I unsubscribed from the NYT after the Tom Cotton editorial. That's when it became clear to me that their ethics were driven by a need to drive traffic to their site and I wanted no part in it.
Stuff like this just reaffirms my decision. Good riddance.
I think that decision was worse than a sign that they have given in to market forces. They have given in to internal activists who have no desire to learn, think, or report the truth, merely use the paper as a weapon for social change.
> They have given in to internal activists who have no desire to learn, think, or report the truth.
I am shocked and saddened this is where we are as a society. Literally one man's opinion distressed so many people, in such a way, they felt the need to raise an army and then descend on their employer and demand they remove, recant and say it will never happen again?
We have arrived at a time in place where you cannot have your own opinion without fear of the rage mob coming after you.
“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”
That man was a United States Senator who suggested using the military to suppress political dissent. The suggestion that this is some minor newspeak squabble or a brief outbreak of political correctness grossly underplays how dangerous this suggestion was and the seeing you try to use Orwell to support your point is even more ridiculous.
> Some elites have excused this orgy of violence in the spirit of radical chic, calling it an understandable response to the wrongful death of George Floyd. Those excuses are built on a revolting moral equivalence of rioters and looters to peaceful, law-abiding protesters. A majority who seek to protest peacefully shouldn’t be confused with bands of miscreants. But the rioting has nothing to do with George Floyd, whose bereaved relatives have condemned violence.
Setting aside whether using the Insurrection Act to respond to rioting and looting is an appropriate response, it is quite clear that Tom Cotton is not advocating the use of the the military to "suppress political dissent", which would obviously violate the First Amendment.
This gets confusing, because many (including cotton elsewhere) intentionally blurred the lines between protestors and "rioters", and stood behind plans that served to suppress peaceful protest.
People on this forum are usually quick to remark that free speech is powerful and important and worth protecting even at great cost to individuals. Property damage caused by a small number of violent actors falls into this category, especially when the majority of the protests were peaceful and actively discouraged property damage.
So yes, Cotton's plan would have served to suppress political dissent and therefore probably violated the first amendment (and the third). Printing a sitting senator advocating for violating multiple constitutional rights without a disclaimer to that effect is a disservice to nyts readers.
Bringing the military in on stopping it is crossing the Rubicon. In as literal a sense as you can get without living in Italy. Regardless of feelings on the current situation, the idea of getting the military involved should be extremely unsettling to anyone living in a democracy.
For a more contemporary quote from battlestar galactica:
Adama: There's a reason you separate military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people.
In 1992 the military was used to put an end to the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles.
There is a spectrum between peaceful protesting and violent insurrection. Burning down police stations, murdering police officers, and stealing rifles from police vehicles is very, very far down the line to violent insurrection. In retrospect I don’t think we were quite there, but we were getting close to it. And ultimately, one of the purposes of the military is to protect our republic from violent insurrection.
Which is closer to violent insurrection: responding to police violence by attacking symbols of the police, or bringing an armed group into a statehouse with the express intent of intimidating lawmakers?
Keep in mind when answering that in most cases, escalations to violence by protests were in response to unnecessary escalating by police forces. We have to evaluate so called bad actors in the context of the response to them.
Are you confident that armed statehouse protests wouldn't have devolved to violence if met with teargas and rubber bullets? Are you confident that police protests would have had similar levels of violence if not pushed towards it by police?
> Which is closer to violent insurrection: responding to police violence by attacking symbols of the police, or bringing an armed group into a statehouse with the express intent of intimidating lawmakers?
By “attacking symbols of the state”, you’re referring to burning down police stations and stealing police rifles from patrol vehicles. Those aren’t “symbols”, they are actual facilities and equipment. In the Seattle incident with the rifles, one of the rioters even opened fire on an abandoned patrol vehicle.
So yes, I would say stealing weapons from a public agency and opening fire with those weapons is much closer to “insurrection” than peacefully carrying your own weapons. For that matter, so do the killings of David Dorn and especially Dave Patrick Underwood.
> Keep in mind when answering that in most cases, escalations to violence by protests were in response to unnecessary escalating by police forces.
It’s clear that your biases are leading you to a very specific judgment of what happened and who is to blame, to the point that you’re bending over backwards to make excuses for arson and murder. To name a more recent incident, the police were not in any way responsible for the act of burning down a Wendy’s in Atlanta; certainly not to the same degree as the extremists who actually burned it down.
But that all distracts from the point. I find your views absurd and morally disgusting, but I would never dream of trying to stop you from expressing them. If you were an elected official who represented the interests and attitudes of some broad group of constituents, I would find value in hearing what you had to say even if I found it reprehensible.
> For that matter, so do the killings of David Dorn and especially Dave Patrick Underwood.
Dorn's killing wasn't obviously connected to protests, and Underwood was killed by far-right "Boogaloo Boys"[0]. Who would be explicitly and vehemently unwelcome at most BLM protests. I'd once again ask you to take the time to re-examine your preconceptions here.
> So yes, I would say stealing weapons from a public agency and opening fire with those weapons is much closer to “insurrection” than peacefully carrying your own weapons.
You've missed the point. I'll reiterate in more detail. There's a respect given to white right-wing protestors carrying your own weapons, both by police and many people that isn't extended to the BLM protests.
For example, you claim that they were "peacefully carrying weapons". Let's ignore for a moment the question of whether "peacefully carrying weapons" is even possible[1], but instead focus on what that respect means.
Most importantly, police actively de-escalate when dealing with armed protestors, but actively escalated with BLM groups. If you take the time to watch videos, you'll see that the large protests are mostly peaceful and self-policing. It's only once police escalate, using weapons and force protestors to break up and lose the civility that was present.
At that point you no longer have a protest but a confused, scared mob. Your solution is to further escalate to requesting military intervention. Mine is to treat unarmed black protestors the same way you treat armed white ones: don't escalate in the first place. Let them protest, peacefully assemble, and leave. In locations where police have allowed that to happen, almost without fail protests have been peaceful, only escalating in direct response to new examples of police violence (Atlanta).
> If you were an elected official who represented the interests and attitudes of some broad group of constituents, I would find value in hearing what you had to say even if I found it reprehensible.
I'm not clear what the point of saying this is. I'm not saying anything about any representatives, not that they should be silenced. If anything, I'm suggesting you listen to even more people: directly listen to those who are oppressed and aren't represented. In the words of Dr. King, "A riot is the voice of the unheard." When you see one, take some time to listen. Not to the system which is clearly not doing a good job of listening, but directly to the people who felt the need to riot.
[1]: Consider that brandishing is a crime in many jurisdictions and open carry isn't legal everywhere. Open carry is an implicit threat, and calling it "peaceful" implies that there's a sort of peaceful intimidation which seems like a questionable premise. Intimidation basically requires the threat of force or harm.
> There's a respect given to white right-wing protestors carrying your own weapons, both by police and many people that isn't extended to the BLM protests.
The tactic of openly carrying firearms during protest marches was pioneered by the Black Panthers and there have, in fact, been a number of predominantly black and pro-BLM open carry marches since the killing of George Floyd. There was one over the weekend in Oklahoma.
> Your solution is to further escalate to requesting military intervention.
This is a straw man. To reiterate, my position is that Sen. Cotton’s proposal of invoking the Insurrection Act was a premature but understandable suggestion. I disagree with it but especially given the precedent of the exact same measures being taken during the 1992 Rodney King riots, it wasn’t an unconscionable suggestion and it was perfectly reasonable for the NYT to publish it.
In other words, my position is that it’s justifiable for the NYT to publish an oped neither of us agree with. Your position is that arson is a legitimate form of political protest.
> Your position is that it’s justifiable for people to burn down private businesses.
I'm unsure in what sense you mean justifiable. If you mean "rationally explainable from a set of observations" then yes. If you mean "morally justifiable", I don't believe I've made any claim to that effect, and once more I'd ask that you examine what led you to believe such a thing.
I previously responded to this at length, but I think we're leaning into territory that dang would prefer we not. So I'll leave it at that, with two final requests:
First that you take some time to actually listen to the protestors and their complaints. Second, that you look into the use of the Insurrection Act in the US, and ask yourself why since 1965 five of the six times it was invoked were to put down civil rights protests.
> First that you take some time to actually listen to the protestors and their complaints.
I have. Please examine your assumption that I haven't.
However, I'm not the one conflating the protesters with the people committing violent acts. The evidence I've seen appears to indicate that most of the violence has not been carried out by protesters, but rather from a variety of extremists who are trying to exploit their cause. I've seen groups of protesters forming perimeters to guard riot police who got separated from their formations, or seizing vandals and instigators and physically shoving them into the police lines so they can be removed from an otherwise peaceful protest.
Maybe you didn't know that. Maybe you thought the rioting and violence was all at the hands of BLM protesters. You definitely didn't seem to know the history of demonstrators openly carrying rifles. But that all leaves you in a very poor position to be misrepresenting my own statements to me directly and asking me to educate myself about things I'm better informed on than you seem to be.
I know literally every thing you've stated. The question I'm asking is not whether we know those things, but if you honestly believe, after having read Tom Cotton's op Ed, that his preference is for the national guard to go in and work with protestors to help control violent groups, or if instead his goal was to quell legitimate protests.
You are repeatedly asserting the opposite: that "riots are the language of the unheard" (rather than, rioters are bad actors using otherwise legitimate protests as cover), that open-carry protests are something only white people do, and so forth.
> The question I'm asking is not whether we know those things, but if you honestly believe, after having read Tom Cotton's op Ed, that his preference is for the national guard to go in and work with protestors to help control violent groups, or if instead his goal was to quell legitimate protests.
I'd prefer if it was done with the federal marshals, or some other civilian organization. Something like the way that Ruby Bridges was escorted to school during desegregation.
I never said it was. I said it was a cost to protect free speech. Do you believe that Cotton, the Police, or the National guard will be able to stop only those looting without accidentally arresting, shooting or otherwise harassing anyone who is simply protesting?
Do you believe deployment of the national guard won't have a chilling effect on people protesting? If you want to protect the speech (or in this case assembly) of the many, you have to be willing to suffer the consequences of the few who will abuse that right.
Otherwise, implicitly, what you're saying is that (a relatively small amount of) property is more valuable than the right to protest an unjust government.
> Destroying things that do not belong to you is not free speech.
Note: that's exactly what the Boston Tea Party did. Protesting by destroying things that do not belong to you has a long, celebrated history in America.
> it is quite clear that Tom Cotton is not advocating the use of the the military to "suppress political dissent"
That's wrong. Regardless of how you feel about the tactics used by the protesters, their dissent is clearly political in nature, and Cotton was advocating stopping their demonstrations with the military. It's a terrible mistake to misunderstand or sugar-coat his message and you shouldn't do it.
I thought it was fairly clear "suppress political dissent" was referring to the suppression of peaceful political dissent, and I was responding to that claim.
>...their dissent is clearly political in nature, and Cotton was advocating stopping their demonstrations with the military.
Calling the burning of buildings, the vandalism of public buildings and monuments, and the violence we've seen "political in nature" is really quite something. It's very revealing in terms of what the end goal is.
> It's very revealing in terms of what the end goal is.
I wonder what "end goal" you believe has been revealed, beyond the obvious: the reduction in unjustified police violence that is the subject of the protests. My sense is that you might have misinterpreted my comment.
Protesting police abuses is a political act, i.e., relating to the government or the public affairs of a country. This is true whether you're talking about a purely nonviolent demonstration or one that gets completely out of control.
>> A majority who seek to protest peacefully shouldn’t be confused with bands of miscreants.
> ...it is quite clear that Tom Cotton is not advocating the use of the the military to "suppress political dissent"...
Eh, I'm not totally convinced. The devil is in the details, and there have been many cases recently where clearly peaceful protesters were treated like rioters when it was convenient to some of Cotton's allies.
>...who suggested using the military to suppress political dissent.
This, of course, is not what he actually said - but it's what you heard that he said. Because that is the nature of the time that we're in, and why what Orwell said is relevant.
This is false, unless you're contesting he did not literally write "we should use the military to suppress political dissent" in that exact sequence of words.
I cannot figure out whether you don't think deploying troops in cities under the Insurrection Act counts as "using the military," whether stopping the protests is not "suppression," or whether you're suggesting the protests should not be defined as "political dissent." All these things are false.
The relevant Orwell quote would seem to be "To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle."
I'm pointing out the words he literally wrote on the page because there's a bunch of people in this thread who are doing what you're doing, which is making a blanket proclamation that Cotton wanted the military to essentially attack protestors, which isn't true. That actual quote is all over this thread.
The rest of your argument is a careless strawmanning, or projection, since the words on the page have actual meaning, words which you can put in front of your nose at your own pleasure.
I question whether you are actually able to draw a distinction between "peaceful protestors" and "rioters and looters". Your entire argument hinges on tricking people into thinking "subdue rioters and looters with the military if police can't or won't do it" is equivalent to "shoot protestors".
> Your entire argument hinges on tricking people into thinking "subdue rioters and looters with the military if police can't or won't do it" is equivalent to "shoot protestors".
I'm not sure what you think my argument is, since you appear to be conducting a separate but closely related debate entirely in your own mind.
To circle back to the original point of contention, using the military to suppress political dissent, the course Cotton discussed in his op ed (and which you accused evgen of making up), is using the military to suppress political dissent whether or not the protesters are peaceful, whether or not you think the protesters' message is legitimate, and whether or not the troops do anything more than stand in the street looking threatening.
(perhaps we're in violent agreement on these points, in which case I don't understand your objection to evgen's comment, except as a reflexive action)
Maybe you and your friends are doing something wrong. Maybe I should be able to learn about an alternate opinion, and then decide that the opinion is dumb, using my own brain and reasoning.
Do you not see how dangerous it is to stop people from discussing a topic openly and freely? What happens when this censorship and attempt at controlling the narrative is aimed at you? Do you want to be the recipient of this treatment?
Instead, here is Taibbi's substack. If you're off a mind, a subscription is only $40 per year, but the stolen article is nevertheless free. https://taibbi.substack.com/
Interesting and good point.
I could see how people could think that it's good idea to censor violent extremist viewpoints.
I tend towards Taibbi's interpretation of publishing anything because I would rather err on the side of releasing dangerous info and let people decide for themselves, than having a media police that police what we read.
Traditionally, newspapers' Opinion and Editorial sections have solicited contributions from major political figures. The Wall Street Journal, for instance, has run the following:
"The Change We Need" (by Barack Obama)
"A Partisan Impeachment, a Profile in Courage" (by Mike Pence)
"I Can Defeat Trump and the Clinton Doctrine" (by Tulsi Gabbard)
"Blame the Fed for the Financial Crisis" (by Ron Paul)
"How Short-Termism Saps the Economy" (by Joe Biden)
"Why I Support the Ryan Roadmap" (by Sarah Palin)
"Why Americans Are So Angry" and "Trump Is the Worst Kind of Socialist" (by Bernie Sanders)
"Companies Shouldn’t Be Accountable Only to Shareholders" (by Elizabeth Warren)
Readers of the Journal typically value these pieces as the newsworthy opinions of important figures, even if they disagree with the authors and the politics therein quite vehemently. Very few readers would mistake these pieces' publication for an endorsement, or for depraved and wanton profit-seeking. Rather, publication of these opinions is itself a form of journalism.
Readers of the Times today, however, seem to expect that the ethics of the Times ought to be driven by the Times waging total war on their common political enemies, and that to do otherwise is an offense against decency. The Times does a good job of waging such a war in the general case, sometimes quite laudably; when it does make its exceptions, however, allowing things like the Cotton editorial, it has generally been in the service of Journalism as well, communicating the newsworthy opinions of important figures.
You should not fear, my erstwhile Times-reading comrade! All signs indicate that the Times has capitulated, and your victory over the forces of Journalism has been secured.
(edit: Added the Bernie Sanders and Warren editorials to the list)
This is stunning false equivalence. None of the opinions you offered are similar to Tom Cotton’s apologia for “sending in the tanks”. The NYT Opinions section is still, for better or worse, still quite diverse in its opinions. Ross Douthat and David Brooks are not leaving anytime soon.
> None of the opinions you offered are similar to Tom Cotton’s apologia for “sending in the tanks”
What makes this matter? Precisely, why?
Does not the radical character of this editorial highlight, as starkly as ever, that this is grossly at odds with the official opinion of the Grey Lady?
Do you somehow impute a net persuasive power to its appearance in those pages? Do you therefore believe the publication presents an increased risk that such a scheme will be carried out? How?
Do you perhaps believe that many dangerous racists will find themselves emboldened by its publication, as if racists with a military-police fetish were notorious for subscribing to the Times and justifying their opinions with what is written on its pages? I think not, sir, though you may find them watching Fox.
The Times could write a thousand opinion columns to their decent readers, warning that Republicans aspire to quash protests with the military; their combined weight would be as nothing compared to the Republican himself telling you in his own words, putting to rest the possibility of doubt.
Precisely why it matters is that the debates you cite in the WSJ are in a completely different realm where you can have reasonable people disagree. I don’t think Cotton’s Op-Ed is novel territory for either the NYT or WSJ, but I think it’s a reasonable position that the NYT should not legitimize calls to violence as a resolution to an ongoing domestic issue.
The NYT operates on links, this is not cable news. Of course it will be shared on FB and elsewhere, so not getting your point at all.
As for the final point, I think there’s a reasonable debate to be had there! I don’t know exactly where I stand on it, I personally find the piece disturbing and it crosses the line in a functioning democracy. However, it certainly informed me beyond a doubt to Cotton’s and his colleagues’ opinions, so I just have to trust others felt similarly.
> the debates you cite in the WSJ are in a completely different realm where you can have reasonable people disagree
I began to write by discussing one of those pieces in the WSJ as a moral equivalent or worse, discussing how I would like to say that no reasonable person could disagree — yet in fact, I must admit that they could.
But forget that. My real point is about journalism.
We are met, on one side, by those like Cotton, who fête thuggish, authoritarian, militaristic oppression, as you are well aware. It is one threat to our freedom. Journalism by itself will not save us, of course, but at the same time, I do not see how we can be saved without journalism.
But those who oppose it, especially the journalists? They are cut from grain of Senator Joseph Raymond McCarthy. Did you learn in your history lessons about the Red Scare? There were once bona fide Communist spies in our nation's government, in great number, and he set out to bring them down — and yet, when we speak today of the House Unamerican Activities Committee, and when we speak of McCarthyism, it is not because they saved us from these spies. It is because they fomented a culture of repression, paranoia and fear which chilled our freedoms and harmed our democracy — and, incidentally, did a poor job of rooting the spies.
Today we do not have the benefit of a single leader like McCarthy to illustrate in so concentrated a manner the disgusting nature of what is being done. We have no singular Mr. Welch to ask him, "Have you left no sense of decency?" when, for nothing more than his own self-aggrandizement, this leader smears an innocuous nobody in a Congressional hearing. But we do have the Washington Post, smearing an absolute nobody in the national press for not being refused from a non-company holiday party two years prior. We have the self-righteousness of those would-be crusaders, and we have the self-censorship for fear of bringing down their wrath.
And in particular, we save a special set of poisons, not for the overt racists, nor even for those who fail to oppose them, but for those who would dare temper their opposition with some other principle. James Bennett's true crime was poisoning the purity of his allegiance to the cause by favoring Journalism. For this he was ejected from the paper. He is far from the only one who will lose his job or be blacklisted in the purges.
So good on you and everyone else for unsubscribing in the name of purity.
Ok, I think we just disagree on what is journalism and that’s fine. The Opinion page is not journalistic, it’s just other people’s op-eds selected by an editorial board and said board is not immune from either bias nor criticism.
The rest of the paper is generally outstanding, though they have some high profile screw ups. Can’t trust anything 100% ever, but I don’t think this incident reflects on the rest of the paper. Regular NYT subscribers (myself included) already know what they’re getting in Opinion, and I personally think it’s trash.
If you go back in time, the NY Times used to print a lot more conservative op-eds. For example, here's a classic, where William F Buckley, a well known conservative (from a different vein than modern conservatives) proposes tattooing a red letter A on the buttons of gay men infected with HIV:
Cotton could have written a far better editorial and people would complain a lot less. I tried to read it giving him the best intentions but it didn't take long to realize that he really just wanted to send out the military to beat people up.
Yep I’m not defending the NYT Opinions page or editorial board, in my opinion it’s an embarrassment for an otherwise solid paper of record (not defending NYT in general, either - they have made some serious mistakes).
However, the poster is trying to put the Cotton op-Ed in the same league as fairly mild policy debates in the WSJ. I find that dangerously close to legimitizing it.
And that’s infinitely more on-point than some relatively mild policy debates in the WSJ! The difference in those cases would be the foreign policy concerns vs a domestic debate, so there’s still some context to discuss, but the comment I’m replying to is blowing this out of proportion and also legitimizing Cotton’s op-Ed by comparing it the prior ones.
Stuff like this just reaffirms my decision. Good riddance.