‘#Unfit: The Psychology of Donald Trump’: Film Review – Hollywood Reporter

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11:18 AM PDT 8/26/2020byFrank Scheck

The diagnosis is in, at least according to the estimable gallery of mental health professionals, and members of The Duty to Warn Coalition, who are seen in Dan Partland's documentary: President Donald Trump suffers from a condition known as malignant narcissism, the components of which are narcissism, paranoia, anti-social personality disorder and sadism.

To which the rest of us can only say, "Well, duh!"

#Unfit: The Psychology of Donald Trump, being released even as we're still suffering the effects of watching the Republican National Convention, delivers a devastating indictment of the mental state of our current chief executive. To anyone who follows the news religiously (and who doesn't, during these anxiety-ridden days?), not much presented here will prove revelatory. The film is even a little out of date, since one of its primary talking heads, Lincoln Project co-founder (and husband of Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway) George Conway, has now abandoned his mission of criticizing Trump. But thankfully not before delivering such acidic comments as "Donald Trump is like a practical joke that got out of hand."

The shrinks participating in the documentary are technically violating what's known as "The Goldwater Rule," which states that it is "unethical for a psychiatrist to offer a professional opinion unless he or she has conducted an examination and has been granted proper authorization for such a statement." The ethical standard springs from a 1964 magazine poll in which 1,189 psychiatrists said that then-candidate Barry Goldwater was unfit to be president. Fortunately for the sake of the country, there's also something known as "The Tarasoff Rule," inspired by a California Supreme Court ruling that decreed that mental health professionals have a "duty to warn" if their patients might put someone else's life in danger.

And while Trump isn't their patient, the talking heads in #Unfit certainly make a convincing case for the danger that he poses to the nation. The film wouldn't really have to do more than trot out some of his greatest hits, which it does with clips of such episodes as Trump's remark that he wouldn't lose any voters even if he shot someone on Fifth Avenue, Sean Spicer's forced lying about the inauguration crowd size, and his machinations with Sharpies. Thankfully, the documentary doesnt include too many of these, since it would lead to a running time dwarfing Gone With the Wind.

"Trump is a sociopath, a sadist, a con artist, a racist, a misogynist and a sexist," declares one of the therapists in the film. He adds, "And I think that is a problem," which might well be the understatement of the year.

#Unfit loses some of its impact by occasionally concentrating on the trivial. There's a lengthy segment, for instance, devoted to chronicling Trump's habit of cheating at golf. Yes, it's indicative of his overall behavior that includes lying nearly every time he opens his mouth. But it pales in comparison to his ability to, say, launch a nuclear war, a topic that is discussed in frightening terms, or his many similarities to such historical figures as Mussolini and Hitler.

Ironically, it's not the mental health professionals on display who make the strongest impact, but rather Anthony Scaramucci, who seems to have settled on a second career as a media figure critical of the man for whom he once, albeit briefly, worked. Say what you will about the Mooch (and please, discuss among yourselves), he's got a way with words, as illustrated by this sly assessment of his former boss. "He is not a racist," Scaramucci affirms. "He treats everybody like shit. He's an asshole. That's different from being a racist."

It says something about our troubled times that the description almost seems comforting. Scaramucci also makes this astute point about the stakes for our democracy: "You can't disrupt a 243-year experiment for one dude's personality."

Naturally, the film can be accused of preaching to the choir (personally, I've lost my voice from so much singing). Despite its powerfully cogent and well-informed arguments, #Unfit: The Psychology of Donald Trump is sadly unlikely to change the minds of the roughly 35-40% of the population who look at the president's behavior and apparently see nothing to be concerned about. But that's a subject for another documentary.

Production companies: Bronson Park Films, docshop ProductionsDistributor: Dark Star PicturesDirector: Dan PartlandProducers: Art Horan, Dan PartlandExecutive producer: Jason DreyerEditor: Scott EvansComposer: Tree Adams

83 min.

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'#Unfit: The Psychology of Donald Trump': Film Review - Hollywood Reporter

Trump goes dark on TV as early voting looms – POLITICO

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The president is not slated to be on the airwaves anywhere during the final week of the month, as Republicans hold their convention.

Its a jarring turn of events for a reelection effort that has long promoted itself as a financial powerhouse and until recently had a heavy TV presence. And its exceedingly rare to see a sitting president go dark so close to an election. But the Trump campaign has seen its long-standing cash advantage over Biden dwindle to just about $20 million, according to the most recent financial disclosures, even as Biden pours money into commercials.

Trump aides say they have decided to focus their spending on the post-Labor Day final stretch of the campaign and say they see little reason to advertise during the national conventions, which are receiving widespread coverage. Bidens campaign spent $16 million on TV during his convention week, and is on track to spend more than $14 million during this weeks Republican confab.

It "makes little sense to blow donor money on ads during convention weeks, when all of the national media is focused on the candidates anyway," said Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh, who argued that Biden's advertising barrage was to designed to compensate for his relatively light public schedule.

Yet it has worried senior Republicans, who argue the reelection effort erred by allowing Bidens message to go unchallenged. Among Trump allies, there is a growing desire to see a super PAC fill the void. Many in the presidents sphere have long expressed dissatisfaction with America First Action, the principal pro-Trump outside group which has been outspent by its Biden-aligned rival.

Corey Lewandowski. | Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images

With 70 days to go in a campaign, all of the people who have raised money on behalf of Donald Trumps name should be spending it to support his campaign right now, said former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, who informally advises the president.

David Bossie, a former Trump deputy campaign manager who remains close to the White House, said, After years of planning, strategizing and fundraising, now is the time for the super PACs and those organizations that support President Trump and Vice President Mike Pences reelection to engage with their all-important dollars to have a positive impact now and not wait any longer.

An America First Action spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment. The organization has spent roughly $13 million over the past month and has booked $24 million from September through the election. It has announced plans for a post-Labor Day, anti-Biden assault.

The Trump forces have also been hamstrung by the downfall of the National Rifle Association. The prominent outside group aggressively bolstered Trump in 2016 but has been essentially a nonfactor in 2020 as it confronts an investigation into alleged financial improprieties.

Trump advisers note they have placed a premium on digital advertising, especially during the conventions. From July 21 to Aug. 15, the presidents campaign spent $31 million on Facebook and Google, while the Biden team invested $25 million, according to Advertising Analytics. It represents an advantage for Trump, but not of the same magnitude Biden has been enjoying on TV.

Trump aides strenuously push back on the idea they are facing financial problems, though campaign manager Bill Stepien has been examining the campaigns operations, including budgeting. He has charged deputy campaign manager Justin Clark to review spending going forward.

Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien. | Amy Newman/The Record via AP

After taking over the Trump campaign last month, Stepien briefly paused TV spending to reassess the strategy. Rather than airing commercials across the country, the campaign decided to target early voting states.

Pressed on the scale-back during a Sunday appearance on NBCs Meet the Press, Trump senior adviser Jason Miller said the campaign is conserving money right now and focusing a little bit more smartly and a little more effectively on the states that are voting early.

Yet even in most of those early voting states, Biden has dominated Trump. The former vice president spent more than three times as much as the president in North Carolina where absentee voting begins next week as well as in Florida and Arizona.

The one state where Trump outpaced Biden was Georgia, where the presidents team made a small investment. Losing Georgia would likely signal a catastrophic election for Trump, who carried the state by 5 percentage points in 2016.

The Trump campaign was also absent in Ohio and Nevada.

To some Republicans, the scenario feels eerily similar to 2012 when Barack Obama crushed Mitt Romney during the convention weeks, fueling an early fall bounce.

Over the dog days of summer, the Biden campaign and his outside allies have owned the airwaves in the states that matter most, said Nick Everhart, a Republican ad-maker.

Everhart, however, cautioned that the average voter has been more consumed with the pandemics impact on their life, and said that deciding who to vote for is still a fall not a summer activity.

Whether the Biden advertising advantage persists into autumn remains an open question. While the Biden campaign has announced plans to spend $220 million starting in September, it has so far reserved only about half that, according to media buying figures obtained by POLITICO. The Trump campaign has booked nearly $148 million so far.

The Biden team has greeted Trumps summertime absence from the airwaves with jubilation and say it's evidence of a campaign on the decline.

The Trump campaign promised us the Death Star, but instead what we got was something closer to the Titanic, said Biden spokesman Michael Gwin.

Not everyone is convinced the drop-off will matter, though. Even without TV ads, Trump has an ability to draw attention in a way few politicians can. And many Republicans point out that the president found himself in a similar position four years ago.

Trump was significantly outspent in 2016, said veteran GOP ad-maker Scott Howell, and that didnt seem to matter.

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Trump goes dark on TV as early voting looms - POLITICO

Webcast: Age of Extinction – Corruption in Donald Trump’s Dept of Interior – Oregon WildBlog

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An overview of the Department of the Interior's most crooked political appointees and its most egregious anti-environmental actions.

This presentation explores the various ways that industry lobbyists and right-wing operatives have infiltrated the Interior Department and are now using the powerful agency to rollback essential environmental laws, including the Endangered Species Act. Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, a former mega-lobbyist for the oil and gas industry and Big Ag, has stocked DOI with conservative ideologues and corporate influence peddlers and together they are doing everything in their power to worsen the biodiversity crisis unfolding across this planet.

Journalist Jimmy Tobias(@JamesCTobias) discusses some of the investigative reporting he's done looking into Trump's Interior Department, with a focus on the agency's most crooked political appointees and its most egregious anti-environmental actions.

Oregon Wild's Doug Heiken reviews the Trump administration's newly announced rollbacks of critical habitat for the northern spotted owl and what the move means for Oregon's beloved remaining old growth forests, followed by a Q&A.

Jimmy Tobias is a contributing writer at The Guardian and a contributor at The Nation. An investigative reporter, he covers conservation, civil society and cities. He was formerly a trail worker with the U.S. Forest Service. His work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Intercept, Pacific Standard, HuffPost, Mother Jones, Outside, High Country News, and numerous other outlets.

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Webcast: Age of Extinction - Corruption in Donald Trump's Dept of Interior - Oregon WildBlog

How Donald Trump canceled the Republican party – The Guardian

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The Republican convention that nominates Donald Trump for a second term will be the greatest event in the political history of cancel culture. What Trump is cancelling is nothing less than the Republican party as it has existed before him. He ran in 2016 in the primaries on cancelling the GOP and in 2020 he ratifies his triumph. After the election, political scientists and historians will study his obliteration of the Republican party as his greatest and most enduring political achievement.

The Republican party has been on a long journey away from being the party of Abraham Lincoln, accelerating since Barry Goldwater and rightwing cadres captured it in 1964 in reaction to the civil rights movement. After Richard Nixon embraced the southern strategy and won the nomination in 1968 with the help of Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, the Dixiecrat segregationist presidential candidate in 1948, the party increasingly radicalized in every election cycle and became gradually unmoored. In 1980, Ronald Reagan opened his general election campaign at the Neshoba County Fair, the place where three civil rights workers had been murdered in 1964. Surrounded by Confederate flags, he hailed states rights. As brazen an appeal as it was, Reagan felt he had to resort to the old code words.

Central to Trumps unique selling proposition is that he dispenses with the dog whistles. His vulgarity gives a vicarious thrill to those who revel in his taunting of perceived enemies or scapegoats. He made them feel dominant at no social price, until his catastrophic mismanagement of the coronavirus pandemic and economic crisis. Flouting a mask is the magical act of defiance to signal that nothing has really changed and that in any case, Trump bears no responsibility.

But there has also been a political cost to Trumps louche comic lounge act that still transfixes a diehard audience lingering like late-night gamblers for the last show. Trump is the only president since the advent of modern polling never to reach 50% approval. Despite decisively losing the popular vote in 2016, he said he won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally. This time, fearing an even more overwhelming popular rejection, he says the outcome will be rigged and he has pre-emptively tried to cancel the US Postal Service, to undermine voting by mail.

From Reagan onward, even as the fringe moved to the center and took it over, the party did not anticipate that it was slouching toward Trump. Conservatives have consistently failed to grasp the unintended consequences of conservatism. Even when Reagan fostered the evangelical right, George HW Bush appointed Clarence Thomas to the supreme court, George W Bush invaded Iraq and neglected oversight of financial markets that collapsed, and John McCain named Sarah Palin as his running mate, Republicans believed they were expanding the attraction of the conservative project. When Newt Gingrich, Roger Ailes and Rush Limbaugh methodically degraded language, it seemed a propaganda technique to herd supporters. When the dark money of the Koch family and the wealthy reactionaries of the cloaked Donors Trust bankrolled the lumpen dress-up Tea Party to do their bidding on deregulation of finance and industry, the munificently funded conservative candidates did their bidding as retainers of privilege.

In the wasteland, only cockroaches and Mitch McConnell may survive

At the presidential level there still remained residual elements contrary to what metastasized into Trumpism. Reagan represented free trade and western firmness against Russia. George HW Bush was a paragon of public service. George W Bush was an advocate for immigrants. John McCain was the embodiment of patriotic sacrifice.

After Trump, all that has been cancelled. Since he first rode down the escalator at Trump Tower in 2015, to declare his candidacy against Mexican rapists, there has always been a new escalator downward. After overcoming his initial hesitation, the House Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy, welcomed the election of a QAnon conspiracy-spouting candidate from Georgia, Marjorie Taylor Greene. Then McCarthy condemned QAnon and stated that Greene wasnt part of a movement she continued to defend.

Trump hailed her as a future Republican star. For months, he has been tweeting messages to encourage the racist, antisemitic cult. Theres a once-in-a lifetime opportunity to take this global cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles out, and I think we have the president to do it, Greene proclaimed. Ive heard these are people that love our country, Trump said. In the wasteland, only cockroaches and Mitch McConnell may survive.

Stuart Stevens, a prominent Republican political consultant, eyes startled wide open, has entitled his expos of the party It Was All A Lie. He describes the conservative Trump apologists, the adults in the room, as latter-day versions of Franz von Papen, the German chancellor who enabled the rise of Hitler in the complacent belief that he could be controlled and the conservatives would maintain power.

On 4 July, at the mammoth stage set of Mount Rushmore, Trump mugged for his photo op by posing his face next in line to the carving of Abraham Lincoln. He had earlier told the South Dakota governor, Kristi Noem, Did you know its my dream to have my face on Mount Rushmore? And I started laughing, she recounted. And he wasnt laughing, so he was totally serious. (Trump tweeted that it was fake news that he had ordered an aide to inquire about immortalizing his face on the mountain.)

Ostensibly, Trump came to deliver his ideological message. He denounced cancel culture, which he said was the very definition of totalitarianism, and it is completely alien to our culture and to our values, and it has absolutely no place in the United States of America. He attributed it to a new far-left fascism. And he spelled out its punitive nature: If you do not speak its language, perform its rituals, recite its mantras and follow its commandments, then you will be censored, banished, blacklisted, persecuted and punished. Thus, he offered a concise description of his own cancel cultures methods.

Trumps cancel culture deals in aggressions, not micro-aggressions. The only safe space is where Trump is worshipped. Before, during and after the death of McCain, Trump unleashed tirades of insult. He finally complained that the McCain family never thanked him for approving the senators funeral arrangements, even though it was Congress that gave approval. For years, Trump has disparaged the Bush family. At the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, when George W Bush called for setting aside partisanship and embracing national unity, Trump tweeted, but where was he during Impeachment calling for putting partisanship aside.

Trumps cancel culture deals in aggressions, not micro-aggressions. The only safe space is where Trump is worshipped

Trump has invoked Reagan only as a stepping stone of his own monumental pedestal. At a rally in 2019, Trump mused: I was watching the other night the great Lou Dobbs [of Fox News], and he said, When Trump took over, President Trump, he used to say, Trump is a great president. Then he said, Trump is the greatest president since Ronald Reagan. Then he said, No, no, Trump is an even better president than Ronald Reagan. And now hes got me down as the greatest president in the history of our country, including George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Thank you. We love you too.

When Trump sought to profit for his 2020 campaign by selling a gold-colored Trump-Reagan commemorative coin set, the Reagan Foundation sent him a curt letter, telling him to cease and desist. Trump has constantly retailed a false story about Reagan supposedly remarking after meeting him, For the life of me, and Ill never know how to explain it, when I met that young man, I felt like I was the one shaking hands with the president. The chief administrative officer of the Reagan Foundation felt compelled to note that Reagan did not ever say that about Donald Trump.

Trumps petty, vindictive and exploitative abuse of the Bush presidents, McCain and Reagan pales in comparison to his raging obsessions about Lincoln. He has boasted his poll numbers are better than Lincolns ever were (true), claimed he is more a victim than the assassinated martyr (untrue), and declared he has done more for Black Americans than Lincoln (untrue).

Trump, the would-be Great Emancipator and upholder of Confederate monuments, has lately ruminated about giving an address at Gettysburg. There are many such monuments there to the thousands of poor white southerners who gave their lives for the Slave Power and to overthrow the democracy of the United States. Perhaps, contemplating his last campaign, Trump could trudge across the rutted field of Picketts Charge. He might ask what his bikers and self-styled militia would be willing to do for him. What Lincoln consecrated, Trump would desecrate. But he would undoubtedly speak longer.

Trumps compulsive need to elevate himself as greater than the greatest president does not stand alone among strange statements about Lincoln from members of his inner circle. Some fancy that they too resemble Lincoln, alongside Trump. Some insist they are bravely fighting the civil war, on behalf of Trump. Some depict Trump as the reincarnation of Lincoln, to justify his dishonesty. Some summon Lincoln to claim God is on their side. The disconnect of these incoherent and eccentric gestures from any reality past or present is a telltale sign of terminal party identity. Each weird distortion marks the progress of Trumps cancel culture, the eclipse of history bred by one-man misrule that is a half-cocked aspiration to an authoritarian system that might be codified by the likes of William Barr.

Stephen Bannon, Trumps now-indicted former campaign manager and senior adviser, appeared in a 2019 documentary about his post-White House crusade to organize an international neo-fascist alliance. The film opens with Bannon cradling a volume of Carl Sandburgs biography of Lincoln. Bannon says portentously that its 1862. Then he reads Lincolns words: They wish to get rid of me and I am sometimes half-disposed to gratify them. We are now on the brink of destruction. It appears to me the Almighty is against us and I can hardly see a ray of hope. Lincolns fiery trial to preserve the union is reduced to Bannons dark apocalyptic mutterings against the forces conspiring against him and Trump: the Deep State, rootless cosmopolitans, globalists and liberal elites. Were a long way from, as Lincoln said, the last best hope of earth.

Betsy DeVos's definition of freedom as 'what we ought', that is, what she determines, is more Orwellian than Lincolnian

Ivanka Trump has turned to Lincoln for the occasional non-sequitur defense of her father. Her vacant voice and immobile expression augment the surprise effect of her inapt citations. After Attorney General Barr issued a deceptive characterization of the Mueller Report to mislead the public about its actual content, Ivanka rushed to support Barrs falsehood. She tweeted a quote: Truth is generally the best vindication against slander Abraham Lincoln. The difference between Barr and Lincoln was that Barr covered up the truth.

During the impeachment inquiry into Trumps withholding of nearly $400m in military aid to Ukraine, to coerce its government to launch an investigation that would smear Joe Biden with fabricated accusations of corruption, Ivanka leaped to protect her father. She claimed the incontrovertible facts were nothing but a partisan attack contrived to malign him, originating from a whistleblower within the intelligence community who was not particularly relevant.

Basically since the election, she said, this has been the experience that our administration and our family has been having. Rather than wait, under a year, until the people can decide for themselves based on his record and based on his accomplishments, this new effort has commenced. Once again, she reached for Lincoln as her fathers model. This has been the experience of most, she observed with the sagacious tone of a student of history. Abraham Lincoln was famously, even within his own cabinet, surrounded by people who were former political adversaries. Ivankas smug confusion was complete. She had mistaken the whistleblower whose memo triggered the impeachment process with Lincolns team of rivals.

On 23 January, Betsy DeVos, Trumps secretary of education, a billionaire heiress and funder of rightwing causes, spoke at the Museum of the Bible in Washington to a group from the Colorado Christian University, to claim Lincoln as the imaginary leader for the anti-abortion movement.

He too contended with the pro-choice arguments of his day, she said. They suggested that a states choice to be slave or to be free had no moral question in it. According to DeVos, women asserting their reproductive rights are engaged in a vast moral evil, equivalent to slavery.

Lincoln was right about slavery choice then, and he would be right about the life choice today, she said. Freedom is not about doing what we want. Freedom is about having the right to do what we ought.

DeVoss mangling of Lincoln, who was an early advocate of womens rights and suffrage but never said a word about abortion, is intended to legitimate the anti-abortion agenda of granting personhood rights to fetuses, which she and other zealots equate to enslaved African Americans. Her definition of freedom as what we ought, that is, what she determines, is more Orwellian than Lincolnian. Historically, claiming that law should be rooted in theological dogma is in the tradition of the southern theologians Lincoln condemned, who justified slavery by biblical references and divine sanction.

Mike Pence, Trumps vice-president, a former rightwing radio host, travelled in January to Ripon, Wisconsin, site of the founding of the Republican party in 1854, garrulously to praise Trump as the true heir to Lincoln in the advancement of our highest ideals. Once again, Pence explained, we are at a crossroads of freedom. Trump, the Lincoln manqu, is all that stands between America and the threat of Joe Biden and socialism and decline. Months before the murder of George Floyd and the wave of Black Lives Matter demonstrations that swept across the country, Pence charged, Joe Biden believes America is, in his words, systemically racist. And despite historically low crime rates prior to this pandemic, Joe Biden believes that law enforcement in America has a, quote, implicit bias against minorities. In conclusion, the evangelical Pence declared, The Bible says, Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom, and with President Donald Trump in the White House for four more years, well make America great again, again.

In the long-ago days when there was only one again, during the 2016 campaign, Pence defended Trumps shout-out to Vladimir Putin to hack and release Clinton campaign emails: Russia if youre listening

You know, Pence explained, Abraham Lincoln said, give the people the facts, and the republic will be saved. I mean, I think thats the point that [Trump is] making. Hes not encouraging some foreign power to compromise the security of this country. Bowdlerizing a dubiously sourced Lincoln quote, Pence portrayed Trump as the simple protector of facts and denied he was encouraging Russian intervention. Pences statement was a cover-up in real time. We now know from the Senate intelligence committee report that Roger Stone, Trumps longtime political operative and dirty trickster, was directly in touch with Trump on the theft of the Clinton emails by Russian intelligence and their release by WikiLeaks. To quote Marx Groucho Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes? If Trump has a faithful servant, it is Mike Pence.

Mike Pompeo, Trumps secretary of state and yet another evangelical crusader, has raised Lincoln to justify his own brand of dogma. In a speech entitled Being a Christian Leader, to the American Association of Christian Counselors at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel at Nashville on 11 October, he explained how God directs him to be humble, forgiving and thrifty.

I know some people in the media will break out the pitchforks when they hear that I ask God for direction in my work, he said. But you should know, as much as Id like to claim originality, it is not a new idea. I love this quote from President Lincoln. He said quote, I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go.

Unfortunately, in their Recollected Words of Abraham Lincoln, the historians Don and Virginia Fehrenbacher rate the words Pompeo spoke with a grade D: in other words, bogus. Lincoln is in fact recorded to have referred to knees only three times, all involving jokes. The Fehrenbachers also give a D to another well-used Lincoln quotation: You can fool all the people some of the time; you can fool some of the people all the time; but you cant fool all the people all the time.

Stephen Miller, Trumps senior adviser, originator of the Muslim ban and separating migrant children from their families, author of the cancel culture speech at Mount Rushmore, is impatient for the apocalypse. Observing the protests at Portland before the federal courthouse that were met with a show of armed force, Miller went on Tucker Carlson Tonight to explain why this was Fort Sumter.

The Democratic party for a long time historically has been the party of secession, he said. What youre seeing today is the Democratic party returning to its roots.

In his compact and inverted analogy, the protest against police violence was a battle in a new civil war and the ragtag shifting bands of protesters including the Wall of Moms were the restoration of the pro-secession Southern Democratic party, which would of course transform Trump into Lincoln. The identity of the enemy may change Muslims, Mexicans or Moms but Miller is prepared to draw the sword for whatever clash of civilization may come. Hes just not prepared for a virus.

During his 2016 campaign, Trump plagiarized not only Reagans slogan, Make America Great Again, but also Nixons appeal to the silent majority. He also boasted: I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldnt lose any voters. Trumps attorney, asked about the Fifth Avenue example by the judge presiding in the case of the Manhattan district attorney seeking Trumps tax returns, argued that Trump would have legal immunity if he killed somebody.

Since March, more than 170,000 Americans the New York Times estimates more than 200,000 have died of coronavirus. On 20 June, Trump kicked off his campaign with a rally at Tulsa. Campaign workers tore stickers off the seats that encouraged social distancing. In the sparse but closely packed crowd sat Herman Cain, proudly grinning, not wearing a mask. For a brief moment in 2012 the former CEO of Godfathers Pizza and fast-talking Tea Party advocate had been the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination. Disillusioned after he quit the race when accused of sexual harassment, he called for a third party. Then came Trump.

For 2020, the man who said his Secret Service code name as president would be Cornbread became chairman of Black Voices For Trump. A month later, he was dead of coronavirus. Cain would miss his speaking slot at the Republican convention. He had joined what the ancient Greeks called the silent majority. Yet 20 days after Cains death, on 19 August, his Twitter account posted Trumps latest ad: Boy, it sure looks like Joe Biden is losing his mental faculties. In death, nobody, not even Mike Pence, could claim greater devotion to the party of Trump.

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How Donald Trump canceled the Republican party - The Guardian

Donald Trump was finally asked about Sarah Cooper’s viral impersonations of him – CNN

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But the target of Cooper's ridicule hadn't been asked what he thinks of the videos ... until Sunday.

"I have not, no," Trump said, blank-faced. "I'd like to see them. Are they good or bad?"

Hilton told Trump he thought the president would find them very entertaining.

"OK, good! I'd like to see them," Trump said. "If you're saying they're positive, I'd like to look. If they're not positive...."

Hilton acknowledged that Cooper "doesn't mean it to be positive."

"I see," Trump said. "Well, I'll have to check it out."

Cooper has garnered a huge social media following since going viral in April 2020 for her satirical Trump impressions. She has been retweeted and praised by a multitude of entertainers, including Lin-Manuel Miranda, Ben Stiller, Halle Berry, Chrissy Teigen and Cher.

Prior to her online success, Cooper was a writer and correspondent on the CBS All Access pilot "Old News," produced by Stephen Colbert. She is also the author of the best-selling books "100 Tricks to Appear Smart in Meetings" and "How to be Successful Without Hurting Men's Feelings."

-- CNN's Lisa France contributed to this report

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Donald Trump was finally asked about Sarah Cooper's viral impersonations of him - CNN

The Incestuous Relationship Between Donald Trump and Fox News – The New York Times

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HOAXDonald Trump, Fox News and the Dangerous Distortion of TruthBy Brian Stelter

Just about everyone understands that Fox News is the cheerleader in chief for a TV-obsessed president. We know the channel traffics in misinformation. Weve seen hosts lob softball questions during their regular interviews with President Trump. Was anyone really surprised to see Sean Hannity warming up the crowd at a Trump rally?

Even so, it is easy to forget the full extent of the power that Fox News wields over the Trump administration. The channel has spawned some of the defining myths of this presidency and spurred Trump to adopt positions so hard-line as to be unpalatable even to congressional Republicans.

A small sampling of Foxs fictions: The caravan of terrorists and criminals supposedly marching north to invade America. The debunked conspiracy theory that a Democratic National Committee staffer was murdered for leaking campaign emails. The false claim that Ukraine, not Russia, was interfering in the 2016 election. Most recently, the deadly notion that the coronavirus was no worse than the seasonal flu.

One moment those falsehoods were being served up by Fox personalities. The next, the president was parroting them, embellishing them, amplifying them to his tens of millions of social media followers sometimes even plagiarizing Foxs parodical chyrons.

This is the value of Hoax, the new book by the CNN journalist Brian Stelter. It provides a thorough and damning exploration of the incestuous relationship between Trump and his favorite channel and of Foxs democracy-decaying role as a White House propaganda organ masquerading as conservative journalism.

Hoax is not likely to change many readers minds. Its basic thesis that Fox is powerful and toxic is already conventional wisdom, thanks in part to last years authoritative New York Times expos of Rupert Murdoch, whose company owns Fox. (Also, lets be honest, not many Fox fans are likely to read this book.) Even so, Stelters cataloging of the power and toxicity of Fox is an important addition to the growing library of books documenting this strange period in American history.

Foxs clout extends far beyond warping peoples understanding of the world. Stelter shows, for example, how spurious attacks by Fox hosts led Trump to fire cabinet secretaries and shut down the federal government. It is the type of old-school media muscle-flexing that would be impossible under a stronger president.

Stelter is at his best when he is explaining the underlying forces that led Fox to embrace propaganda. (Once upon a time, he writes, Fox had a journalistic culture.) Part of the reason is money. Fox News makes nearly $2 billion a year. Its intensely loyal audience allows the channel to charge more for advertising and in fees assessed by cable companies. Inciting viewers is crucial for keeping ratings high.

But there is another force at play. Many Fox employees view their job as catering to the president. Nothing gets people buzzing like a @realDonaldTrump tweet. Everyone at Fox could see that the way to get attention, to get promoted, to get ahead was to hitch a ride with Trump and never look back, Stelter writes. Some Fox journalists yes, they still exist! find this troubling. Very few have the guts to say so publicly.

Stelter traces the Trump-Fox synergies to 2011, when Roger Ailes, the channels longtime boss, gave Trump a weekly phone-in slot on the Fox & Friends morning show. The platform provided him a direct line into the brains of millions of Republican primary voters. For its part, Fox got someone whose penchant for bombast and demagogy proved a ratings winner.

That symbiosis inspired other Fox hosts, none more so than Hannity.

Pre-Trump, Hannity was in trouble. He was churning out bland, predictable screeds against President Obama. Some producers were considering pairing him with a female co-host to spice things up. In Trump, Hannity sensed a chance to turn things around. He glommed onto the ascendant candidate, stoking fears of rigged elections, violent immigrants and murderous Democrats, and pitching Trump as the panacea.

By the time Trump was sworn in, Hannitys entwinement with the new president went far beyond sycophantic interviews and concocted conspiracies. On a near-daily basis, Hannity served as a presidential sounding board, and Stelter amusingly describes the TV star as exhausted by the round-the-clock counseling.

Stelter is far from an impartial observer. He is the host of a CNN show about the media, and his regular criticisms of Fox have made him a popular punching bag for Hannity and others.

Early on in Hoax, Stelter acknowledges that he is shocked and angry by what is going on at Fox, and his emotions sometimes seem to get the better of him. He resorts to name-calling and spreads gratuitous gossip about Fox personalities, at one point quoting an unnamed sources assertion that a female anchor knew how to use sex to get ahead. Coming from a victim of Foxs smears, it feels a little retributive.

Stelter also glosses over the fact that CNN is guilty of its own, Fox-lite version of partisan pandering. Certain hosts tend to ask leading, left-leaning questions. Everyone is incentivized to say things that go viral; hyperbole trumps nuance. This is not new. Tucker Carlson who has emerged as Foxs leading promoter of racist lies rose to notoriety as a flamethrower on the CNN show Crossfire.

To be clear, there is no equivalence between the occasionally inaccurate and misleading liberal media, which generally owns up to its mistakes, and the highly productive factory of falsehoods at Fox. But in a polarized America, cable news networks reflect and to varying degrees contribute to that polarization.

My biggest disappointment with Hoax is that Stelter doesnt unpack the greatest mystery of Foxs success: Why is the channels unbridled demagogy so enticing? Do viewers realize theyre getting played? Do they care?

The book cites research that shows Fox viewers are especially likely to hold inaccurate views of important issues, but what is actually going on in their heads when they sit down in front of the TV? The closest Stelter comes to answering this question is when he asserts that for some, Fox is an identity. Almost a way of life.

That may be true, but I would be curious to hear from and better understand those viewers. There is no sign that Stelter spoke to any. Readers are left to look down on Foxs millions of loyalists as gullible members of an extremist cult. It is just the sort of easy-to-digest but unnuanced conclusion that would play well on cable news.

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The Incestuous Relationship Between Donald Trump and Fox News - The New York Times

The Desperation of Donald Trump Jr. – The Nation

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Donald Trump Jr. tapes his Republican National Convention speech in Washington, D.C. (Susan Walsh / AP Photo)

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Cocaine and Donald Trump Jr. started trending at the same time on Twitter on Monday night. This was a direct result of liberals freely and without facts theorizing about the presidents eldest son. These speculations are not just baseless but also unfair. There are far more human reasons for Trump Jr.s odd performance during the speech he gave at the RNC.Ad Policy

If you simply examine the text, the speech itself is perfunctory. Its a hard-right statement of the case for Donald Trumps reelection, in keeping with Trump Jr.s role as the family member who works hardest to enthuse the conservative base. His sister Ivanka, by contrast, is much more an emissary to the larger world and tries to put a moderate spin on Trumpism.

Heres a not uncharacteristic specimen from Juniors speech:

If Democrats really wanted to help minorities and underserved communities, instead of bowing to big money union bosses, theyd let parents choose what school is best for their kids. Theyd limit immigration to protect American workers. Theyd support the police who protect our neighborhoods. Theyd learn how to negotiate trade deals that prioritize Americas interest for a change. Theyd end the endless wars and quit sending our young people to solve problems in foreign lands. Theyd cut taxes for families and workers. Theyd create opportunity zones that drive investment into inner cities. In other words, if Democrats cared for the forgotten men and women of our country, theyd do exactly what President Trump is doing. America is the greatest country on earth, but my fathers entire worldview revolves around the idea that we can always do even better. Imagine the life you want to have, one with a great job, a beautiful home, a perfect family. MORE FROM Jeet Heer

Its only in the last sentence that Trump Jr. sounds a bit off, as if he were a radio station that suddenly shifted from Rush Limbaugh to Talking Heads. (And you may find yourself in a beautiful house / With a beautiful wife / And you may ask yourself, well / How did I get here?)

Whats odd about the speech is Trump Jr.s mannerisms, the wild, distant glaze in his eyes, his strange puppet-like hand gestures, the too-fast racing through the words.

The most likely explanation is existential dread. Trump Jr. has never been comfortable in public life; hes always tried to mimic his father (a more successful public speaker). Trump Jr. has always seemed more like a lost puppy than a grown man, someone who is never at ease with the world but anxiously trying to spy out the situation. Added to this natural discomfort are his likely worries about his fate if his father loses.

More than any of the other Trump progeny, Trump Jr. was implicated in Russiagate. As The New York Times reports:

Dons the only person who thinks theyre going to lose, says a prominent conservative activist who is in regular contact with him and other key members of Trumps political operation. Hes like, Were losing, dude, and were going to get really hurt when we lose. An electoral defeat in November, Trump Jr. fears, could result in federal prosecutions of Trump, his family and his political allies. He has told the conservative activist that he expects that a Biden administration will not participate in a peaceful transition and instead will shoot the prisoners.

We dont need cocaine to explain Trump Jr.s speech patterns. There are reasons more firmly rooted in his life.

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The Desperation of Donald Trump Jr. - The Nation

Mark Zuckerberg reportedly warned President Trump about the rise of Chinese tech firms – CNBC

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Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer and founder of Facebook Inc., arrives for a House Financial Services Committee hearing in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2019.

Andrew Harrer | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg warned President Donald Trump at a White House dinner last October that Chinese tech firms posed a direct threat to the U.S. business, according to The Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the matter.

Zuckerberg is said to have argued that clamping down on these firms should be more of a priority than reining in Facebook.

Around the time of the dinner, Zuckerberg warned U.S. officials and lawmakers that Chinese tech firms pose a risk to American values and the nation's technological dominance.The tech mogul is also said to have pointed out that TikTok, which is owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, doesn't share Facebook's commitment to freedom of expression.

Rep. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer who met Zuckerberg in September called for an inquiry into TikTok in October.A national security review was launched soon after, and Trump signed an executive order to ban the app this month citing national security concerns. TikTok confirmed over the weekend that it has launched a legal appeal against the ban.

TikTok presents major competition to Facebook's business. The social video-sharing app, which has boomed in popularity in recent months, competes directly with Instagram. Given the size of TikTok's audience, it's possible companies would rather pay for advertising space on TikTok than on Instagram or Facebook.

White House trade advisor Peter Navarro told CNBC's "Squawk Box" on Monday that Zuckerberg has "zero influence" when it comes to TikTok and that the report has "zero credibility."

A Facebook spokesperson told CNBC on Monday: "Mark has never advocated for a ban on TikTok. He has repeatedly said publicly that the biggest competitors to U.S. tech companies are Chinese companies, with values that don't align with democratic ideals like free speech.It's ludicrous to suggest that long-standing national security concerns raised by policymakers on both sides of the aisle have been shaped by Mark's statements alone."

Read The Wall Street Journal's full report here.

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Mark Zuckerberg reportedly warned President Trump about the rise of Chinese tech firms - CNBC

Privacy and Alt-Right Transhumanism in Hari Kunzru’s ‘Red Pill’ – PopMatters

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Red Pill Hari Kunzru

Knopf

September 2020

"You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe," Morpheus tells Neo in the Wachowski Bros.' 1999 film, The Matrix. "You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes."

It is with The Matrix that the term "red pill" entered our vocabulary and later memedom as we grew into our collective, online consciousness, but the dilemma between living in blissful ignorance and confronting the truth about reality is nothing new. Neither is the idea that our reality might be simulated, or at least manipulated. From Ren Descartes' Evil Demon to Gilbert Harman's Brain in a Vat, thought experiments have often sought to tease out whether it is possible to trust our perception of reality, to determine whether we can know with certainty that what we seem to experience with our senses is an accurate assessment of some larger truth.

It is this larger truth that the far-right, emboldened by the emergence of a reactionary political class all too willing to stoke the flames of panic and prejudice, have laid claim to in recent years, claiming also, in the process, the term "red pill" to describe their process of awakening to uncomfortable realities they accuse the left-leaning of not wanting to come face to face with. British-Indian novelist Hari Kunzru, author of five previous novels and PEN/Jean Stein Book Award finalist, addresses the intersection of such existential quandaries in his latest novel, aptly titled Red Pill.

The premise of Red Pill is simple enough; clichd, almost. The unnamed narrator, a struggling writer suffering a dry spell, embarks on a retreat to clear his mind and restore his creative faculties. Any overused tropes end here, though, as Kunzru weaves an intricate fabric from a multitude of seemingly disparate elements German romanticism, the legacy of the Third Reich, the Stasi, the European migrant crisis, the 2016 US presidential election all of which come together to create this haunted tale that merges questions of privacy, transhumanism, the political ascendency of the Right in Europe and the US, and moral responsibility, among others.

Water drop by qimono (Pixabay License / Pixabay)

Kunzru's protagonist a man of Indian heritage, married and father to a young daughter is awarded a fellowship at the Deuter Center in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee. If that latter name sounds familiar, it is because it served as the location of the eponymous 1942 Wannsee Conference, in which the implementation of the Final Solution to the Jewish Question was discussed a tragic and macabre past that weighs on the setting in much the same way the cold, stark, unforgiving weather does. Rather than use his fellowship to any industrious effect and develop his work on the concept of the self in lyric poetry, however, the narrator finds he is unable to fall in step with the center's rather aggressive communal work policy, which dictates that he must research and write in the presence of others.

In between calls with his wife back in Brooklyn and visits to the grave of Romantic poet Heinrich von Kleist, he binge-watches Blue Lives, a disturbingly violent police show that peppers its scenes of torture with obscure quotes, which the narrator believes might be intended as subtext.

Interestingly, the fictional Blue Lives airs at a time in which another nihilistic group fixated with the brutalization of the body is filming its own horrors for the world to see. Although ISIS is not explicitly mentioned by name, the footage from "jihadi propaganda" videos is referenced in one of several instances in which the narrator juxtaposes death with spectacle, the dignity (and what he assumes to be the inherent human right) of privacy with violent and humiliating invasiveness. Meanwhile, his initial topic of investigation the lyric "I" suffers from his frustrated attempts to secure for himself isolation and, if he is being honest with himself, plain old disinterest.

"Deep down I had no real desire to understand how lyric poets had historically experienced their subjectivity. I wasn't that interested," he admits. "It was a piece of wishfulness, an expression of my own desire to be raised above the pleasures and pains of my life, to be free from the reigning coercions of a toddler, the relentless financial pressure of living in New York. I wanted to remain alone with myself as inwardness. I wanted, in short, to take a break."

Photo by Advait Jayant on Unsplash

His desire for solitude and clarity is inexorably thwarted, and he happens upon surveillance footage that leads him to believe that residents at the center are being watched, even in (what ought to be) the privacy of their own rooms. It is thus that his paranoia at being spied upon and his preoccupation with the creator of Blue Lives, Anton, and the show's underlying meaning converge to form the catalyst for his own descent into madness, mirrored, no less, by the poet Kleist, who also "had a crisis, brought about by reading Kant, who taught that the human senses are unreliable, and so we are unable to apprehend the truth that lies beneath the surface of things."

He begs his cleaning lady, Monika, to tell him the truth about whether the center is spying on its residents, which leads to a rather long aside in the novel in which she recounts her terrible experiences at the hands of the Stasi, little assuaging his general sense of malaise and imminent doom.

The world events that unfold around the narrator are no more helpful at staying this spiral into psychosis. At the very outset of the novel, he acknowledges the role of chance in determining whether one is born into wealth or war, comfort or mortal struggle, also acknowledging the fragility of one's current circumstances, tenuous and unpredictable. "Our very happiness made me uneasy," he confesses. "It was a time when the media was full of images of children hurt and displaced by war. I frequently found myself hunched over my laptop, my eyes welling with tears. I was distressed by what I saw, but also haunted by a more selfish question: if the world changed, would I be able to protect my family? Could I scale the fence with my little girl on my shoulders? Would I be able to keep hold of my wife's hand as the rubber boat overturned? Our life together was fragile. One day something would break."

His position as a member of an ethnic minority in a white man's world compounds this anxiety, which he sees reflected in a refugee father and daughter duo he meets at different intervals in the novel and desperately longs to help in some way. "It's always people like us who go first," he tells his wife.

When the narrator at last meets Anton, he is finally afforded the opportunity to ask the burning questions that have been consuming his thoughts only the answers he receives are far from placating. His obsession becomes manic, and he follows the mind behind the show across countries, refusing to accept the man's destructive vision of a future in which humankind is divided into two groups: one that fuses with technology to transcend animal limitations an updated version of the Nazi take on Nietzsche's bermensch and the other that is destined to slavery in service of the first.

Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

Kunzru accomplishes several noteworthy things with Red Pill, not the least of which is following nihilistic philosophies (even those that do not designate themselves as such but instead, claim to hold a utopian vision for the future that involves culling 'undesirable' elements) to their logical endpoint. In striving to fabricate an artificial, 'perfectionist' version of ourselves, we ironically (or predictably, for anyone who is familiar with history) expose the very worst in our nature.

Kunzru also addresses the bedrock humanity hits in stretching philosophy that questions reality to the extent it renders any cooperation based on that reality impossible to its snapping point. If we cannot agree on basic premises and inalienable rights, what then?

The mental crisis that ensues from having the foundations of one's belief system shattered is likewise accurately depicted: the world becomes unrecognizable, a simulation as it were. "The streetscape wasn't real. The sidewalk, the passers-by, the cars, the clouds in the sky, all were elements in a giant simulation. The sunlight was not sunlight but code."

The author excels in capturing the geist in alt-right circles, down to the language used. "Cultural Marxism has filled your brain with worms," Anton tells the narrator, after the latter confronts the Blue Lives creator and accuses him of being on the wrong side of history with his morbid masterplan for the future. Using a term favored by conspiracy theorists who allege that progressives are using psychological manipulation to topple the natural order of the world, Anton essentially equates the narrator's opposition to the erosion of basic human values with erosion of the values he personally believes to be enlightened. For that is what cultural Marxists do, according to the alt-right: They promote atheism, gay rights, feminism, all through the humanities faculties in universities and the media and all at the expense of the status quo.

Noteworthy is the Nazi preoccupation with the thinkers of the Frankfurt School, most of whom were Jewish. Another gem of an exchange between narrator and Anton: "Why are you promoting a future in which some people are treated like raw material? That's a disgusting vision," the narrator says, to which Anton responds, laughing: "I'm sorry it gives you sad feels."

Perhaps the most remarkable features of this novel are its relevance to current events and the questions it raises with regard to the ethical frameworks we take for granted and within which we operate. If "privacy is the exclusive property of the gods," as the narrator posits, is the impending class struggle between spies and those who are spied upon? Where will our steady handover of privacy in exchange for security lead to down the road?

If, again, privacy is the demarcating factor between the ruling and subordinate classes, what does it say about refugees on dinghies in the Mediterranean, whose lives and bodies are battlegrounds for political figures to build their platforms on? Is little Alan Kurdi, lying face down on a beach in Turkey, the ultimate spectacle, the ultimate "mockery of human dignity" that is simultaneously relished as a symbol, as the sacrificial animal on which humanity's sins may be pinned, and disdained for its inconvenience?

In the novel, as in reality, the very real flesh-and-blood human lives of refugee father and daughter occupy a space in the background as the theoretical tug of war between Anton and the narrator occupies the foreground, and the parallels between a past that is never too far behind and a present that threatens to rouse those ugly ghosts are all too evident.

Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog [By Caspar David Friedrich - The photographic reproduction was done by Cybershot800i. (Diff). Public Domain / Wikipedia]

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Privacy and Alt-Right Transhumanism in Hari Kunzru's 'Red Pill' - PopMatters

The RNC is turning into one long right-wing Youtube video – Business Insider – Business Insider

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Watching the Republican National Convention has felt like falling into an algorithmically-driven rabbit hole of right-wing YouTube.

Instead of relying on former presidents or party nominees to give impassioned speeches on conservative values and policies, the RNC has been dominated by Trump-supporting culture warriors whose rhetoric sounds eerily similar to online discourse pushed by right-of-center (some decidedly far-right) social media stars.

The four-day political pageant even kicked off Monday night with a speech by a prominent conservative YouTuber, Charlie Kirk.

The 26-year-old Turning Point USA co-founder with close ties to the Trump White House called the president the "bodyguard of Western civilization." Whatever Kirk meant by "Western civilization" isn't exactly clear, but the term is an obsession of right-wing YouTubers like Dennis Prager, "Intellectual Dark Web" celebrities like Jordan Peterson, and the recently banned by YouTube alt-right philosopher Stefan Molyneux.

When Georgia State Rep. Vernon Jones spoke at the RNC of the Democrats' keeping Black people on their "mental plantation," I felt like I was listening to Candace Owens, the YouTube star and Trump favorite who started "Blexit" to convince Black people to abandon the Democratic Party.

Patrica and Mark McCloskey best known for drawing their guns on Black Lives Matter protesters outside their St. Louis home called congressional candidate and protest organizer Cori Bush a "Marxist liberal activist" during their RNC speech. Granted, Bush is a Democratic Socialist, but the McCloskey's deliberate and repeated invocation of Marx made me think of "cultural Marxism" an obsession of conspiracy theorists like former InfoWars editor-at-large Paul Joseph Watson.

Right-wing YouTubers like Ben Shapiro are positively obsessed with opposing left-wingers' goal of "equality of outcome" rather than "equality of opportunity." The latter phrase made it into both Jon Voight's RNC intro narration and Tiffany Trump's Tuesday night speech.

There's nothing particularly novel about hearing these things at an overtly partisan and propagandistic event. Conservatives don't like socialism, they like their "culture," and they can't understand why more Black people won't vote for them.

What's striking is how these phrases, which are repeated like mantras on right-wing YouTube, have made it to the big kids' table at the RNC.

One reason for YouTube rhetoric reaching prime-time could be that under Trump, the GOP's long flirtation with anti-intellectualism went into high gear. Thoughtful, principled Republicans were purged as "Never Trump cuck-RINOs." All that remains are Trump sycophants and a leader who openly flirts with dangerous online conspiracy theories like QAnon.

Filling the void are the conservative YouTubers, whose audiences are legion, and who are directed deeper into extreme content both by the site's algorithm and by the communities formed around these channels.

Hearing these phrases and bugaboos sprinkled throughout RNC speeches feels in some sense like a callback to their original sources. And they may be deliberate or inadvertent signals to young conservatives.

The message: We know who the conservative thought leaders are in the Trump era, and we watch their videos, too.

This is an opinion column. The thoughts expressed are those of the author(s).

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The RNC is turning into one long right-wing Youtube video - Business Insider - Business Insider

Then and now – Counterpoint – ABC News

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75 years after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki what is the nuclear future of the world? Henry Sokolski says that ' the answer is unclear. Military advances in precision guidance and targeting are making city busting (the massive murder of innocents) far less attractive or necessary. Yet for relatively small, weak states that lack such non-nuclear options, acquiring and using the bomb may remain attractive no matter what advanced states might do'. He explains who has weapons, who wants them and why and suggests how we can move forward so that 'indiscriminate attacks like Hiroshima' can become 'an ever more distant memory'.

Then (at 15 mins) do the woke left and the alt-right have more in common than they might think? Zaid Jilani believes so. He argues that it is the 'same puritanical spirit that prevailed during the heyday of the Moral Majority, except that its been marshalled in service of a different faith'. He tells us about a new study that examines the 'link between political attitudes and the so-called three Dark Triad personality traits: Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy'. The conclusions so far? 'Notwithstanding their diametrically opposed political postures, both hard Left and hard Right seem disproportionately populated by individuals who are impelled to control others behaviour, and draw attention to themselves'.

Also (at 25 mins) Amanda gets on her soapbox to rant about positive thought.

Then (at 27 mins) who should you believe? An expert or someone on twitter? The person who says they have all of the answers or the person who doesn't have the answer right now? Dr Andrew Little argues that 'the rise of social media means that experts willing to share their hard-won knowledge have never been more accessible to the public. So, one might think that communication between experts and decision-makers should be as good as, or better than, ever. But this is not the case'. So how do we block out the noise and how can we 'change the way that we relate to experts, not just listening to the loudest and most confident voices, but to those with a track record of only claiming as far as the evidence will take them, and a willingness to say I dont know'.

Finally (at 40 mins) how can we hear what's happening deep in a forest or in the middle of a wasteland? Adam Welz explains that 'a recent, steep drop in the price of recording equipment and the rapidly expanding capabilities of user-friendly artificial intelligence algorithms are heralding an era of big natural audio data. One key use of biological acoustic monitoring is tracking what is known as defaunation, the hard-to-detect decline of animals like birds and monkeys from habitat that appears intact for example, animals shot and trapped by poachers in an intact forest'. He tells us how it works and where it is and how it is' rapidly expanding scientists ability to understand ecosystems by listening to them'.

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Then and now - Counterpoint - ABC News

Kelly Marie Tran will take over the lead role in Disney’s upcoming Raya and the Last Dragon – SYFY WIRE

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Raya and the Last Dragon, Disney's upcoming animated film first announced last August, has gone through some behind-the-scenes shake-ups after being delayed alongside PIxar'sSoul. Now the Southeast Asia-inspired movie (focused on the cultures ofVietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia, and the Philippines) has new directors, a new co-writer, and one exciting new lead Kelly Marie Tran to help usher in this story of one girl and her quest to find the last of a legendary species.

According to EW, there's a lot of newness coming from the film, which looks toreplaceCassie Steele withStar Wars actress Tran in the title role. The other part of the title (that whole "last dragon" thing) will still be tackled byAwkwafina, who'll be playing Sisu. She'll be in human form at first, needing Raya to help her return to full-on fire-breathing reptile of legend. Together, the pair will need to stop baddie Druun. There's also a secret third female lead that the filmmakers aren't divulging. And speaking of filmmakers, there's a lot of them.

Helming this feat will be directorsDon Hall (Moana) andCarlos Lpez Estrada (Blindspotting), co-directorsPaul Briggs and John Ripa (Frozen), and writersQui Nguyen andAdele Lim. It takes a village - and hopefully one that respects dragons rather than fears them. The film is underway with everyone working from home, but they're mostly still excited about landing Tran as the new lead.

I'm never going to forget it, Lpez Estrada said of her audition. I think [Don and I] rode in the car together, and we were quiet, looking at each other and nodding our heads just being like, Yep, yep, yep. Kelly's perfect.'"

We had this little dramatic moment; it was written as a few lines. And I remember her going, Hey, I have some ideas because this is normally how I would say this or I have some questions. Do you mind if I tried it a little bit differently? Lpez Estrada explained. She went for it, improvised for a minute, and had us all in tears. We changed the scene and reblocked the animation so that it would follow what Kelly did that day because she just clicked on something that was so much bigger than anything we had imagined.

Hall's take? "She is Raya just her buoyancy and her positivity, but yet there's a strength as well to Kelly and the character." And yes, she's a Disney princess (daughters of chiefs count, right?). She is someone who is technically a princess but I think that what's really cool about this project, about this character, specifically is that everyone's trying to flip the narrative on what it means to be a princess, Tran said. Raya is totally a warrior. When she was a kid, she was excited to get her sword. And she grows up to be a really badass, gritty warrior and can really take care of herself.

Take a look at Raya and her ride, Tuk Tuk, below in the first image from the film:

Raya and the Last Dragonheads to theaters onMarch 12, 2021.

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Kelly Marie Tran will take over the lead role in Disney's upcoming Raya and the Last Dragon - SYFY WIRE

Opinion: Danger of confusing people with ideas – The Appalachian Online

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Twitter user @sadkimberly tweeted Aug. 20:

an ISU professor put on there [SIC] syllabus If you are racist or homophobic on purpose i will dismiss you from class and republicans are literally calling for her to be fired. and youre going to tell me that republicans arent shit human beings. okay.

The takeaway from this tweet is that Republicans are bad people. This sentiment is echoed on both sides of the political spectrum, with Republican pundits such as Jesse Watters saying Democrats have aligned themselves with looters, arsonists, and homicidal maniacs. While democratically leaning news sites such as Slate have accused republicans of being thugs and Nazis. This rhetoric from major news organizations has a massive effect on the average persons view of their political opposites and is a cause for the hatred that many Americans have for their fellow citizens.

The idea is not that Republican or Democratic ideals are bad. No, the people who harbor these ideals are. A poll done by Axios in 2018 found that 23% of Republicans would describe Democrats as evil, and 21% of Democrats feel the same about Republicans. Some recognize the danger and self-defeating nature of this attitude, but not the many proponents of it. If those looking for support on the other side of the aisle wish to find it, then this attitude must change.

Social media platforms are inherently provocative. They reward and actively encourage controversy. Making people angry gets likes, retweets and Monday night cable TV views. Controversy is an unfortunate reality of selling news.

However, if this attitude is allowed to become the standard by which we treat each other the attitude that the other sides people are the problem and not their views it removes all opportunities for discourse. If someone writes off their political adversary as a bad person, someone who is so corrupted by their political ideals that changing their mind is out of the question, what can they do? They cannot sit down and discuss their differences because it would inevitably devolve into violence.++

Some would blame President Donald Trump for this polarization. While he shares some blame, this issue is too complicated to fault one person. This division does not go away with Trump. It is an American problem and Trump is a side effect, not the cause. If we continue to correlate the character of people with their political disposition, we will find ourselves at a place of no return. There, the only answer to our problem is violence against our fellow citizens, as has already been the case in some Black Lives Matter demonstrations, such as the ones in Seattle, as well as alt-right protests like in Charlottesville, Virginia.

These situations represent the extreme, not the norm. But, if the rhetoric of hating the people and not their ideas continues, then they may become the norm. The issue we have is with each other. So how do we fix it? A simple start would be to stop condemning the other sides supporters on social media and condemn their ideals instead. You can change a persons opinions. But if we trap ourselves in the notion that the oppositions people living, breathing, loving, human beings are the problem, then there is no longer room for conversation.

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Opinion: Danger of confusing people with ideas - The Appalachian Online

The growing illiberalism of liberalism | Commentaries – St. Louis Jewish Light

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In my earlier life I was a liberal, drawn by liberalisms traditional focus on individual liberty, open-mindedness and other such values. However, as I explained in my 2002 Class Warfare book: All the while as I was aging, I was becoming more and more alienated from the left. It is not that I have abandoned liberalism. Rather, liberalism has abandoned me.

That was 2002. The illiberalism of liberalism has only exacerbated since, todays liberalism being unrecognizable from its roots.

A common narrative the liberal media promote these days is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian, if not outright fascist. We hear speculation that he may refuse to leave the White House if defeated in November, that he has sent jackbooted armed troops into cities such as Portland, Oregon to impose law and order, that he is using executive orders to bypass Congress and that he exhibits other manifestations of dictatorship.

I am not a fan of Trump. However, I would argue that such characterizations of Trump are wildly exaggerated and, in any case, are surely no worse than the kind of illiberalism that the Democratic Party and its brand of liberalism now represent.

I am not just talking about Democratic proposals by Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other high-profile party figures to triple the size of the federal budget, even though the growth of Big Government itself is a recipe for more, not less, regulation and coercion over how we live our lives.

No, I am more concerned about the threat to our most precious liberties, particularly free speech, posed by the Left not only through government restrictions (should the Democrats take control of both the executive and legislative branches) but also through the larger cultural institutions it already controls (academia, Hollywood, media and big tech).

There is no question that liberals now dominate the latter sectors of American society, from Ivy League professoriates to entertainment industry celebrities to most newsrooms to the corporate boards of Apple, Google, Twitter and Microsoft. And there is no question as well that these elites who shape our national conversations about race and all other matters have had a negative effect on free expression and tolerance for viewpoint diversity, manifested by their language policing related to political correctness, speech codes, safe spaces, microaggressions, trigger warnings and, most recently, the cancel culture.

Although right-wingers at times can be a source of curbs on free speech, the restrictions today are coming mostly from the left.

A new CATO Institute survey finds that self-censorship is on the rise in the United States as nearly two-thirds 63% of Americans say the political climate these days prevents them from saying things they believe because others might find them offensive.

Interestingly, only the far left feels comfortable expressing their views in the current environment. The CATO study says that strong liberals stand out as the only political group who feel they can express themselves. A majority of centrist liberals (52%), moderates (64%) and especially conservatives (77%) feel they have to self-censor. In other words, it is not some alt-right fringe group that is being silenced, but a majority of the country.

Even thoughtful liberals such as Steven Pinker of Harvard have conceded there is a problem. He said at a talk he gave in St. Louis that academias obsession with diversity goes only so far, as universities typically want students and faculty who look different but think alike, that is, subscribe to liberal orthodoxy.

Pinker was among more than 150 prominent intellectuals (including J.K. Rowling, Gloria Steinem and Gerald Early) who signed A Letter on Justice and Open Debate that appeared in Harpers Magazine on July 7, protesting that a well-intentioned call for racial and social justice has intensified a new set of moral attitudes that tend to weaken our norms of open debate and toleration of differences in favor of ideological conformity. The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted.

Among the signees of the letter was Bari Weiss, then an opinion writer for The New York Times, who subsequently resigned her position in protest of what she called the new McCarthyism at the paper that marginalizes anyone who dares to take a centrist or conservative viewpoint for example, the backlash she experienced from co-workers in writing pro-Israel articles.

In her letter of resignation, Weiss blasted the Times for no longer honoring founder Adolph Ochs famous 1896 statement: to [provide] a forum for the consideration of all questions of public importance, and to that end to invite intelligent discussion from all shades of opinion.

Weisss colleague at the Times, Bret Stephens, echoed her concerns in his June 12 op-ed, in which he lamented how the predominantly left-leaning newsroom was successful in forcing the resignation of the opinion editor who had published a piece by U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton, calling for federal troops to be used in cities experiencing violent protests.

Stephens wrote: Tom Cotton speaks for a large part of this country. Will we not listen? There is a ferocious intellectual intolerance sweeping the country and much of the journalistic establishment with it. Contrary opinions arent just wrong but unworthy of discussion.

An average person must be wary today of uttering even the most seemingly innocuous phrase, such as all lives matter, lest he be called a racist or worse. Examples abound of restrictions on speech that can only be called insane. To cite just a few:

Janet Napolitano, Secretary of Homeland Security in former President Barack Obamas administration, who just stepped down as president of the University of California, instructed faculty to avoid making certain statements she considered to be microaggressions, which included, I believe the most qualified person should get the job.

I attended a workshop at University of Missouri-St. Louis in which an education professor said one should never ask, Where are you from? when attempting to engage a stranger in conversation.

A UCLA professor named William Peris was condemned by college administrators for reading to his class the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.s Letter From a Birmingham Jail during a lecture on racism because it included the n-word.

Such speech is considered unacceptable today. Yet one can say far more questionable, even outlandish, things if it has the imprimatur of the left.

There is no better example than the National Museum of African American History and Culture recently featuring on its website a Whiteness chart claiming that such values as hard work is the key to success, self-reliance, be polite, emphasis on scientific method, objective, rational linear thinking and the nuclear family: father, mother, 2.3 children is the ideal social unit exemplify white culture and supremacy and thus are racist.

As part of cancel culture, the left has been emboldened not only to take down (legally or illegally) statues of Columbus and others considered expressions of an evil past, but to eliminate even more recent institutions that were established precisely to promote a more just society. There is perhaps no more outlandish idea than that floated by New York Times classical music critic Anthony Tommasini (July 16), who argued for an end to behind the curtain blind auditions in hiring symphony musicians, because they have failed to produce enough diversity never mind one cannot imagine a fairer selection process.

Are we allowed to say Tommasinis argument is absurd? One can only hope liberalism recovers its senses.

J. Martin Rochester, Curators Distinguished Teaching Professor of Political Science Emeritus at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, is the author of 10 books on international and American politics.

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The growing illiberalism of liberalism | Commentaries - St. Louis Jewish Light

Contributing writer discusses parallels between rise of Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Boogaloo movement in US – The College Reporter

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By Max Sano || Contributing Writer

The revolution will live in Lebanon

As a Lebanese-American, I noticed that the unrest and instability in Lebanon over the last year has reached a peak that has not been seen since the end of the civil war in 1989. Leading Shiate political parties Amal and Hezbollah have blamed the protests on foreign intervention rather than addressing the divisions themselves. This misinformation campaign has led party followers to attack and suppress the protests.

Last fall, all seventeen factions of society came together to protest long-standing government inaction, corrupt institutions, and limited public services such as food, water, electricity, and internet access. What started with opposition to a tax on Whats App messages burgeoned into a popular grassroots movement throughout the nation as it rallied for a new political system.

In a similar way, American citizens are uniting under the Black Lives Matter movement as the national consciousness focuses on police brutality, community investment, police divestment, and racial discrimination. What began as a public outcry against the grotesque murders of Breonna Taylor, Ahmoud Arbery, and George Floyd erupted into mass demonstrations demanding institutional reform to remedy the systemic and historic injustices.

Both Americans and Lebanese are at a crossroads in establishing their national identity. Will we continue to remain stagnant with our prejudices, or can we learn to take a step back and avoid this unnecessary and endless cycle of violence?

My father has always known Lebanon to be in a constant upheaval and violence. He was born in Beirut in 1970, several years before the conflict with Iran along the southern border erupted into a full-scale civil war. Hezbollah, originally a Shiate spiritual movement among the working class, turned into a paramilitary organization that enforced Lebanese sovereignty against Israeli forces and posed domestic threats.

(My grandfather had gambled with moving to Lebanon from Syria just a few years beforehand. He was born in Damascus and grew up to be a banker and an economic advisor to the United Arab Republic a political experiment uniting Syria, Egypt and Gaza under a centralized socialist republic model from 1958 to 1961.)

I cannot help but worry that the past decades of chaos in Lebanon could be the United States future as Americans lose faith in our institutions: infrastructure, law enforcement, media, health care, mass transit, public education, and Congress. Rather than discussing the merits of reopening schedules and balancing economic and moral responsibilities, American citizens and policymakers squabble over whether or not the crisis itself exists.

Even more troubling is the rise of right-wing, anti-government militias like the Boogaloo movement that attack law enforcement and incite violence during peaceful BLM protests in order to take advantage of the chaos and serve the white supremacist agenda. Meanwhile, the problems do not go away and people continue to die.

The same phenomenon has occurred in Lebanon, yet to a more eerie end, through the rise and consolidation of Hezbollah. Many Lebanese view Hezbollah, which expanded to have a political wing after the civil war, as crucial to national security. Fast forward to today, Hezbollahs paramilitary presence overpowers that of the Lebanese army and they have representation in the cabinet and parliament. The Hariri government could not act in the peoples best interest because many of the leading cabinet members were implicated in the civil war, and Hezbollahs policy reigns supreme due to political and logistical support from Syria and Iran.

Why is this happening? Richard Spencer, founder of the alternative right movement in the United States, proves this point: I dont think the country will come together and I dont want it to. Maybe we cant be a nation anymore. I believe that the American alt-right and Hezbollah use increasingly violent and drastic methods to maintain their power, because they understand the power of plurality and multiculturalism. They fear the progressive trends of the younger generation, and so they capitalize on the existing divisions even if they are increasingly obsolete, as is the case for Lebanon.

Even though the Boogaloo movement may not lead to the hostile takeover of the American government and political process, their innate violence is something that concerns me, as did a small militia in southern Lebanon that developed into an international paramilitary and political organization. By reestablishing faith in institutions, we can prevent this. Misinformation campaigns become impossible when an engaged citizenry can see through the noise.

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Contributing writer discusses parallels between rise of Lebanon's Hezbollah and Boogaloo movement in US - The College Reporter

Why This Pro-Life Conservative Is Voting for Biden – The Bulwark

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Since I announced publicly that I will be voting for Joe Biden in November, Ive received a few communications from puzzled readers. How can you, a supposedly pro-life woman, support someone who believes in killing babies? Others say, What do you not like about Trumps record? The tax cuts? The record jobs numbers? The conservative judges? One reader summed things up with I used to like you.

I understand. I feel the same way about many people myself.

I will try to respond for the sake of those who, like me, find themselves alienated from the Republican Party despite some policy agreements with the Trump administration.

Lets start with abortion. I have been pro-life my entire adult life. I havent changed. I continue to find the practice abhorrent, and will persist in trying to persuade others. But Ive noticed a tendency among pro-life conservatives to forgive absolutely everything else if a politician expresses the right views on abortion. This is a mirror image of the left, as we saw when Bill Clinton was accused of sexual misconduct. Many liberals were willing to overlook his gross behavior toward women in the name of preserving abortion rights. Call it abortion washing. Both sides do it.

Abortion washing shuts down moral reflection. Rather than do the work of analyzing how one good thing weighs in the balance against other considerations, abortion washing permits the brain to snap shut, the conscience to put its feet up.

My views on abortion cant be severed from the rest of my worldview. I oppose abortion because its morally wrong. I understand that women are sometimes plunged into terrible life crises by unplanned pregnancies, which is why I do what I can to provide help for them. Crisis pregnancies can present agonizing choices, but I dont think killing is an acceptable solution because life is sacred.

That doesnt settle the matter of how to place abortion within the matrix of factors that go into voting. There are prudential considerations. While I would prefer to vote for someone who upholds the right to life, Ive never believed that electing presidents who agree with me will lead to dramatic changes in abortion law, nor is the law itself the only way to discourage abortion. The number of abortions has been declining steadily since 1981. It dropped during Republican presidencies and during Democratic presidencies, and now stands below the rate in 1973, when Roe v. Wade was decided and when abortion was illegal in 44 states.

The Supreme Court, despite Republican appointments, has side-stepped many opportunities to reverse Roe. As David French noted, Justices Sandra Day OConnor, Anthony Kennedy, and David Souter were harsh critics of the decision, but chose, on the bench, to vote for continuity. So if the logic is to support presidents based on the kind of Supreme Court nominees they will choose, the chances that any particular appointment will have the effect of changing the law seem remote.

It has always been my hope to change peoples hearts, so that this cruel practicelike slavery, torture, and mutilationcan be put (mostly) behind us.

Being pro-life is part of an overall approach to ethical questions. Its wrong to take innocent life. But other things are immoral too. Its also wrong to swindle people, to degrade and demonize, to incite violence, to bully, and while were at it, to steal, to bear false witness, to commit adultery, and to covet. I dont think Trump has committed murder, and he seems to have honored his parents (though perhaps in the wrong way). But as for the other eight of the 10 commandments, Donald Trump has flagrantly, even proudly violated them all, and encouraged his followers to regard his absence of conscience as strength.

Donald Trump is a daily, even hourly, assault on the very idea of morality, even as he obliterates truth. His influence is like sulphuric acid on our civic bonds. His cruelty is contagious. Remember how he mocked a handicapped reporter in 2016? His defenders either denied the obvious facts, or insisted that, while Trump himself might be politically incorrect, his supporters wouldnt be influenced by that aspect of his character.

Alas, they are. Consider the incredibly moving moment during the Democratic National Convention when youngBraydon Harrington, who struggles with stuttering, introduced Joe Biden. That night, anAtlanticeditor with the same affliction tweeted This is what stutterers face every day. Im in awe of Braydons courage and resolve. But Austin Ruse, author ofThe Catholic Case for Trump,tweeted his doubts that Biden ever stuttered, and replied to another comment with,W-w-w-w-w-w-what?

Casual cruelty has become the fashion for many Republicans. Trump acolytes have adopted the mob-boss style that Trump brought to the Oval Office. When former Trump lawyer/fixer Michael Cohen was preparing to testify before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Rep. Matt Gaetz, tweeted, Hey @MichaelCohen212 Do your wife & father-in-law know about your girlfriends? Maybe tonight would be a good time for that chat. I wonder if shell remain faithful when youre in prison. Shes about to learn a lot. (Gaetz was rebuked by the House Ethics Committee for this last week.)

Even U.S. senators and cabinet secretaries have aped Trumps bullying tactics. During Trumps impeachment trial, Senator Rand Paul (R., KY) repeatedly badgered Chief Justice John Roberts to reveal the name of the whistleblowerin violation of the spirit of whistleblower protection statutes, and despite knowing that it might endanger that persons safety. When Roberts declined, Paul revealed the name himself on the Senate floor. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo permitted his aggression free reign when NPRs Mary Louise Kelly asked a question he didnt like, screaming profanity at her. Sen. Martha McSally, perhaps sensing that the new Republican chic is rudeness, wheeled on a CNN reporter and called him a liberal hack before you could say Trumpian. And Ted Cruz, self-styled constitutional conservative, has made a show of joining the social media group Parler, which hosts alt-right and other unsavory characters, the better to own Twitter.

It isnt just a matter of style. At Donald Trumps order, thousands of children, including hundreds under the age of four, were forcibly separated from their parents at the border. Pro-lifers are tender-hearted about the most vulnerable members of society. So images like this must stir something. Separating children from their parents is a barbaric act. In the crush of outrages over the past three and a half years, it has gotten swallowed up, but the horror of what was done in our name should never be forgotten.

All of this is familiar to Trump supporters, along with the fine people in Charlottesville, the mocking of reporters for wearing face masks, the Joe-Scarborough-is-a murderer intimations, the Lafayette Park tear gas, denying the legitimacy of elections, the bleach enemas, and on and on. They accept it. Some Trump supporters genuinely hate Trumps imbecilic tweets and disordered personality. But they will vote for him because they believe that the left is far worse.

Gaetz, characteristically subtle, claimed at the RNC that Biden and Democrats will disarm you, empty the prisons, lock you in your home, and invite MS-13 to live next door. And the defunded police arent on their way.

Writing in Commentary, Abe Greenwald proclaims that the violence following George Floyds death is the start of a revolution. Echoing the alarm of the Flight 93 election argument from 2016, he writes, The battle for the survival of the United States of America is upon us. Speaker after speaker at the Republican National Convention has sounded the same theme. The left is on the march. Violent mobs are coming for your suburban home. If you dont vote for Trump, Antifa will control your town council, AOC will confiscate your guns, and Al Sharpton will dismantle the police.

Funny, but I could have sworn that the Democratic Party nominated Joe Biden last week, not Alexandria Ocasio Cortez or Bernie Sanders.

Look, there are extremists on the left, and the Democratic Party has a weakness for not wishing to call them out. Democrats do the truth and themselves no favors by attempting to gloss over the looting, arson, and vandalism that have persisted in Portland, Chicago, and other cities throughout the summer. And they insult the millions of peaceful protesters who expressed the conscience of the nation by failing to distinguish them from criminals who used the opportunity to pillage and destroy.

Some of the extremists are not on the streets, but on the editorial boards of leading newspapers, on university faculties, and in other positions of cultural influence.

But its dishonest, and frankly, a bit hysterical to attempt to hang every sin of the left around Joe Bidens neck. Hes no radical, and the party that nominated him showed that its centrist core was stronger than its extremist wing.

Biden denounced violence in cities, saying:

The vast majority of the protests have been peaceful. Anyone who burns or pillages should be arrested. They are a problem for society and they make a mockery of what the march is all about. They should be tried, arrested and put in jail.

As for calls to defund the police, Biden kept his balance.

Absolutely not. I do not support [defunding the police] and I never have. What I support is strong and serious reform of police departments which most serious police officers in the country support. And we should have transparency in what in fact occurs within police departments as it relates to accusations of brutality or violating peoples rights.

In the wake of renewed violence following yet another horrific police shooting, this time in Kenosha, Wisconsin, Biden repeated this message, expressing deep sympathy for Jacob Blake and his family, outrage at what happened, and also condemnation of violence, saying burning down communities is not protest, its needless violence . . . Thats wrong. Biden struck exactly the right tone.

The argument that the left is worse doesnt persuade me. Strange as it is to write those words after 30 plus years as a conservative columnist, I have to say that when you compare the state of the two major parties today, the Republicans are more frightening.

It is the Republican party that has officially become a personality cult, declaring that it will not adopt a platform but will simply follow whatever Trump dictates. It is the Republican party that pretends that COVID-19 will magically disappear. It is the Republican party that has elevated a series of criminals and grifters including Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, Roy Moore, Steve Bannon, Wayne LaPierre, Rudy Giuliani, Jerry Falwell, Jr., and Roger Stone. It is the Republican party that shamefully declined to uphold the Constitution when Trump diverted funds to his border wall. It is the Republican party that has become truth-optional. And it is the Republican party that now opens its arms to adherents of a deranged but nonetheless dangerous new cult called QAnon, which a (defeated) Republican called mental gonorrhea, and which in December, 2016, inspired a man to open fire in a pizza parlor in Washington, D.C., as part of a self investigation. The FBI has designated QAnon a domestic terror threat, yet minority leader Kevin McCarthy has committed to providing committee assignments to Marjorie Taylor Greene, should she be elected in November

There is putrefaction where the Republican partys essence should be, and appointing pro-life judges cannot mask the stench. So this conservative is voting for the Democrats. Will the GOP reform? I hope so. But my priority isnt trying to heal the Republican party. Its trying to heal the country.

Update, August 27, 2020, 10:29 a.m.: Austin Ruse claims that his tweet was not meant to mock Braydon Harrington, but was meant to express doubts that Joe Biden ever stuttered.

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Why This Pro-Life Conservative Is Voting for Biden - The Bulwark

Good Afternoon, News: Cops Turn Blind Eye to Violent Right Wingers, Falwell (and KellyAnne) Resign, and a Black Wisconsin Man Shot in the Back by…

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Proud Boys battle with Portland protesters on Saturday, August 22. Justin Katigbak

Here's your daily roundup of all the latest local and national news. (Like our coverage? Please consider making a recurring contribution to the Mercury to keep it comin'!)

ICYMI, on Saturday a bunch of alt-right yahoos from Patriot Prayer and the Proud Boys battled counter-protesters as Portland Police made disturbing (and obviously butt-hurt) excuses for refusing to get involved. But don't fret, cop supporters! They showed up in droves to violently put down an anti-police brutality protest on Sunday night. (It's almost as if they're begging to be defunded!) Hot shot contributor Suzette Smith has the details.

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Four Portland protesters have filed a federal lawsuit against Acting DHS Director Chad "CHAD!" Wolf and 200 officers for injuries sustained from the feds' copious use of tear gas and impact munitions on peaceful demonstrators.

The Indian Creek fire in Oregon has burned close to 50,000 acres so far, and is currently only 20 percent contained.

Related: Oregon prisoners are being paid under $10 to fight the many blazes across the state, and our Blair Stenvick has more.

The Oregon Health Authority today reported 220 new positive cases of coronavirus in the state, and three additional deaths. Disturbingly, the OHA also reported on Saturday that a 34-year-old Multnomah County woman had died of the virus even though she had no underlying health conditions. WASH YA DAMN HANDS, WEAR YA DAMN MASK, KEEP YA DAMN DISTANCE.

According to a report from the AP, the governors of several states (including Oregon and Washington) were influenced by business interestssome of whom were very self-servingwhen coming up with state mandates that are being used to combat COVID-19.

IN NATIONAL NEWS:

Wisconsin's governor has called out the National Guard to respond to absolutely righteous protests following the despicable police shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man who was shot seven times in the back in plain view of his three children.

President Trump accepted his corrupt party's nomination to run against Joe Biden in November today, while also making sure to note that if he loses, it'll probably be because the election was "rigged." (He didn't mention that if he wins it will definitely be because the election was rigged.)

The Republican National Convention (AKA the GOP Garbage Parade) starts tonight in case you're a fan of watching a rapidly moving slurry of lies, corruption, racism, selfishness, and gross ineptitude.

New York's attorney general is asking a court to force Trump's business associatesincluding son Eric Trumpto testify and turn over documents in her case to prove that the president has a long history of committing business-related fraud.

Evangelical Christian and Trump supporter Jerry Falwell Jr. has resigned his post as the head of Liberty University over allegations of a sexual relationship between him, his wife, and a business associate. TO BE CLEAR: One's sex life is one's own damn business and shouldn't have any bearing on one's job. However, Falwell is indisputably a grade-a conservative creep who shouldn't be allowed to be in control of anything, so... HA. HA. HA.

In other "stepping down" news: White House counselor Kellyanne Conway has announced she is stepping down from her post to "spend more time with her family" to whom we offer our deepest condolences.

Postmaster General and Trump crony Louis DeJoy testified before an angry Congress today, denying that any of the implementations that he's enacted since taking his post have slowed down the mail. (Narrator's voice: "Though they clearly have.")

Today in "headlines you probably don't want to read, but here it is anyway": Scientists say Hong Kong man got coronavirus a second time.

Are these two points related? As a Taylor Swift fan, I say PROBABLY.

YOU NEED LAUGHS, RIGHT? Then don't miss the livestream I, ANONYMOUS SHOW featuring the wildest anonymous confessions and rants from the famous I, Anonymous column that will be deliciously dissected by a hilarious panel of comedians including Simon Gibson, Steph Tovah, Ify Nwadiwe, and your host Kate Murphy! GET THEM TICKETS NOW, BABIES!

THE WEATHER REPORT: Sunny skies tomorrow with a comfortable high of 82.

And finally... posted without comment.

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Good Afternoon, News: Cops Turn Blind Eye to Violent Right Wingers, Falwell (and KellyAnne) Resign, and a Black Wisconsin Man Shot in the Back by...

Labor candidates receive email threatening negative ads if they support gay conversion therapy ban – The Canberra Times

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news, act-politics,

Labor election candidates have received emails from a conservative lobby group threatening to run negative advertising if they supported legislation to outlaw gay conversion therapy. ACT Labor election candidates across all five electorates received an email from Melbourne-based conservative group Binary Australia on Tuesday, warning it would release negative advertisements if they supported the government's bill to ban gay conversion therapy. It came as Chief Minister and Labor leader Andrew Barr warned of a rise in "ultra-right activity" in Canberra, which he feared would only increase in the lead up to the ACT election. Mr Barr said right-wing groups, which were based outside Canberra, were "agitated" by his government's progressive policies and would seek to rally their forces in an attempt to disrupt and influence the October 17 ballot. In the email seen by The Canberra Times, Binary Australia spokeswoman Kirralie Smith said the candidates had 24 hours to respond before the ads would be published. "Let us know if you support the Labor Green Bill or do you believe that parents and teachers and people of faith should be protected and able to speak openly with kids in their care?" it read in part. "If you support the bill as is, or if we don't hear from you, the ads will be run online." Ms Smith said Binary Australia had made attempts to gauge each candidate's position on the legislation before publishing the ads. "People are reasonably asking where the candidates stand on these issues considering there was little to no public consultation," she said. "We don't want to misrepresent the candidate's positions so we have gone to great lengths to get feedback from the candidates before we publish any advertising." Labor's candidate for Kurrajong, Jacob Ingram, took to Facebook on Tuesday, saying he "couldn't care less" and stood behind the legislation. He labelled the email "blackmail" and said it was "disgusting behaviour" by the conservative group, which "is only going to make me advocate for it even more". "Do your worst," he wrote. Ms Smith rejected the claim the emails were blackmail. "It is not blackmail to ask a political candidate in public office to state their position on an issue," she said. Under the proposed legislation, people would face fines of up to $24,000 and 12 months' imprisonment for performing a "sexuality or gender identity conversion therapy" on a child or individual with an impaired decision-making ability. The bill has come under fire from religious groups saying the definition of sexuality and gender identity conversion practices is too broad. Mr Barr said the threats from Binary Australia, which last week robocalled Canberrans about laws allowing young people to change their gender on birth certificates, was evidence of a rise in activity from what he described as "ultra-right conservative groups". He also pointed to reports that material linked to alt-right, male-only group Proud Boys had been seen in Canberra. "I fear that we will see more of this activity in the lead up to the territory election," Mr Barr said. "The ultra-conservatives are certainly agitated by a progressive government in this city and are seeking to marshal their forces in an attempt to influence or disrupt the ACT election. "I need to make very clear that we will not bow to pressure from right-wing extremist groups on gay conversion, on white supremacy on anti-Islam ... on all of that right-wing nonsense."

https://nnimgt-a.akamaihd.net/transform/v1/crop/frm/YSE9Nkng6wVvRADAVf7nRi/af7950e3-a63d-4d9f-8fa9-55f3ec0f7df0.PNG/r0_662_828_1130_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg

Labor election candidates have received emails from a conservative lobby group threatening to run negative advertising if they supported legislation to outlaw gay conversion therapy.

ACT Labor election candidates across all five electorates received an email from Melbourne-based conservative group Binary Australia on Tuesday, warning it would release negative advertisements if they supported the government's bill to ban gay conversion therapy.

It came as Chief Minister and Labor leader Andrew Barr warned of a rise in "ultra-right activity" in Canberra, which he feared would only increase in the lead up to the ACT election.

Mr Barr said right-wing groups, which were based outside Canberra, were "agitated" by his government's progressive policies and would seek to rally their forces in an attempt to disrupt and influence the October 17 ballot.

In the email seen by The Canberra Times, Binary Australia spokeswoman Kirralie Smith said the candidates had 24 hours to respond before the ads would be published.

An email sent to Labor candidate Jacob Ingram from Binary Australia warns negative ads would be published if he supported legislation to ban gay conversion therapy. Picture: Supplied.

"Let us know if you support the Labor Green Bill or do you believe that parents and teachers and people of faith should be protected and able to speak openly with kids in their care?" it read in part.

"If you support the bill as is, or if we don't hear from you, the ads will be run online."

Ms Smith said Binary Australia had made attempts to gauge each candidate's position on the legislation before publishing the ads.

"People are reasonably asking where the candidates stand on these issues considering there was little to no public consultation," she said.

"We don't want to misrepresent the candidate's positions so we have gone to great lengths to get feedback from the candidates before we publish any advertising."

Labor's candidate for Kurrajong, Jacob Ingram, took to Facebook on Tuesday, saying he "couldn't care less" and stood behind the legislation.

He labelled the email "blackmail" and said it was "disgusting behaviour" by the conservative group, which "is only going to make me advocate for it even more".

"Do your worst," he wrote.

Ms Smith rejected the claim the emails were blackmail.

"It is not blackmail to ask a political candidate in public office to state their position on an issue," she said.

Under the proposed legislation, people would face fines of up to $24,000 and 12 months' imprisonment for performing a "sexuality or gender identity conversion therapy" on a child or individual with an impaired decision-making ability.

He also pointed to reports that material linked to alt-right, male-only group Proud Boys had been seen in Canberra.

"I fear that we will see more of this activity in the lead up to the territory election," Mr Barr said.

"The ultra-conservatives are certainly agitated by a progressive government in this city and are seeking to marshal their forces in an attempt to influence or disrupt the ACT election.

"I need to make very clear that we will not bow to pressure from right-wing extremist groups on gay conversion, on white supremacy on anti-Islam ... on all of that right-wing nonsense."

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Labor candidates receive email threatening negative ads if they support gay conversion therapy ban - The Canberra Times

From Cummings to bardcore: this week’s fashion trends – The Guardian

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Going up

Cummings collar Forget the political advisers creased white shirt. Were into his new Spitting Image styling with a Ming the Merciless popped collar.

French bob The most requested style since hairdressers reopened. See Anna Karina in Vivre Sa Vie or current favourite, Marc Jacobs.

Beyoncs Black is King jigsawHow is it possible for an item to be peak summer 2020 but still properly great? Such is the genius of Bey.

Wine windows Plague-era method of selling alcohol through a window, updated with ice-cream for the current pandemic.

Floafers Loafers that float? Were actually into them.

Hawaiian shirts Garish even before they were co-opted by the alt-right. Were about camp collar (wide, unstructured) shirts this summer.

Boob or bust The needle of shame has landed on our decolletage. Sales of bust-firming cream are on the up. Cheers, Zoom.

Ocado Sick of not getting a slot. Were ordering online BBQ packs. Try Smokestaks smoked meat in a box.

Baseball caps Simply not enough coverage. We prefer the wider Patagonia brimmer and NE Blake cricket hat.

Bardcore Internet trend for medieval versions of pop songs not in a funny way. Havent we been through enough?

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From Cummings to bardcore: this week's fashion trends - The Guardian

Professor on using AI to detect medical errors, the future of AI in medicine – The Stanford Daily

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Scripps Professor of Molecular Medicine Eric Topol gave a talk on the future of artificial intelligence (AI) in medicine at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence in Medicine & Imaging Symposium on Aug. 5, where he discussed developing medicine that is much more accurate than it is now. According to Topol, there are over 12 million serious medical errors per year, leading to added costs and other complications.

In one sense, machines are much more capable than humans at detecting errors, Topol said. Machines are able to find different medical complications that doctors themselves may not be able to find, such as tumor nodules, and can advance medical technology, as with mammographies.

If you show this picture [of a retina] to retinal authorities, their chance of getting [the gender] right is 50%, Topol said. But interestingly, an AI algorithm can be trained to be 97 to 98% accurate.

Machines can identify many other aspects of a patient simply from the retina, including ones possibility of kidney disease, Alzheimers and diabetes and age and sex. Topol said applications of AI are not limited to images of the retina: AI can interpret all sorts of slides and images that pathologists cannot see or make conclusions.

This is going to affect, in the future, every medical discipline, he said. Theres no exception here. And its not just those in the hospital. Its paramedics, its all the paraprofessionals, pharmacists the works.

Topol said AI would transform the health and medical field with tasks such as interpreting scans, selecting embryos for in vitro fertilization and predicting death in hospitals. AI will also greatly improve the resolution and quality of medical scans.

Machines will not replace physicians, Topol said, quoting professor and neurosurgeon Antonio Di Leva. But physicians using AI will soon replace those not using it.

Even with the tremendous potential of AI applications, Topol still emphasized that humanistic medicine is important in the long-term advancement of AI in medicine.

Even now, Topol said that patients often feel rushed during their doctor visits. Its not uncommon to see physicians typing on computers or facing their screens, without making eye contact with patients during doctor visits.

Topol said in medicine there is a lack of empathy, which companies and institutions should focus on improving.

We want to restore the humanistic side the critical component of what is medicine, Topol said.

Contact Amanda Zhu at amandaz9888 at gmail.com.

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