COMMENTARY: 'This is not an election. What is it? I have no idea'
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- Written by Henry Adams
Tom Engelhardt's confession of ignorance, published yesterday (Mar. 29), arrived at this conclusion: "This is not war as we knew it, nor government as we once understood it, nor are these elections as we once imagined them, nor is this democracy as it used to be conceived of, nor is this journalism of a kind ever taught in a journalism school. -- This is the definition of uncharted territory. -- It’s a genuine American terra incognita and yet in some fashion that unknown landscape is already part of our sense of ourselves and our world. -- In this 'election' season, many remain shocked that a leading candidate for the presidency is a demagogue with a visible authoritarian side and what looks like an autocratic bent. -- All such labels are pinned on Donald Trump, but the new American system that’s been emerging from its chrysalis in these years already has just those tendencies. -- So don’t blame it all on Donald Trump. -- He should be far less of a shock to this country than he continues to be. -- After all, a Trumpian world-in-formation has paved the way for him. -- Who knows? -- Perhaps what we’re watching is the new iteration of a very old story: a twenty-first-century version of an ancient tale of a great imperial power, perhaps the greatest ever -- the 'lone superpower' -- sinking into decline. -- It’s a tale humanity has experienced often enough in the course of our long history. -- But lest you think once again that there’s nothing new under the sun, the context for all of this, for everything now happening in our world, is so new as to be quite literally outside of thousands of years of human experience. -- As the latest heat records indicate, we are, for the first time, on a planet in decline. -- And if that isn’t uncharted territory, what is?"[1] ...
COMMENTARY: Hawks favor Hillary
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- Written by Henry Adams
ANALYSIS: 'All over barring the delegate count' (FT)
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- Written by Henry Adams
Distance brings perspective, and Edward Luce stands out as one of the few perceptive, dispassionate commentators on this year's presidential election. -- Writing on the day after, the Financial Times of London's chief commentator on U.S. affairs sized up Super Tuesday and concluded: "It is all over barring the delegate count."[1] -- "On Tuesday night, the outlines of the 2016 election started blurrily coming into view. -- On one level it will be a conventional battle to win the hearts and minds of the squeezed U.S. middle class. -- Yet it will also be the strangest match up imaginable. -- It will be the first election where one candidate claims he paid the other to attend his wedding (Mr. Trump married his third wife, Melania, in 2005. The Clintons were there). -- It will also be the first between a man and a woman. -- Alas, that is unlikely to lift the tone. -- In addition to everything else, 2016 will be a battle of the sexes." -- Below are some excerpts from the article...