The latest video from Retro Report is called "The Outrage Machine," and it (perhaps too ambitiously) draws a line from TV shows like The Jerry Springer Show "that fed the public's appetite for the crass and salacious" to the "online mobs" who cast "unsuspecting people as Public Enemy No. 1." I'll concede that you can ruin reputations (and do worse) online -- what you say to someone live, in real time, can't be read over and over again, let alone read by millions of people who weren't part of the conversation in the first place -- but if we lose our ability to shame each other properly, we're in big trouble as a civilization. And maybe our "liberal" media should simply avoid covering the "crass and salacious" in the first place, since the vast majority of it just isn't need-to-know. Total time of video: 12 minutes, 29 seconds.
The New York Times wonders if the "Sanders agenda" is "out of date." They conclude, of course, that it is, not because it wouldn't work (or doesn't work, or hasn't worked!), but because, apparently, "(h)is policy proposals were consistently out of step with the ideas that have been emerging from progressive think tanks like Demos or the Center for American Progress or championed by his own congressional colleagues." In other words, democracy isn't about you -- it's about organizations or actors that are bigger than you! I think it's more important that Mr. Sanders's proposals are not out of step with what the electorate actually wants. So, at worst, this is elitist claptrap, and at best, it's the kind of overthinking for which some liberals are notorious.
In a peripherally-related note, Richard Eskow reminds us that Mr. Sanders's "leverage" "isn't going anywhere." I have never understood the logical basis for claiming that Mr. Sanders should endorse Mrs. Clinton now or lose his "leverage." Jesus Mary and Joseph nearly half of the Democratic primary electorate would rather have had an over-70 not-previously-Democratic Senator as their nominee than the "inevitable" Mrs. Clinton -- many of whose supporters are with her, I feel compelled to note, mainly because they think she can win. It sure sounds like Mr. Sanders's "leverage" comes from his voters rather than some group of elites, which is I'm sure the real reason for all this desperate arguing that he should endorse nownownownow.
U.S. Supreme Court refuses to hear challenges to state bans on assault weapons in Connecticut and New York. This was never the slam dunk gun-rights extremists may have thought it is -- while this is the Court that said the Second Amendment guarantees the right to own a gun for self-defense, this Court hasn't said that gun can be any gun, and I'm sure the Chief Justice Roberts, being as compulsive a literalist as has ever served on the Court, is acutely aware of that. (He may also be acutely aware of his 4-4 split on the Court -- a split that won't hold if Hillary Clinton becomes President and Justice Thomas retires, as folks close to him have said he might.)
Finally, Donald Trump says we really ought to reconsider racial profiling in the wake of the Orlando shooting. Which, in addition to being unconscionable for a free people, also doesn't actually prevent or even predict crime. I can already hear the right-wingers squealing butbutbutbut he's only saying what people are thinking! But, frankly, not very many people are thinking that -- only the ones who are too lazy to do the hard work of maintaining a civilization, and those folks might be loud, but they're not a majority. Not even close. And that's why I love America.
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