This article contains news with liberal commentary.
Journalists are indispensable. Most of what we know about current events is because of them. Without journalists, we would only hear propaganda. Journalism has standards for truth and accuracy; it’s a noble profession. Reporters and editors can make mistakes, but reputable news organizations admit and correct their mistakes. Professional news reporting is the best quick source of information we have.
Among Trump’s countless and egregious personal failings, he expects everyone to suck up to him, and harbors a visceral hatred toward anyone who doesn’t. No gutter is too low for him to crawl in, so we’re no longer surprised by what he says or does.
So I wasn’t surprised by this. It’s just more of Trump being the sick twisted semi-human-being he is.
On May 30, 2020, “NBC News reporters Ali Velshi [photo, right], Morgan Chesky, and their respective crews found themselves in the center of the clash between police and protesters in Minneapolis. Velshi was struck in the leg by a rubber bullet. Chesky and his crew evaded tear gas after a flash-bang went off near them.” See news report and video here.
On Friday, September 18, 2020, Trump called that “the most beautiful thing.” Not in private, but to a cheering crowd of his supporters, at a campaign rally in Minnesota. (Cheering this? What is wrong with these people???)
“Trump inexplicably deemed it ‘law and order’ …. Velshi was breaking no law — nor were protesters — when he was injured by police. Trump mistakenly recounted in his tale that Velshi was painfully struck by a tear gas canister and complained afterward. ‘Oh my knee, oh my knee,’ the president mocked,” Huffington Post reported here. (In typical Trump fashion, he couldn’t get the facts straight.)
MSNBC, of course, reacted. “Donald Trump is endangering the lives of journalists after the president mocked reporter Ali Velshi for getting shot in the leg with a rubber bullet by police while covering a protest. Velshi was shot by police with a rubber bullet on-air back in May while covering protests in Minneapolis over the death of George Floyd. … Freedom of the press is a pillar of our democracy. When the president mocks a journalist for the injury he sustained while putting himself in harm’s way to inform the public, he endangers thousands of other journalists and undermines our freedoms,” MSNBC responded in a statement (here).
MSNBC is wasting their breath on Trump, a man bereft of morals or ethics, who doesn’t believe in democracy, respect the Constitution, and wants to be a dictator. They’re speaking to us.
This is wrong in so many ways it’s hard to decide where to begin. Kind of arbitrarily, I’ll start small and work up to big.
When Trump mentions “law and order,” the appropriate response is to laugh. He flouts the law and thrives on disorder.
Next, the problem isn’t Trump, per se. He is what, in our unrefined youthful days, my friends and I usually referred to as a “vindictive prick.” Such people exist and we can’t do anything about it. They are what they are. It is what it is. The problem is that he’s President of the United States, and that problem was created by the people who voted for him. So that problem is their responsibility, and it’s something they did to us.
Now I’ll go big picture. Civilization brings us immense benefits. Where are you right now? Rather be in a cave? Living like a wild animal? Waiting to be food for wild animals? Enjoying (so to speak) a lifespan of maybe 28 years if you’re lucky? Like our Stone Age ancestors? I thought not. Modern civilization may look impressive on the surface, but like the Missouri River, it’s a mile wide and an inch deep. Human beings are capable of being savages. I don’t need to go into details.
We see the thin veneer of civilization ripped off, and the savagery exposed, every day in our surroundings. I don’t need to go into details. Maintaining this shallow and superficial veneer is an ongoing struggle. We use the military and police, and laws and courts, to some extent for that; but mostly we depend on social norms and expectations to suppress humankind’s animal instincts and keep our villages inhabitable.
So we don’t need someone coming along shredding our norms of social behavior. Stoking racism, provoking violence, stirring up subterranean hatreds, that kind of thing. Of course, Trump has done that innumerable times; attacking judges, the media, people who work for him, even our war dead (why??? what’s in that for him???). And yes, he attacks his supporters too, calling them “disgusting.” (See here.) If you voted for him, that’s you he’s talking about.
Actually, I agree with him on that one point; I think his supporters are disgusting, too.
It’s crazy to put him in charge of our civilization, responsible for protecting and defending it. Fox, henhouse; I don’t need to go into details.
Some people still think this is about politics, policies, judges, ideology, or whatever. It’s not. It’s about preserving our basic values — honesty, morality, decency, civility — from a man who makes a sport of tearing them out of our social fabric.
Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, ought to be able to agree on this, even if we agree on nothing else.
Go ahead and be a conservative. I have no problem with that. I’ll defend to the death your freedom to choose what to think, say, and who to vote for. I’m not trying to tell you what to do. I’m asking. For God’s sake, make this psychiatric case a private citizen six weeks from now. Once he’s no longer President, we don’t have to worry anymore about where he goes or what he does. He’ll be just another deranged thug dancing on the thin surface of our fragile civilization. We can deal with that.
At a news conference, drump provides evil response, to feed his crowd, rather than doing what is right in the eyes of everyone.
Love does no harm to a neighbor.