It’s well documented that more people respond to stories of one person’s misfortune than to stories about mass suffering; that’s why those late-night TV ads talk about a single starving child rather than millions. Maybe that explains why, after decades of running one of the planet’s most repressive dictatorships, Saudi Arabia is now finally feeling some heat over the murder of a single journalist. But there’s another factor at play, too, best summed up by two words: bone saw. The grisly manner of Jamal Khashoggi’s murder makes it catnip for a country addicted to true-crime drama.
The apparent involvement of that country’s new murderous dictator, Mohammed bin Salman, is causing some frantic ass-covering among the foreign-policy punditocracy, many of whom rhapsodized over the despot because he opened a movie theater and allowed women to drive cars.
This historian of Nazi Germany thinks people are wrong to compare Trump to Hitler, because Trump represents…
…a new kind of authoritarianism, what I call “illiberal democracy,” where the whole system does not need to be changed entirely. You don’t need a vast army of secret police. You don’t need concentration camps. You don’t need to lock up all your opponents. Now, in America or other liberal democracies, if … a would-be authoritarian manages to tweak the electoral system, infiltrate and stop the judiciary, control information and pollute the public discourse against truth — using language such as “fake news” — people basically lose faith…. If the standard threshold for an assault on democracy and authoritarianism is set at Adolf Hitler then we are all failing to see how much damage can be done to democracy without getting anywhere near that level.
The lawsuit by advertisers claiming fraud by Facebook regarding its bogus stats on video viewership has unleashed a torrent of rage from journalists, who saw thousands of their colleagues lose their jobs as media outlets swallowed the “pivot to video” lie that Mark Zuckerberg fed them. The truth is that the majority of consumers would rather read their news than have it read to them, and always has been.
Joe Biden continues to grab headlines as he stumps for Democrats around the country, most recently for saying Democrats should not rush to impeach Trump if they win control of the House. Biden argues that Democrats shouldn’t act until Robert Mueller’s investigation is complete.
Delaware politics might strike you as a disgusting mud pit, but it looks like a cleanroom compared with just about any other state. Consider Florida, where multimillionaire fraudster Gov. Rick Scott set up a “blind trust” that was anything but blind. Or consider Wisconsin, where a member of Gov. Scott Walker’s administration quit a $208,000-a-year job specifically so he could trash Walker in an open letter. The letter was also signed by two other former cabinet members; all said they will vote for Walker’s Democratic challenger.
Mother Jones has an excerpt from historian Joseph Ellis’ new book “American Dialogue,” and stuffy old John Adams comes out looking like a soothsayer.
Adams never used the word “capitalism,” but he did describe the emerging nation as a “commercial republic” in which the quest for material rewards would dominate and define what subsequent generations meant by “pursuit of happiness.” (Jefferson had intended something different.) It followed that wealth would become the defining characteristic of the American aristocracy, which would then use its powers to wrest control over political institutions to serve its own interests and agenda. That is precisely what happened during the first Gilded Age, and it is happening again in this one.