The Wall Street Journal has published “the Facebook papers,” which revealed that Facebook and other big technology companies have been more than willing to monetize disinformation and misinformation, even when it needs to people’s deaths. Legacy media is laughing, but they should look at themselves too.
American employers spent decades treating employees like crap. They slashed salaries, eliminated training, disrespected them, increased their working hours and then, when they were done with them, unceremoniously fired them in mass layoffs. Now they need more workers but people have moved onto their own businesses or family obligations instead.
Aware that the American public no longer trusts them and believes them to be deeply partisan, members of the Supreme Court of the United States have been telling public forums that they make decisions objectively, based on legal doctrine rather than personal politics. But there’s no denying their voting records. How can they be so much in denial?
A disproportionately high percentage of the 700,000 Americans who have succumbed to COVID-19 died because, as Republicans, they refused to get vaccinated or to wear masks. Now Donald Trump is gearing up for a possible reelection campaign. He might really miss those lost voters.
Military suicides among active-duty personnel continue to increase. It’s hardly surprising that some of the people who volunteer to kill innocent people feel guilty enough to end their lives. The mystery is why so many veterans don’t feel guilty.
A research project found that writers at the New Yorker magazine are even less diverse than they were 50 years ago. The editor of the digital edition defended the magazine by saying that his section is becoming more diverse. Problem is, when journalists talk about diversity, they never talk about class. A newsroom that really looks like America includes people who come from disadvantaged backgrounds, not just people who check off certain boxes.
Democrats are fighting internally between their progressive and centrist wings over infrastructure bills, one for actual buildings, the other one for actual human beings. Interestingly, two right wing senators control what comes out of the US Senate even though they are only a tiny minority. Over in the House of Representatives, on the other hand, the small minority progressive squad is dismissed as the small minority that they are. What both assumptions have in common is that right wing politics are always considered normative.
Both the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate held hearings last week in which they examined the chaotic evacuation from Kabul and the many mistakes made during the war against Afghanistan. The key witnesses were the same generals who presided over the 20-year mess. Meanwhile, over on cable news television, the usual retinue of retired generals, several of whom presided over a war we had no business fighting, held court. We might get less militaristic foreign policy results if we asked people who are not in the war business (like academics, journalists and antiwar activists) about whether or not we should start a war.
Voters have the tendency to forgive the worst wrongdoings committed by politicians from their own party while getting angry about the very same thing when it’s done by a member of their own party.
When jobs are scarce, workers are told to make big changes in their lives to adjust to reality. Now that workers are scarce, however, whiny employers are offered sympathy rather than given advice to change their obsolete business models.
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