Despite the "World War I" label attached to the substances in this week’s infographic, one of these gases was used (heavily) this week in the United States, another was deployed in Syria, and a third may have been used in Iraq in a shell fired by ISIS. Real monsters just don’t want to stay buried.
Charlotte is on my mind. On a lot of our minds tonight. There’s justifiable outrage over the death of Keith Lamont Scott; outrage that has only reinforced by the reluctantly-released, edited videos which have been shown to the public. There’s also admiration and support for those who are translating demands for justice to action. And there’s the sincere, deep hope that everyone comes through the night in one piece.
Leonard Pitts is back in Tulsa, with a letter to the police in that city.
Dear Tulsa Police:
I’m not here to debate the shooting of Terence Crutcher.
… I’m just curious about something I heard on the video right before Crutcher was killed. The footage was shot from a police helicopter circling high above and one of the officers watching the scene below can be heard to say, “That looks like a bad dude, too.” Which raises a question for me: how did the officer know Crutcher was a bad dude?
See, I don’t like bad dudes and I want to avoid them if I can. That copter was circling at — what? — 100 feet, maybe 200 feet, above the action? Yet your officer was able to discern Crutcher’s character from that distance. ...
In 2014, a South Carolina State trooper somehow knew Levar Jones was a bad dude even though he was just complying with an order to produce his driver’s license.
That same year, a Cleveland police officer somehow knew Tamir Rice was a bad dude even though he was just playing in the park with a toy gun.
In 2012, George Zimmerman somehow knew Trayvon Martin was a bad dude even though he was just walking along the street, minding his own business. …
Recognizing bad dudes is a valuable skill. So I’m hoping you’ll share some pro tips.
Well, I think you know item one on the list of bad dude characteristics. Item two is … who am I kidding? There is no item two.
Come on in. Let’s join our regularly scheduled pundits, already in progress.
I’m not sure that being banned from last week’s APR was the tipping point, but the New York Times has earned its way back onto the page this week with a number of “why the heck haven’t you been doing this all along” articles.
Chief among them, the New York Times endorses Hillary Clinton, and does a bang-up job.
In any normal election year, we’d compare the two presidential candidates side by side on the issues. But this is not a normal election year. A comparison like that would be an empty exercise in a race where one candidate — our choice, Hillary Clinton — has a record of service and a raft of pragmatic ideas, and the other, Donald Trump, discloses nothing concrete about himself or his plans while promising the moon and offering the stars on layaway. (We will explain in a subsequent editorial why we believe Mr. Trump to be the worst nominee put forward by a major party in modern American history.)
But this endorsement would also be an empty exercise if it merely affirmed the choice of Clinton supporters. We’re aiming instead to persuade those of you who are hesitating to vote for Mrs. Clinton — because you are reluctant to vote for a Democrat, or for another Clinton, or for a candidate who might appear, on the surface, not to offer change from an establishment that seems indifferent and a political system that seems broken.
Running down the other guy won’t suffice to make that argument. The best case for Hillary Clinton cannot be, and is not, that she isn’t Donald Trump.
The best case is, instead, about the challenges this country faces, and Mrs. Clinton’s capacity to rise to them.
Read it all, and print out a few copies to shove at friends and / or relatives who are, unaccountably, still maintaining any hint of indecision.
Charles Ramsey was in Charlotte before events began to unfold, but maybe not soon enough.
All week, I’d been talking to police leaders from around the country about the challenges they face in building trust in their communities, getting accurate information out when misinformation flies so quickly on social media, and how to keep people safe. It was a coincidence that our training workshop took place in Charlotte last week, but what is happening in this city is a lesson for everyone. …
I was a police chief in major cities for 17 years before I retired in January. This is the most challenging period I have ever witnessed.
That Ramsey says the killing of Keith Scott didn’t seem like the type of incident that would cause problems, and asserts that unrest began because “unfounded information spread quickly,” shows again just how much willful blindness remains. Trying to diminish what’s happening into a need for “a better relationship” with the community demeans the real problem.
Danielle Allen and Richard Wilson warn that Trump’s primary policy goal isn’t just unachievable, but a threat to national stability.
In May, former homeland security secretary Michael Chertoff told the New York Times: “I can’t even begin to picture how we would deport 11 million people in a few years where we don’t have a police state, where the police can’t break down your door at will and take you away without a warrant.” He also said, “Unless you suspend the Constitution and instruct the police to behave as if we live in North Korea, it ain’t happening.” …
One of the last times the world saw such a major effort at mass deportations in a developed country was in the 1990s in the former Yugoslavia. That experience is instructive. ...
The process spun out of control and, in many communities, neighbors turned against neighbors, driving them out of their homes and seizing their assets. It started with a small number of activists, fewer than a few thousand people who were extreme nationalists and members of fringe parties…. The fratricidal conflict claimed 100,000 lives.
Policies based on hate invite violence, especially when those policies are aimed at an ethnic or religious group. It’s happened again and again. And it can happen here.
Susan Chira asks if Trump or Clinton makes voters feel safer.
When you’re scared, do you feel safer with Mommy or with Daddy?
That, at heart, is the visceral question voters must address as they consider whether Hillary Clinton or Donald J. Trump is the leader they trust to protect them in an age of terror. A key test will come in Monday’s debate.
When did we start letting three-year-olds vote? That’s an extremely silly simplification to force on adult voters.
This campaign has seen an eruption of old-fashioned misogyny. The insults to Megyn Kelly and Carly Fiorina. The “Hang the Bitch” chants. The testosterone on display at Trump rallies. This sexism coexists with — indeed, is most likely prompted by — a change in gender attitudes that tears up the old political playbooks.
The remainder of the article is more substantive, though it dips a lot into the area of what people believe about what people believe— a school of journalism that has really gotten a workout this season.
Dana Milbank on the critical irony shortage among Trump supporters.
In the days since I wrote that Hillary Clinton wasn’t necessarily wrong to say that half of Trump’s supporters are racists and other “deplorables,” the response has been, well, deplorable. A sampling of the thousands of emails and social media replies:
“Please do not tell me you think we whites are just as violent, nasty, and/or Godless as the other races.”
“You call it racism, I call it concern that in time ‘foreign’ folks will have the voting power to make the USA another Muslim state.”
My personal experience is that some Trump supporters do have a sense of irony, but it’s a poor one. Every single message I’ve received from a person who has added “Deplorable” to their handle on Twitter or email has more than lived up to that term.
Another writer informed me that “blacks are the most violent population in America,” that “blacks work the least of any race in America” and that “black women have the lowest moral standards of all women in America,” concluding: “The biggest problem for blacks is blacks.”
I actually hope Trump supporters keep the “Deplorable” label even after the election. It makes it really nice when sorting messages.
Kathleen Parker believes the debate is all about entertainment.
Is anyone really going to change his or her mind based on what the candidates say Monday as opposed to what they said last week? Trump lovers are set in stone, as are Clinton haters. That’s one voting bloc. Clinton supporters (I don’t think there are many lovers around) are solid and entrenched, as are those who find Trump utterly unfit to be president.
Let me pause here for a metaphorical middle finger directed at the idea that there are “Trump lovers” but not “Clinton lovers.” To quote an American classic: Up your nose with a rubber hose, Ms. Parker.
It’s all over but for showing up at the polls.
Thus, the debate won’t really be about substance. It will be a popcorn-and-brew event — entertainment pure and simple. To the extent there’s a contest, it will be one of senior superlatives. Who’s smartest? Funniest? Quickest? Deepest? Most important, whose voice do you want to listen to for the next four years?
Parker’s nasty remark earlier in the piece makes it easier to say this: She’s dead wrong. The polls have shown there is still a critical mass of voters who are being swayed by events, and more critically, by how the media is presenting events. The debate will be a factor—a huge factor—in not just moving, but solidifying those votes.
Lisa Barrett on a kind of misogyny that may be encoded into our brains.
When Hillary Clinton participated in a televised forum on national security and military issues this month, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, Reince Priebus, tweeted that she was “angry and defensive the entire time — no smile and uncomfortable.” Mrs. Clinton, evidently undaunted by Mr. Priebus’s opinion on when she should and shouldn’t smile, tweeted back, “Actually, that’s just what taking the office of president seriously looks like.”
The implication of Mr. Priebus’s comment was a familiar one: A woman making stern-looking facial movements must be angry or upset. A man who looks the same, on the other hand, is focusing on the important matters at hand.
This is a classic example of a psychological phenomenon that my lab has studied: how people perceive emotion differently in men’s and women’s faces. It’s something for Americans to consider as they watch the first debate between Mrs. Clinton and Donald J. Trump on Monday.
Fascinating read. Check out the rest, and keep it in mind when reading responses to the debate.
Ross Douthat returns to complain about … everything.
This has been quite a year for traumas. Pope Francis keeps busting up Catholic punditry. Brexit busted up British punditry. And Donald Trump’s ascent has left almost everyone who writes about American politics in a state of post-traumatic shock.
Ah, Francis. Always ruining the return to the ruler-to-the-knuckles no-gays no-divorces no-mercy Catholicism that Douthat knows is coming any day now. Any day now. Just… any day. But, on to Trump.
… there’s been so much gaming-out of how Trump might ambush Hillary Clinton, how he might manage expectations well enough to make a poor performance look like victory, that it’s easy to lose sight of the core truth: It will be ridiculous if Donald Trump wins these debates. ...
Trump has not yet done anything remotely like what he’ll be asked to do this week: stand there and argue with a seasoned politician about public policy for 90 minutes without any refuge or escape. Nor has he shown anything in the last few months to indicate that he’s cultivated the self-discipline necessary for this task. He remains true to himself – proudly ignorant, blustering and serially mendacious.
My guess is that, no matter what the question, Trump will turn every response into “but Hillary’s email...”
Michael McFaul wants to draw some lines between the Gipper and the Grifter.
… Trump’s approach to dealing with Moscow radically diverges from Reagan’s strategy. Trump’s advisers argue that Reagan befriended Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, so what’s the harm in Trump doing the same with Russian President Vladimir Putin? The answer is that Putin is no Gorbachev, as the Russian president would passionately explain to you. As the last leader of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev sought to democratize the Soviet political system and move his country closer to the West. Reagan rightly assessed Gorbachev’s commitment to these laudable goals and worked with him to achieve these objectives. Putin has the opposite agenda — greater autocracy at home and less cooperation with the West, and the United States, in particular. …
Reagan believed in supporting our allies in Europe and Asia. Trump does not. He has raised serious doubts about his commitment to defending our allies. …
Trump thinks that the United States is no different from Putin’s Russia. When asked by MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough in December 2015 about new evils in Russia, Trump replied, “well our country does plenty of killing also, Joe, so, you know. . . . There’s a lot of stupidity going on in the world right now, Joe. A lot of killing going on.” It is unimaginable that Reagan would have compared the brave efforts of our soldiers abroad to what the Kremlin is doing around the world and at home.
McFaul’s praise of Reagan’s foreign policy tends to wander into hagiography and ignores a few things, like illegal arms sales and supporting right-wing death squads that weren’t exactly spreading sunshine and lollipops. Still with a quarter of Trump supporters expecting the man to start a nuclear war (and they’re okay with that), Reagan comes off like a spokesman for the Dalai Lama.
Nicholas Kristof on dealing with someone whose every breath is a lie.
With presidential debates approaching, we in journalism are locked in a fierce dispute: How should we report on a duplicitous demagogue?
Traditionally, American reporters respond to a controversy by quoting people on each side and letting the public decide. Some of us have argued that this approach hasn’t worked in this election cycle, and that we in the media (particularly some in cable television) have enabled a charlatan by handing him the microphone and not adequately fact-checking what he says. ...
Frankly, we should be discomfited that many Americans have absorbed the idea that Hillary Clinton is less honest than Donald Trump, giving Trump an edge in polls of trustworthiness.
Hello? There is no comparison.
The New York Times this week went through the effort to document just one week of Trump's lies. Yes, it may be tedious to have to back up after every sentence and explain why it’s not true, but if they’d done this earlier, it would probably not be Trump coming onto the stage Monday night.
One commonly cited example of Clinton’s lying is her false claim in 2008 that when she was first lady she came under sniper fire after her plane landed in Bosnia. In contrast, with Trump, you don’t need to go back eight years: One examination found he averages a lie or an inaccuracy in every five minutes of speaking.
I’m amazed at that statistics. I’d swear it was closer to five seconds.
David Axelrod was on Barack Obama’s team when Obama debated Hillary in 2008.
Mrs. Clinton is an accomplished debater, and there is no question that she upped my candidate’s game and her own over time. But she will be facing an entirely different kind of opponent on Monday night. …
Mr. Trump’s bludgeoning style and boundless bluster have frustrated opponents, moderators and media analysts all season. But what elite commentators have dismissed as boorishness has, to many alienated voters, signified strength, authenticity and, crucially, a willingness to defy “political correctness.” …
In the end, presidential debates are less a trial of fact than a televised final exam for the most exacting job on the planet. They offer Americans a window into how each of these candidates would deal with excruciating pressure. They are measured in revealing moments. Will the candidates react with grace, humor and unflappability, or with anger and uncertainty?
People think that Barack Obama is Vulcan Cool, but few politicians have had to hold their tongue against over-the-top attacks so often as Hillary Clinton. For Clinton, the biggest challenge may be not chasing down every every question and clubbing it to death. Particularly when it comes to subjects like her email, Hillary really needs to learn how to say “I think we’ve all heard enough about that, now, let me tell you about...” Anything else. Anything at all.