<p>Heather Cox Richardson discusses the southern drive to reinstitute one-party, white supremacist oligarchy after Reconstruction, and how the present insurrection reflects the same drive on a national scale. </p>
“…Warning of an overbearing attitude by Facebook owner Mark Zuckerberg in the face of the events in the United States – and the suspension of Donald Trump’s accounts on that company’s platforms – President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said that it is important to create alternative media as a counterweight to the actions of executives from social networks and traditional media.
In answering a question, related to what happened in the neighboring country, he said that his government will support the alternative media, to guarantee the people the right to information, in the face of the risk that the traditional ones and the networks tend to believe a world media power, a Holy Inquisition that censors and silences….”
Georgia Signals Hope, But Trump Madness Remains Rampant
A member of the Proud Boys, right, stands in front of a counter protester as members of the Proud Boys and other right-wing demonstrators rally on Saturday, Sept. 26, 2020, in Portland.
John Locher / AP
And so today, at least for a few hours, we descend once again into the madness.
The past four days have been as dizzying as anything we’ve experienced as a nation, and would be seen as such if we hadn’t been dealing for the past four years with the terrible consequences of electing Donald Trump as president in 2016.
This is one of a series of “chats” Heather Cox Richardson posted on the history of the Republican Party. The full collection is on her facebook website. Each chat is about an hour. I believe there are 16 of them.
In this day of up-to-the-second breaking news and instant analysis perhaps of the most important missing pieces is how today’s big breaking story fits in with the the long haul of events in this country. For that we usually need historians who have a long view that is not tainted by current happenings. Perhaps one of the best today is Heather Cox Richardson.
Image (cc) 2008 via the Norman B. Leventhal Map Center
Now here’s an ethical dilemma. In Livermore Falls, Maine, a man who had taken four people hostage in a home called a television news reporter who was outside covering the standoff. Police asked the reporter to hand them his phone. He complied, and an officer continued the conversation with the hostage-taker while pretending to be the reporter.
It would seem to violate any sense of journalistic ethics and yet it was a life-or-death situation. What would you have done? I think I would have done exactly what the reporter, Taylor Cairns of CBS 13, did, and then wondered later if there might have been a better way to handle it. I definitely believe Cairns did the right thing in the moment.