I realize the New York Times is trying to be helpful. It knows that I read anything dealing with politics, so perhaps it’s not surprising that its algorithm recommends all these articles about Trump. (See screenshot.) What bothers me about all this is that the NY Times has been publishing so many articles about Trump
and almost none of them call him out on his insanity. Instead, it posts and prints articles about Trump’s ideas — how he’ll make America great again, how he’ll build a wall, and so on, and they treat them as if they are real ideas worth considering. The Times is not alone in this.
I think the most critical writing about Trump has come from the Guardian, and from alt press/voices, such as TruthDig. However, they are not the “paper of record.” When the Times prints something, right-wingers do take notice, which makes their kid-glove treatment of Trump all the more upsetting.
Yanis Varoufakis (former Greek finance minister) believes that, in Europe, we are seeing the post-modern version of the 1930s — a broken economic system, blame being placed on “the other” (immigrants, minorities), and the rise of authoritarian voices. Greece has twelve Nazis in Parliament. Hungary has already gone authoritarian, with Poland going in the same direction, led by the ironically named “Law and Justice” party which has nothing to do with law or justice. France has Le Pen, and Germany’s Neo-Nazis have come alive in the last couple of years. Here in the U.S., even if Trump is not elected president, we have seen right-wing, authoritarian ideas take hold.
The future is not bright, and there is nothing to be gained by pretending otherwise. And while the selection of our next president is of utmost importance, it will also do little to change the overall situation. It will either slow or accelerate things, but not drastically alter them. Bernie will be ineffectual because, let’s be frank, he doesn’t have the political chops to push through major legislation. I love him. I love his ideas. But he’s come to the national stage thirty years too late. Hillary is, to some degree, like Obama. They are Eisenhower Republicans, who believe that the government can help with some of the large problems, but that there are limits to what the government can do. Trump has zero political experience, and based on the ideas he’s pulled out of his rear end, such as renegotiating our debt, import tariffs, and so on, he’ll plunge us, and the world, into an even deeper depression than the one we are still in.
I’d like to think that by voting for Bernie or Hillary, we’ll have accomplished so much. Unfortunately, we’ll have accomplished very little. It took nearly forty years to get to where we are now. It will take at least that amount of time to put us on the path we should have been on.
What are scribblings?
by 
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