If you perused the face page of the New York Times’ website Thursday morning, you would have seen an op-ed piece, characterized as a “guest essay,” by a right winger named Matthew Walther titled, “Why I Don’t Vote. And Why Maybe You Shouldn’t Either.” It was basically an exhortation against voting, replete with some stunningly facile arguments.
It’s no longer there on the site’s front page. You can still find it on the site by Googling the title, which has now been changed to “Why I Won’t Vote.”
The essay itself is just bad. But what’s even more gobsmackingly appalling is the Times’ decision to run it at all. On the 4th of July.
As initially observed by Stephen Wolf:
As noted by Carl Gibson, writing for Alternet, in addition to his other musings, Mr. Walther opined that he found the phrase “civic duty” to be “off-putting:”
"If patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel, civic duty is surely the first. Some version of the civic-duty line is trotted out by the sort of do-gooder who hands out voter registration forms to strangers — an activity I find as off-putting as I would an invitation to sit down and fill out a handgun permit," [Walther] wrote.
Really? Equating voter registration efforts with soliciting an application for a handgun permit?
As Gibson notes, this “guest essay” soon drew more attention:
While quote-tweeting Wolf's post, History professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat — an expert on democracy and authoritarian governments around the world — admonished the national paper of record for its decision to publish Walther's column.
"This is just very sad and frankly just what the Autocracy Doctor ordered," she tweeted. "Not voting is a vote to let others decide your fate, and we know that many elections are decided by relatively few votes. The goal of many autocracies is 'demobilization': people detaching from politics so they don't resist."
What were they thinking when they ran this? Running a piece on Independence Day explaining to people why they shouldn’t vote?
The mind just boggles. Someone literally read and approved this for publication. They even commissioned some cartoon artwork for it.
When fascism comes to America, the New York Times won’t be providing the story.
It will be the story.