The warnings started early: Just weeks before the 2016 election, after the leak of the Access Hollywood tapes that captured Donald Trump bragging about sexual assault, Michelle Obama told a crowd at a campaign event in New Hampshire, “This is not normal. This is not politics as usual. This is disgraceful, it is intolerable.”
Читать дальше...
The 2020 presidential election could very well be messy, complex, and slow, defined by an unprecedented number of mail-in ballots, legal challenges, and possibly recounts reminiscent of the fiasco in Florida in 2000. And cable news, which millions of people will be watching throughout election night, is pathologically incapable of dealing with messy, complex, and slow stories. The networks are designed for easy answers that feed simple narratives, and they have shown a tendency to be short-circuited by Donald Trump’s chicanery. Читать дальше...
In 2020 in Texas, depending on which county they live in, a voter can head to the polls at 3 a.m. Or they can drive for several hours to drop their ballot off at the one box in their county of millions, and then wait to see if their ballot will be thrown out later in court. Some voters surround campaign buses in trucks festooned with “Back the Blue” flags so tall they block traffic, and other voters could be the ones run off the road.
Fascism is the outcome of a collective incapacity to think. This is how, in 1939, Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges explained the success of Adolf Hitler. From his marginal observation post in Buenos Aires, Borges said that the predominance of an irrational logic was predictable in fascists who fanatically believed in the cult of their leaders. But what was shocking for Borges was that this irrationality was also present in anti-fascism. This was unexpected, and for Borges, unacceptable.
Hockey icon Bobby Orr broke the hearts of millions last week when he declared his support for Donald Trump in a campaign ad in New Hampshire. Not because he exercised his free-speech rights. Not because athletes or icons should “stick to sports” or because there is reason to think the dubious endorsement—“that’s the kind of teammate I want,” Orr stupidly wrote—will change the outcome of the election. But because in choosing to take his stand, in embracing this candidate, Orr inflamed one of the... Читать дальше...
I’ve always had trouble watching the countdown to Election Day. Even in a cycle that passes for normal, issues get reduced to talking points trotted out for their appeal to marginal polling demographics. Since the Electoral College robs us of one-person-one-vote fairness and hinges on the favors of undecided voters in swing states, candidates’ rhetoric and campaign promises descend into pandering to these small groups. And because they’re not seen as the key to winning Pennsylvania hearts, the... Читать дальше...
