That was pretty powerful. I still think the Cotton piece passed a line in that it argues for the use of deadly force against legal and Constitutionally protected speech, but kudos for making their case as well as it can be made.
My conclusion? The Times is not the problem, but the piece they ran is definitely a symptom of what ails us…
I wonder if this editor will admit he erred in publishing the piece if/when journalists get killed.
How absurd. Of course I read the Times. A friend of mine used to report for them.
And again, deferring to power generally is a different thing than deferring to this current occupant. I don’t know how to make that any more clear.
I don’t pay for it, though. I subscribe to local news sources and WaPo (bc Bezos needs more $$), but I steal the Times unless I want to pick up the hard copy to do the crossword.
Frankly, I had thought that lynching had been a federal crime already.
I just assumed that. Well, it certainly should be, but why so long? The heyday of lynching was in the 1930;s for hell’s sake.
It has been suggested that Cotton’s op-ed is him auditioning to replace Esper, just as Barr auditioned to replace Big Dick Toilet Salesman Whitaker.
Trump is entering the overt tyranny phase of his last-ditch effort to stay out of jail. He fears his election is doomed, so it’s time to literally install himself as dictator using military force. He has nothing to lose.
Esper is just a hardware salesman who accepted Trump’s invitation to loot the Treasury. But he wasn’t so clear-eyed about executing American protestors and officially turning America into a dictatorship.
This op-ed is Cotton saying that yes he’ll do it, gladly, and that (like Barr) he has concocted a notional rationale justifying it. Recall that’s precisely what Barr did: he wrote a letter not only saying the POTUS is above the law, but putting some flesh on the bones of that legal absurdity. Trump seems to believe that is an important part of the slow-motion norm violation. It’s probably because he knows this whole coup rests on Fox’s ability to sell it, and they need some raw ingredients to riff on.
When was the last time they published an op-ed advocating armed citizen’s arrests at corporate annual meetings? Seems to me that’s a viewpoint people should know about and discuss.
Cotton is running unopposed for another 6 year term and has his own presidential ambitions. Why take a job that may not exist in 6 months?
I’ve read that, but I don’t think he’s aiming for a SecDef replacement that will probably end next January.
Cotton is a young guy with a safe Senate seat. I think the OpEd is more likely intended to help position him for a 2024 Presidential run. There aren’t many viable proto-Trumps out there, who could carry the torch for a younger generation of racist assholes. Cotton is at the top of the list.
ETA: ninja’d by turdburgler 
Cotton has no interest in being in the minority party, which is inevitable now unless the election is hijacked or prevented.
NYT editor will never admit he was wrong. They are so afraid of the wrath of Trump that judgment goes out the window. Anything to avoid setting him off or worse, being accused of being liberal. I subscribe to the Washington Post now and find that I go days without reading the Times. The only reason I keep my subscription is to support a free press but it is getting harder to justify not canceling.
Ever since McConnell stole a SCOTUS seat from Obama, Republicans have increasingly been acting very clearly as though they believe there will never be another Democratic administration. That’s not because they think they’re going to keep winning elections.
They are all-in for a full-on fascist coup that establishes a one-party state. McConnell fired the starting pistol (only god knows why then), but they’ve all been doing it. And everybody knows that Trump intends to become president-for-life.
Every day of the protests, GOPers have kept their heads down, praying for Trump to just get on with it already and finish his plain-as-day coup.
Cotton recognizes that Trump may fail if he’s unable to put down these protests, and also that if Trump succeeds, the GOP will rule for a very long time.
If you, I, or Joe the Rag Picker had submitted the identical op-ed, it would certainly NOT have been published. They published it because he’s a senator in the majority party of that chamber, which makes it WORSE than both-siderism: it’s kowtowing to and favoring power.
Cotton has taxpayer-paid facilities (i.e., the well of the Senate) to get his message out via C-SPAN any time he wants, as well as taxpayer-funded press releases, etc. Beyond that, there’s the gargantuan power of the right-wing media-entertainment complex. Why does the NYT need to give him a platform?
A lot of people have protested it because it’s far more likely to provoke violence than quell it, and that’s true. But it’s also horrible judgment for seeming to advocate turning the world’s most powerful military instrument into a prop for Trump’s reelection, as well as ultimately transforming that instrument into a banana-republic palace guard for the Mango Mussolini.
Furthermore, NYT served as a front man for Cotton’s 2024 presidential bid, as one astute columnist pointed out:
I’m not on board with this kind of fear mongering about a coup. There are too many barriers. The individual states run the elections for President and all the down-ticket races, for one. Vulnerable Republican congress critters need Trump’s name on the ballot so his base turns out. The Constitution requires the duly elected President to be sworn in next January.
If Trump loses the election, or the polls look too dire ahead of the election, he simply doesn’t have the power to fight it. Too many Blue state Governors and Blue city mayors will not let their police or National Guard units to be used in a military coup. The standing Army won’t support it either. He’s lost significant support in the military, now polling at around 50% disapproval.
But that’s not the real reason there won’t be a coup. The real reason is that Trump is a coward at heart. He doesn’t have the balls for it. He’ll slink away in January, whining about how he wuz robbed, but he’ll go away.
I think you’re right about Trump being a coward, but he’s also a cornered animal, and even cowards can do incredible things when squeezed.
He faces utter annihilation the moment he leaves the protection of the Oval Office. His cowardice is a factor there, too.
And, importantly, he’s surrounded himself with accomplices. Many hands make light work. Barr will stop at nothing.
Good to know that they enabled comments (after many publicly called them out), but the fact that they failed to do so initially still undermines the Times’ purported justification for running the piece. I think your comment struck the appropriate tone; too bad the NYT disallowed it. I have to wonder how many other comments the NYT barred.
Armalite, Kalashnikov, po-tay’toe, po-tah’toe…
Recommended thread.
When a paper publishes an editorial, it lends its authority & above all RESOURCES to the author. Not only does Tom Cotton get the IQ boost of Times typeface, he gets editors, copy eds, & fact-checkers who are charged with burnishing his argument to give it the best possible shot.
— Virginia Heffernan (@page88) June 4, 2020
and this:
"Three Times journalists, who declined to be identified by name, said they had informed their editors that sources told them they would no longer provide them with information because of the Op-Ed." https://t.co/tgMzTJS7Vx
— Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) June 4, 2020
and this:
The emerging divide in journalism is not between "let all relevant arguments be heard" and "don't publish opinions we find repulsive." It's between those who ask, "is this something we should be amplifying?" and those who don't see the importance of putting the question that way.
— Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) June 4, 2020
They def crossed a line and they knew it. Some stuff is indefensible and in the mea culpa they issued they explained or tried to it’s because Cotton has trumPP’s ear and he’s probably also going after Pence’s job, and we should know what a danger that represents. From Bennett the Editorial Page Editor:
Cotton and others in power are advocating the use of the military, and I believe the public would be better equipped to push back if it heard the argument and had the chance to respond to the reasoning
Thanks for sharing news about a guy on Twitter citing something from another source no one much knows anything about.