This is the heading of a Facebook post by Rebecca Solnit.
--Kim
MILITARY, CONSTITUTION, HEALTH, EDUCATION, ENVIRONMENT, BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP UNDER ATTACK. TRUMP TAKES FLAMETHROWER TO CONSTITUTION. But you won't see those headlines much. You'll see too many bland little pieces about how they plan to do those things, not much about how they violate the law and the harm that will proceed from them if realized. It's as if they described the planes headed for the World Trade Center on 9/11 as "well educated foreigners informally decide to detour route of airlines."
Much of the media is more or less erasing Biden, which it's been doing for four years (so that a whole lot of people didn't know what the administration did domestically and saw almost no footage of Biden, except for The Debate), and letting Trump fill up their field of attention, while also normalizing a lot of outrages and intentions to violate the law by the incoming administration and the MAGA-aligned state governments. In a way it feels like they're installing the new regime two months early. And caving to it before it has any power.
Meanwhile, here's the NYT headline on a flagrant breach of freedom of religion: "Texas Education Board to Vote on Bible-Infused Lessons in Public Schools" and only several paragraphs down notes "the proposed curriculum has ignited an uproar, with parents and teachers — including some Christian Texans — expressing worry that the lessons blur the line between instruction and evangelizing, and present scripture and tenets of the Christian faith as factual truths to young children."
And here's a NYT editorial normalizing a totally unqualified guy covered in white nationalist tattoos: "Pete Hegseth, like many of President-elect Donald Trump's cabinet picks so far, may seem unworthy of the role he has been tapped to fill. But the instinct to choose someone like him is not.... Mr. Hegseth, despite his heavy baggage, represents something that needs to be acknowledged: the deep bipartisan dissatisfaction with a military leadership that has presided over 20 years of failed wars and incalculable costs to America's veterans and their families." Ma'am do we know who started those wars in Afghanistan and Iraq? Do you? I do.
She goes on "If Mr. Trump could find a nominee for secretary of defense who holds similar views, but without his obvious shortcomings, his choice would be justified. Mr. Hegseth has become an influential adopter of the isolationist views..." So the NYT is on the isolationist bandwagon. The author clearly thinks the US should abandon Ukraine, although she justifies isolationism by pointing to war's toll on American soldiers and no American soldiers are in combat in Ukraine. And does this isolationism she praises in the sex crimes nominee really mean the guy just wants to be nice to Putin, as do Trump and Musk?
I have the impression the NYT will accommodate almost anything, and normalize almost anything. Friends, today's lesson: hang onto your vocabulary. Don't accommodate the outrages.
Here's another NYT headline: "Trump says he'll use the military to help fulfill his immigration plans. Here's what that could look like." It would look like violating the law. It would look like using the US military against civilians inside the country. It would look like a massive break with long-established precedent. Here's the NYT on a vast network of concentration camps Stephen Miller proposed: "The Trump team believes that such camps could enable the government to accelerate deportations of undocumented people who fight their expulsion from the country. The idea is that more people would voluntarily accept removal instead of pursuing a long-shot effort to remain in the country if they had to stay locked up in the interim." So much for rights. The word "illegal" is only used to describe immigrants, not illicit attacks on them.
Meanwhile independent voices stand up for stuff too much of the media daren't:
Laurence Tribe
@tribelaw
No president has used his Art. II power to force Congress to recess for the purpose of circumventing the Senate's obligation to provide "advice and consent" regarding presidential nominations. Doing so would violate the Constitution's basic structure of checks and balances.
Barry R McCaffrey [former general]
@mccaffreyr3
If Trump fires the JCS Chairman Gen Brown and then conducts a purge of the senior officers of the Armed Forces it will an utter disaster for US national security. The Service Chiefs are not political by law. They have no operational command authority.
Ron Filipkowski
@RonFilipkowski
·
8h
At 4:03 AM Trump posts that he is prepared to use the military to round up migrants in a mass deportation effort after Mike Johnson, Tony Gonzales & other Republicans spent the weekend saying this was not the case.
Aaron Rupar
@atrupar
·
Nov 17
Schiff on Trump calling him "enemy within" & threatening to use military against him: "Would he go to the length with the military [of asking] them to fulfill an unconstitutional order? I would hope the military has more independence than that ... I'm not going to be intimidated"
Bobby Kogan @bbkogan.bsky.social
·
4h
Republicans are looking at cutting Medicaid and nutrition assistance as a way to partially offset the cost of tax cuts that disproportionately help the rich.
I posted some more stuff I think constitutes useful information from reliable sources in the comments.
All reactions:
2.4KCarol Cook and 2.4K others
No comments:
Post a Comment