There’s an old saying arguing that one picture is worth a thousand words. An activist named Joe Quint is testing that thesis.
The promotional postcard reproduced below describes the project, sponsored by the “Faith, Justice and the Arts” program of St. Paul’s church.
On the website giving additional information about the project, Quint explains what motivated him to produce graphic representations of the consequences of gun violence.
It was mid-2014 – right after the University of California at Santa Barbara shooting – and I happened to glance at that weeks’ issue of PEOPLE magazine. The cover story was about some Kardashian wedding and there was a little blurb in the upper right corner about the shooting… with a subhead saying ‘How could this happen – again?’. Setting aside the disproportionality in importance of these two stories, I was struck by both the naivety and irresponsiblity of that copy….
I became increasingly frustrated by inaction – my own and the inaction of my country. I could no longer pay lip service to the importance of reducing the over 36,000 senseless and preventable deaths that take place every year. I could no longer just sign petitions or – worse – scratch my head in amazement every time there was a national tragedy and wonder what it was going to take to change society for the better.
The result of his frustration was It Takes Us, a long-term documentary project about the impact of gun violence on the survivors, their family members , and on witnesses to these horrific acts.
One of the unfortunate consequences of the turmoil generated by Trump and his administration is the sheer number of important issues competing for our attention. Gun violence and our need to address its causes must compete with assaults on women’s equality, efforts to undo environmental protections, defund public education, eviscerate the ACA…the list goes on. But as the teenage survivors of Parkland have reminded us, America’s gun culture can no longer be ignored.
If you live in or around Indianapolis, or another venue listed on the website, go see the exhibit.
My mother used to throw that line at me when I protested that “all the kids” were doing whatever it was she disapproved of. Despite promising myself that I would treat my children differently–I used that same line with mine. It made a point.
Let’s face it–we all know that just because your co-worker is stealing from the till doesn’t give you a pass to do likewise.
That homely truth applies even more urgently to our political system. One of the reasons so many of us are so concerned (okay, frantic) about the current willingness of the GOP to ignore time-honored norms–to “play dirty”– is that damaging behaviors by one party are too often seen by the other party as permission to act just as badly.
As I have repeatedly maintained, the nation needs two responsible, ethical, adult political parties. When one party is off the rails, it’s harder for the other party to maintain discipline and enforce ethical and responsible behavior.
The article pointed to incidents in which Senate Democrats ignored longstanding norms during the recent Kavanaugh hearings. I will admit that I cheered many of those norm-breaking efforts; after all, we stand to lose a half-century of settled jurisprudence that has expanded and confirmed individual rights if this partisan warrior is confirmed, but it’s hard to argue with Time’s observation that the behaviors of Senators Harris, Booker and Warren, among others, was inconsistent with the decorum and comity we expect in such hearings.
The article wasn’t a hatchet job on the Democrats; far from it. It conceded that the relatively minor deviations of the Democrats during the hearings paled in comparison to the daily offenses perpetrated by the occupant of the Oval Office:
The point of the article was not to castigate the Democrats’ newly aggressive behavior; the point was to identify an undeniable problem: once partisans start down this path, with each side justifying inappropriate behavior by the equivalent of “well, he started it!” we are in danger of losing critically important, if unwritten, rules that safeguard reasoned democratic deliberation and make government accountable.
In his speech on September 7th, former President Barack Obama called on Democrats to show up at the polls in November and restore “honesty and decency and lawfulness” to government– to take the high road back to power. Obama is urging Democrats to play fair despite the fact that neither the President nor his GOP has shown any interest in playing by the rules.
The real test will come when Democrats return to power (hopefully after the upcoming midterm elections). If they decide to exact revenge by acting as dishonorably as the GOP has acted, we may well see an ugly race to the bottom and a further erosion of civility and willingness to work together to get the people’s business done. As the Times article concluded:
One day, Trump will no longer be in office, but by then it may be that breaking norms is the new normal.
If the Democrats jump off that cliff just because the Republicans jumped before them, we will all be the real losers.
Our demented President continues to brag about the economy, claiming sole credit for producing good numbers, and (as usual) fabricating many of them.
That said, according to the metrics used by most economists and pundits, the economy is doing quite well.
Republicans running for the House and Senate are trying hard to emphasize that economic “good news,” and one of the more puzzling aspects of the midterm campaigns has been the lack of traction those efforts have generated. Usually, when the economy is humming along, that’s good news for the incumbents; this time, economic arguments don’t seem to be convincing many voters.
The “chattering classes” attribute this to a variety of factors– Trump’s extreme unpopularity, concerns about the negative effects of Trump’s tariffs and the escalating trade war with China. Those things clearly matter, but I have a different explanation: we are using the wrong metrics to measure economic performance . I’ve misplaced the link, but I copied the following paragraph from an MSN website that makes the same point.
A humming national aggregate economy does not necessarily translate into improved livelihoods for most workers. Since the recession, nominal wage growth has been anemic compared to past business cycle peaks. Health-care and education costs keep rising while job benefits disappear. Most households are still in rather precarious financial straits. And there’s still a large population of “shadow” unemployed the official unemployment rate isn’t catching.
According to official statistics, the net worth of the typical American household is still about 20 percent below where it was when Lehman Brothers’ failure triggered the financial crisis. It is true that the gross domestic product is now substantially higher than it was — but a majority of Americans have not seen their incomes improve. And as the above quote notes, the admittedly very good unemployment rate ignores people who have given up looking for work.
If a “good economy” is measured by stock market performance and corporate profitability, then yes, we currently have a good economy. If, however, it is measured both by aggregate indicators and the degree to which citizens share in the prosperity, our economic performance doesn’t look quite so good.
Wage growth is still sluggish, with modest gains offset by inflation. Despite recent increases, the share of prime-age Americans in the labor force is still slightly below the pre-Recession level. Levels of unemployment vary widely across places and the population by key demographic characteristics.
The report was generated as part of Brookings annual update of the employment rate gap (which, as the authors explained, differs from the jobs gap), calculating each indicator by race/ethnicity and level of education. The employment rate gap is the difference between the demographically adjusted 2007 employment-to-population ratio and the same ratio at other points in time.
As the report concluded,
The Great Recession inflicted economic pain on many American families, but its burden was not equally distributed. Ultimately, the brunt of the Great Recession was borne by those without the protection of postsecondary education. College raises average lifetime earnings, and it also helps insulate workers from economic downturns, providing economic security in the times they need it most. Finally, racial disparities have been less severe in recovery than in the worst years of the Great Recession, though differences in employment rates persist. For the American labor market to be truly healthy, it needs to work for all people—not just some.
A truly “great” economy distributes its largesse widely. It is that often-referenced rising tide that lifts all boats.
When most of the benefits generated by economic productivity enrich only the top 1%–or even the top 10%–that economy is only “great” for the pigs who have monopolized access to the trough.
It’s unlikely that Bob Woodward’s new book will move public opinion. The country is so polarized between people who are appalled by Donald Trump and dispirited by the unwillingness of the Congressional GOP to meaningfully confront him, on the one hand, and his white supremcist “base” on the other, that it is hard to see the added documentation doing much to change the political dynamic.
For me, the most difficult aspect of the last few years has been the need to accept an ugly reality: approximately 35% of my fellow Americans enthusiastically support a racist, and are willing to ignore every other distasteful and disgraceful thing about him, in return for his constant reassurance that– despite all the evidence to the contrary–their pigment makes them superior.
Woodward’s book won’t penetrate that. At best, assuming America survives this descent into tribal hatefulness, it will join the growing mountain of evidence available to future historians and psychiatrists.
Woodward’s 448-page book, “Fear: Trump in the White House,” provides an unprecedented inside-the-room look through the eyes of the President’s inner circle. From the Oval Office to the Situation Room to the White House residence, Woodward uses confidential background interviews to illustrate how some of the President’s top advisers view him as a danger to national security and have sought to circumvent the commander in chief.
Many of the feuds and daily clashes have been well documented, but the picture painted by Trump’s confidants, senior staff and Cabinet officials reveal that many of them see an even more alarming situation — worse than previously known or understood.
Actually, those of us who have been glued to news sources since November of 2016 do understand how alarming this Presidency is, and how utterly pathetic a man-child Trump is. It really isn’t necessary to get confirmation from anonymous sources–every day, Trump tweets his lack of even the most superficial understanding of the government he heads or the Constitution and laws that constrain it.
Let’s be honest. Trump owes his (very slim) electoral success to Barack Obama. Trump’s votes came largely from the white people (mostly men, but plenty of women) who couldn’t abide the presence of a black family in the White House. For eight years, they seethed, exchanging racist emails and sharing racist posts, looking for anything they could criticize publicly, and inventing things when the pickings were slim.
When Trump proved willing to say publicly the things they’d been thinking and saying privately–when he was willing to re-label civility as “political correctness,” and to “tell it like (they believe) it is,” they were his. Woodward’s book won’t change that; it is doubtful that many of them will read it.
I know that many good people, good citizens, good Americans will cringe at what I’ve just written. It’s too close to name-calling, too uncivil, paints with too broad a brush. President Obama himself, in his recent speech, took the higher road.
We won’t win people over by calling them names or dismissing entire chunks of the country as racist or sexist or homophobic. When I say bring people together, I mean all of our people. This whole notion that has sprung up recently about Democrats needing to choose between trying to appeal to white working-class voters or voters of color and women and LGBT Americans, that’s nonsense. I don’t buy that. I got votes from every demographic. We won by reaching out to everybody and competing everywhere and by fighting for every vote.
There’s a part of this that feels like it’s ignoring reality. Political science research on the 2016 election suggests that Trump won because a huge chunk of voters responded positively to his racism and sexism. Voters who scored high on tests of racial resentment were unusually likely to support Trump, as were voters who scored high on measures of hostile sexism. These voters did not tend to be particularly stressed economically; this wasn’t displaced economic resentment. Rather, they seem to genuinely share the current president’s values, agreeing that the way to “Make America Great Again” is to slow or even roll back social change.
My hopes are pinned on the midterm elections. I do believe that most Americans are better than the base for whom “Crazytown” is just fine so long as they see it vindicating their white privilege. This is one election where every blue vote will count–whether it elects someone or not–because it will be, and will be seen as, a vote against tribalism, racism, sexism and the pervasive corruption of Crazytown.
A major element in the rightwing attack on “Fake News” is the assertion that platforms like Google and Facebook skew to the left, that they privilege liberal results.
Scholars and journalists, for their part, worry about the “filter bubble”–the use of sophisticated algorithms to target individuals with information that is consistent with their pre-existing biases.
Google News does not deliver different news to users based on their position on the political spectrum, despite accusations from conservative commentators and even President Donald Trump. Rather than contributing to the sort of “echo chamber” problem that critics fear have plagued Facebook and other social media networks, our research has found that Google News algorithms recommended virtually identical news sources to both liberals and conservatives. That’s an important point to keep in mind when evaluating accusations that Google News is biased.
Our findings are part of an ample and growingbody of research on this question. Online services – including Google’s regular search function – may provide intensely personalized information. But media scholars like us have found that when it comes to news, search engines and social media tend to lead people not to a more narrow set of sources, but rather to a broader range of information. In fact, we found, Google News is designed to avoid personalized search results, intentionally constructing a shared public conversation based on traditional criteria of journalistic values.
The construction of that public conversation is critically important. As the eminent media historian Paul Starr has observed, “journalism isn’t just about uncovering facts and framing stories; it is about assembling a public to read and react to those stories.” In other words, there is a crucial difference between an audience and a public.
Journalism in a democratic system is about more than dissemination of news; it’s about the creation of shared awareness. It’s about enabling citizens to occupy the same reality. It’s about facilitating meaningful communication. As the information environment continues to fracture into smaller and more widely dispersed niches, many of us worry that we are in danger of losing the common ground upon which public communication and discourse depend.
When cities had one or two widely-read newspapers, residents were at least exposed to the same headlines, even if they didn’t read the articles. When large numbers of Americans tuned in to Walter Cronkite or to his competitors on one of the other two networks, they heard reports of the same events. If today’s citizens do not encounter even that minimal amount of shared information, if different constituencies access different media sources and occupy incommensurate realities, the concept of a public becomes meaningless. Informed debate becomes impossible. In that sort of fractured and fragmented environment, how do citizens engage in self-government?
If I say this is a table, and you insist it’s a chair, how do we come to an agreement about its use?
I hope this study, and the others it cites, are right–and that Americans retain enough of a common language and share enough of a common reality to qualify as a “public.”
