Other than that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?
good article, really nice writing, btw.
Great summary, Alice. Thank you.
How about an attack from Russia?
The internet has fostered a belief that experience and competence don’t matter any more. Anyone can do better than the experts. Now we are seeing proof to the contrary.
That’s similar to what I was going to say.
Hate to keep saying this, but it’s easy to give Alice a “like” up top.
May their evil plots continue to be ineffectual.
noipe
I wonder in the current environment how big a crisis would it take to bring people to the table together. I’m not sure I want to find out."
an unusual one-two punch (a successful hacking attempt from a non European power+ an unforeseen foreign policy debacle) could do it. However, folks might wonder out loud: “what’s innit for Trump?”
The drumbeat for war with North Korea is getting louder everyday. Somebody needs to stop him, or we could be facing a nuclear exchange with North Korea, China, or both.
It’s much worse than that. If you ask the trumpets, everything is going swell, there are no hitches. And trump is doing a tremendous job. There’s no dysfunction, no incompetence, no nothing, all that’s just stoopid out of touch libruls imagining things.
Either all sane people no longer share the same reality, or there’s a depressingly high proportion of non-sane Americans.
Yesterday Trump stated that he was not apologetic about some of his unfortunate tweets. He merely said that when you make hundreds of them, you have an occasional clinker and you can’t do anything about that. Think about the level of carelessness and irresponsibility in that statement. No hint of thinking about your obligation to others simply as a human being sharing the same planet. You just say whatever you feel at the moment and use the media platform to disseminate your thoughts widely. The feelings of innocent others you may embarrass matter not a bit. The risk you place them in with your accusations count for nothing. This man is President. He is a danger to us all, even those who voted for him. He must be removed and soon.
Things are going fairly OK because they were left a pretty decent situation by Obama and haven’t had time to screw it up yet.
I have to correct Mr. Collender. He said, “In the absence of a crisis, I don’t see this getting better anytime soon.” We have plenty of crises: an incompetent President who has unknown conflicts of interest and who appoints similar ilk to high level positions, a President who was elected with considerable help from a foreign power and who may have colluded with them, a President who may have entanglements with that same foreign power that would encourage him to support the foreign power’s agenda over one that is in the best interest of the United States, partisan gerrymandering in so many states that require the Democratic party to have an 8 to 9% vote advantage in order to win an equal number of seats in Congress as the Republicans, the existence of the Electoral College…
I think we have sufficient crises, thank you.
The internet has fostered a belief that experience and competence don’t matter any more.
The Republican Party has been conducting a war on expertise and competence for many decades, long before the internet was even a theoretical idea. Responding to criticism that Nixon Supreme Court nominee G. Harrold Carswell had been a mediocre judge, Roman Hruska, the Republican Senator from Nebraska, memorably stated in 1970:
“Even if he were mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren’t they, and a little chance? We can’t have all Brandeises, Frankfurters and Cardozos.”
Unfortunately, the internet offers the opportunity to spread ridiculous horseshit tailored to specific demographic groups, and Mercer’s Cambridge Analytica used that to expertly target Republicans and the more unhinged Clinton haters across the political spectrum. The Republican assault on competence and expertise has become a genocidal war on basic intelligence and common sense.
Just wait until the intended results and collateral damage of Trump’s executive orders and Cabinet appointee actions take effect. Although that may rally some business leaders and some Republicans in Congress, the vast majority of the American people will rally even more bigly.
More of a GIGO problem than a sanity problem if we are lucky.
Is the same type of targeting being used to spread Islamophobia, fear of immigrants and racism as well?
For many years, hurting the Democrats has been more important than governing for Republicans. Now we see they got nothin’. Let them be greedy, hateful, spiteful and vindictive on their own tribe members for a while. They have richly earned it.
And for all up comments mentioned inexperience and ineptitude this is why I can’t get behind term limits. I live with a state legislature that has term limits and weak ethics standards, and therefore we get those in office that may have been able to get their voters to elect them, but only work for their big moneyed donors.
Just a musical side note ever since the general campaign I’ve had the song from the Music Man running through my head:
Don’t be so sure that the Trumpets think it is all going well. This article was front page of the Inquirer in Philly yesterday and was quite interesting.
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/politics/presidential/potter-county-trump-clinton-election-.html