Map of life expectancy at birth from Global Education Project.

Monday, October 21, 2019

Indictment

Bizarrely, the continual torrent of outrages from the Resident drowns each individual atrocity in the flood. The corporate media barely have time to report one before they go chasing after the next, and nothing ever lingers in the collective consciousness long enough to seem important.

The editors of the Los Angeles Times are trying to correct this by issuing a long-form catalog. As they put the problem:

In the corrosive and dangerous Trump presidency, the outrages fly so fast and the chaos mounts so thoroughly that it’s easy to pass off the entire unsettling phenomenon as one more made-for-TV-and-Twitter unreality show. New outrages drive the previous ones from our minds.
It's worth reading to gain a sense of the depth and breadth of the calamity that has befallen the nation and the planet. It's reminiscent of the bill of particulars against King George III in the Declaration of Independence, and it seems likely that they were thinking of that consciously.  We can't secede from the current ruler, but impeachment and removal from office would be the equivalent action. As the editorial board concludes:

More than any president in living memory, Trump has cheapened his office, instilled distrust in essential institutions of justice and democracy and replaced knowledge and professionalism with ignorance and amateurism. This partial list represents a mere slice of what makes Donald Trump unacceptable as president of the United States and what makes it of utmost importance that Americans of all political parties and positions reject and replace him.
Unfortunately, there is as yet no sign that Americans of all political parties will do that. So there is oe further imperative: the Republican party must be destroyed. They have sacrificed any legitimate role in the national project.

1 comment:

Don Quixote said...

Agreed. The Republican party has not changed--it has MUTATED. It is a freak party, an assemblage of willfully ignorant liars who debauch the Constitution of the U.S. and, as such, cannot be a part of it any longer. They've forfeited their right to belong in this country because they don't exercise free speech but, rather, 1) hate speech, which is harmful to all, and 2) slander/libel, which is illegal and comes in the form of misinformation, conspiracies, and lies. They are also generally racist, sexist, xenophobic, and utterly inauthentic, having been paid for by the Murdoch-inspired propaganda machine.

There is no equivalency with the Democratic party. Sure, many Dems are corporately invested and many are run-of-the-mill politicians. But you won't find any honest men or women among governmental Republicans any longer. Many Dems are, though.

The concept of "character" may seem subjective, but Republicans seem fond of electing people who possess NONE. While we can't all agree on what gives someone "character," a good place would be someone who is not pursued by rape and fraud claims and who does not habitually and compulsively lie.