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Jeffrey Harrison's avatar

We have met the enemy and he is us. Patrick Lawrence has a piece over on CN where he relates the experiences of a couple of Russian bureaucrats that were given a tour of the US by the State Department. At the end, the DoS minders asked the Russians what they thought. They said that back home, the Russian government makes sure that all the news was the same. Remarkably here in the US, it made no difference what city we were in, the news was all the same.

What kills me about the Trump/Russia fiasco is that it was so unnecessary. Donald J. Trump is just a New York City grifter. His leadership skills and executive skills are non-existent. His management skills were chaotic at best. There's a reason why he went bankrupt three times. One didn't need to make shit up to criticize Trump. The fact that his critics felt a need to do so tells you more about his critics than they've told you about him.

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Mark Brody's avatar

I cancelled my subscription to The NY Times almost 3 years ago after getting sick and tired of watching them interdigitate facts and editorial. The notion that alternative viewpoints need to be presented and alternative understandings of the facts was no longer seen. I had seen this trend developing well before the pandemic. Although I am no fan of Trump, the vicious and gratuitous libel with which Trump was publicly tarred and feathered made an impression on me, of long-standing progressive orientation, that journalism had lost its footing and was becoming a weaponized political tool. My uncle, the late David Laventhol, one of the great newspaper editors of our time, and who died several years ago would have wept to see the state of immoralism that has overtaken journalism, and our country in general. Shocking as the breaches of ethics and sound principles in governing not only journalism, but politics, medicine, education, and business, what is even more shocking is to see how many are willing to sell their souls for the sake of a buck or to curry favor with the rich and powerful. And then, just as horrifying, are those who are willing to look the other way and somehow claim that they are not morally responsible since they didn't commit the crime themselves, even while being aware of it being committed . We live in immoral times where the syphilitic powers of nature have been unleashed upon the world and we must hold onto our morals with all our might as they all that keep us from being sucked into the abyss of evil.

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