be less
productive because they have fewer or less advanced tools to work with.
Their lower wages reflect lower productivity (Slide 20). Slide 6 offers
some additional insights.
Trump’s election seems to reflect the cooling effect that our energy
problems are having on the economy as a whole. Citizens are increasingly
unhappy with their wage situation, and want a major change. Trump’s
election may at least temporarily have a beneficial effect, since it may
work in the direction of reducing complexity.
Long term, however, it is hard to see that the policies of any
elected official will be able to fix our underlying energy problems.
medialens | The idea that journalism should offer a neutral 'spectrum' of views
was unceremoniously dumped during the US presidential election. Hillary
Clinton was endorsed
by the 500 largest US newspapers and magazines; Trump by 20 of the
smallest, with the most significant of these – something called the Las
Vegas Review-Journal - reaching some 100,000 readers.
As with Jeremy Corbyn, from the moment Trump became a genuine
contender, he was drenched in vitriol by virtually the entire US-UK
corporate press. The smear campaign was epitomised by the baseless, Ian Fleming-like suggestion that Trump was in cahoots with the establishment's other great bête noire, Putin – a propaganda-perfect marriage of Evil and Pure Evil.
Ironically, Trump may well turn out to be the final nail in the
coffin of the manifestly stalled human attempt to become civilised. As
leading climate scientist Michael Mann has noted, Trump's stance on climate stability may mean 'game over' for it and us.
But elite media did not oppose Trump because of his climate
views – no question was raised on the issue during the presidential
debates and, as Noam Chomsky observes (below), the issue was of no
interest to journalists. On the other hand, Edward Herman comments,
a declared lack of enthusiasm for foreign conflict, notably with
Russia, 'may help explain the intensity of media hostility to Trump'.
Inevitably, our drawing attention to the awesome level of media bias
drew accusations that Media Lens was an unlikely 'apologist' for Trump's
far-right declarations promoting racism, misogyny and climate denial.
When we asked Guardian commentator Hadley Freeman why, in comparing
Trump and Clinton, she mentioned Clinton's email server scandal but not
her war crimes, she interpreted this as an endorsement of Trump:
The roots of the Clinton-Trump fiasco lie in decades of 'liberal' media refusal to challenge the increasing venality, violence and suicidal climate indifference at the supposedly rational end of the political spectrum. Virtually the entire 'liberal' journalistic community saw great hope in Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, while treating genuinely honest and compassionate political commentators like Chomsky, Edward Herman, John Pilger, Howard Zinn, Harold Pinter, Chris Hedges, Jonathan Cook and many others as quixotic freaks who may be mentioned in passing, published once in a supermoon, but otherwise ignored.
As Slavoj Zizek observed: 'The real catastrophe is the status quo.' When liberal journalism slams the door on reasoned arguments and authentic compassion, other doors swing wide for the likes of Trump.
The default corporate media excuse for ignoring 'our' crimes is that elected politicians have been chosen to serve by the people, and it is the task of journalism to support, not subvert, democracy. But of course democracy is profoundly subverted by a lack of honest media scrutiny. Structural media distortion is so extreme that, despite bombing seven countries, Barack Obama continues to be depicted and perceived as an almost saintly figure.
Hillary Clinton was indisputably the preferred establishment candidate, backed by virtually the entire US-UK corporate press.
'Mainstream' media did not merely support Clinton, they declared propaganda war on Trump. As we have seen in this brief sample, even BBC journalists thought nothing of ridiculing Trump's 'narcissistic personality disorder' – unthinkable language from a BBC reporter describing an Obama, a Cameron, or indeed a Clinton.
The intensity of establishment support for Clinton meant that journalistic performance was filtered by host media and self-censorship. As the former Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger told us in an interview:
'[T]he whole thing works by a kind of osmosis. If you ask anybody who works in newspapers, they will quite rightly say, "Rupert Murdoch," or whoever, "never tells me what to write", which is beside the point: they don't have to be told what to write. It's understood.'
The moment the vote was cast, pressures filtering out criticisms of Clinton and less hysterical coverage of Trump were lifted. The result is a semblance of balance that allows stunningly extreme 'mainstream' media to enhance their ill-deserved reputation for 'fairness' and 'impartiality'.
thedailybell |This Bloomberg article is focused not on the top people in this conspiracy but on the “little people” who do the bidding of higher ups and have learned how to survive in an internationalist environment and profit from it.
But in our view, these are probably NOT the people that Trump’s voters really voted against. Many of Trump’s voters, like Trump himself, understand that the problems go far beyond academics, bureaucrats and corrupt tycoons.
In fact, this Bloomberg article is a perfect example of a kind of elite propaganda. It is trying to convince us that we need to “listen” to the anger of Trump voters and then, we are instructed, the intelligentsia needs to react.
American intellectuals may violently disagree with the average Trump voter on most things. They may have access to facts that prove that voters wrong. But there’s no way they — we — can go on dismissing and ridiculing these people without dooming themselves to irrelevance and provoking further backlash.
This is in fact the fondest hope, no doubt, of those tasked with defending the REAL culprits from exposure and attack. Such individuals are the ones running the world’s largest corporations and leading the most powerful nation states.
And these individuals may be found in higher places still, plotting the propaganda that the rest of us imbibe. Also managing central bank strategies and even plotting our gradual progress toward a new world war.
The Bloomberg article ends by suggesting that a lot of the irritation of Trump voters is aimed at political correctness and that the US needs “an open conversation about what ails it, not … one that tiptoes around speech taboos about racism, misogyny and sexual discrimination.”
Once more – hooey. Our guess is that like Donald Trump himself, many of his voters – perhaps tens of millions are quite aware that the world’s problems extend far beyond political correctness and “intellectuals.”
vox | So how do we have a better conversation around these
issues, one that can actually reduce people’s racial prejudices and
anxieties?
The first thing to understand is how white Americans,
especially in rural areas, hear accusations of racism. While terms like
“racist,” “white privilege,” and “implicit bias” intend to point out
systemic biases in America, for white Americans they’re often seen as
coded slurs. These terms don’t signal to them that they’re doing
something wrong, but that their supposedly racist attitudes (which they
would deny having at all) are a justification for lawmakers and other
elites to ignore their problems.
Imagine, for example, a white man who lost a factory job
due to globalization and saw his sister die from a drug overdose due to the opioid painkiller and heroin epidemic
— situations that aren’t uncommon today. He tries to complain about his
circumstances. But his concerns are downplayed by a politician or
racial justice activist, who instead points out that at least he’s doing
better than black and brown folks if you look at broad socioeconomic
measures.
Maybe he does have some level of white privilege. But
that doesn’t take away from the serious problems he sees in his world
today.
This is how many white Americans, particularly in
working-class and rural areas, view the world today. So when they hear
politicians and journalists call them racist or remind them about their
privilege, they feel like elites are trying to distract from the serious
problems in their lives and grant advantages to other groups of people.
When Hillary Clinton called half of Trump voters “deplorable,” she made this message explicit.
“Telling
people they’re racist, sexist, and xenophobic is going to get you
exactly nowhere,” said Alana Conner, executive director of Stanford
University’s Social Psychological Answers to Real-World Questions
Center. “It’s such a threatening message. One of the things we know from
social psychology is when people feel threatened, they can’t change,
they can’t listen.”
WaPo | I will never again use the term “political correctness.” Whatever rhetorical value the term may have once had is far more than offset by what has been unleashed in the name of resistance to it since the presidential election.
I have made no secret over the years ofmy convictionthat the sensitivities of individuals or members of various group should not be permitted to chill free speech on college campuses. I have the scars to show for speaking out againstoverdoing the idea of microaggression, the regulation of Halloween costumes and the prosecution of students for taking part in sombrero parties – all of which have struck me as “political correctness” run amok.
But the events of the last week are giving me pause about that term and its usage and the complex issues underlying it. It’s not that I now think speech codes are wise or that we should stamp out microaggressions wherever they are perceived. Rather,my reactionis to the way President-elect Donald Trump has been heard during the campaign and the terrifying events his election has set off.
The fight for academic freedom and for ideological diversity on college campuses should and will go on. But given what opposition to “political correctness” has licensed, it time to retire the term.
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