No sympathy here, not now, now ever
I am having a great deal of difficulty feeling any sympathy whatsoever for Sarah Huckabee Sanders after her more recent vitriolic press session this past Thursday. Jim Acosta asked her to disown Trump’s description of journalists and the press as the enemy of the people. She refused, instead blaming the press for what she called “lower[ing] the level of conversation in this country.” Now, I do read the newspapers, and except as the press refers to Trump as a liar as often as he lies (4,229 times in the past six months), I am not certain to what she refers. The press reports the news but does not invent it: what the press calls news (the Times claims to report “all the news that’s fit to print) may vary according to what the particular journalist and/or media institution declares news, but the press doesn’t invent anything or maliciously falsify what it discovers. The same cannot be said for Trump or Sanders.
As for the level of discourse Sanders decries and blames on the press: Since the campaign Trump has spewed personal invective on an almost daily basis. He once claimed that he could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot someone and still get elected; he has insulted anyone who disagrees with him with ugly descriptions and denigrating epithets. He has spoken mistruths with glee and then blamed the press as selling fake news for calling him out on it. He is more than an autocrat: Trump is a would-be tyrant and the press stands as a bulwark against his encroaching tyranny.
And so, Sanders’ plaint that he and she have been abused by what they refer to as the fake news press is so laughably false that I grow more concerned that our democracy is endangered and that those who are sworn to uphold it are destroying it beyond recovery. Trump and his fawning lackeys call to the baser elements in our nation—yes, what Hillary Clinton referred to as the deplorables. Just watch the faces of the attendees at any of Trump’s rallies and be afraid! Watch the faces that listened to the hate-filled speeches in Nazi Germany. This is an administration that thrives on hatred and duplicities; that acts with imperious malice; and that fosters an environment that supports an environment that encourages expressions and actions that promote racism and misogyny, anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim sentiments and focused acts of violence; that callously separates families, sometimes irretrievably; that destroys international relations that have been built up over seventy years; that thrives on a rejection of established science and international policy concerning the dangers to the environment; and endangered the future out of a personal animus that avoids any attention to the care of the public sphere. The nation is being run by Tony Sopranos
So, no, I have nothing but contempt for Sanders’ whine, and hold nothing but contempt for her service to our would-be-tyrant.
As for the level of discourse Sanders decries and blames on the press: Since the campaign Trump has spewed personal invective on an almost daily basis. He once claimed that he could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot someone and still get elected; he has insulted anyone who disagrees with him with ugly descriptions and denigrating epithets. He has spoken mistruths with glee and then blamed the press as selling fake news for calling him out on it. He is more than an autocrat: Trump is a would-be tyrant and the press stands as a bulwark against his encroaching tyranny.
And so, Sanders’ plaint that he and she have been abused by what they refer to as the fake news press is so laughably false that I grow more concerned that our democracy is endangered and that those who are sworn to uphold it are destroying it beyond recovery. Trump and his fawning lackeys call to the baser elements in our nation—yes, what Hillary Clinton referred to as the deplorables. Just watch the faces of the attendees at any of Trump’s rallies and be afraid! Watch the faces that listened to the hate-filled speeches in Nazi Germany. This is an administration that thrives on hatred and duplicities; that acts with imperious malice; and that fosters an environment that supports an environment that encourages expressions and actions that promote racism and misogyny, anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim sentiments and focused acts of violence; that callously separates families, sometimes irretrievably; that destroys international relations that have been built up over seventy years; that thrives on a rejection of established science and international policy concerning the dangers to the environment; and endangered the future out of a personal animus that avoids any attention to the care of the public sphere. The nation is being run by Tony Sopranos
So, no, I have nothing but contempt for Sanders’ whine, and hold nothing but contempt for her service to our would-be-tyrant.
posted by Alan A. Block at 1:04 PM
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