Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news media and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Pondering the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Paul Krugman: Lies, Damned Lies and Trump Rallies

Who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?

Donald Trump lies a lot. In fact, he lies so often that several media organizations try to keep a running tally, and even try to draw political inferences from fluctuations in the number of lies he tells in a given month (although the trend has been relentlessly upward). [..]

But Trump’s recent lies have been different.

On Tuesday the White House science office went beyond Trump’s now-standard claims that we’re “rounding the corner” on the coronavirus and declared that one of the administration’s major achievements was “ending the Covid-19 pandemic.”

Who was that supposed to convince, when almost everyone is aware not only that the pandemic continues, but that coronavirus cases and hospitalizations are surging? All it did was make Trump look even more out of touch. [..]

What’s scary about all this isn’t just the possibility that Trump may yet win — or steal — a second term. It’s the fact that almost his entire party, and tens of millions of voters, seem perfectly willing to follow him into the abyss.

Indeed, current Republican strategy is almost entirely based on trying to scare voters about bad things that aren’t happening — like a vast wave of anarchist violence sweeping America’s cities — while not noticing bad things that really are happening, like the pandemic and climate change.

This strategy may or may not work; this year it probably won’t. But either way, it will poison America’s political life for many years to come.

Alan Alda: I cannot remain silent as Trump rejects science and endangers lives

Alan Alda is an actor, writer and co-founder of the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University.

Almost 63 million people voted for Donald Trump in 2016, but in 1983, more than 106 million people watched the last episode of “M.A.S.H.” So, it seems that by this president’s standard, I’m a bigger deal than he is.

But I don’t write here as a formerly famous person; I write just as a citizen who might have something in common with you. After spending a decade doing everything I could to get the Equal Rights Amendment ratified, I made a decision 37 years ago to keep much quieter in public about my political opinions. If I was going to make a contribution, it should be by doing what I was good at: writing and acting.

Since then, I’ve found that one of the things I’m also good at is helping scientists communicate more clearly. I’ve helped train more than 15,000 scientists around the world, so science is important to me — as it is to all of us. We swim in a sea of science, and perhaps, like fish who take water for granted, we take science for granted. But without it, we would stop breathing.

Which is where we are now. Science is at stake, as is our very breath.

Stephen King: I’ve come to understand what 2016 Trump supporters wanted.

Stephen King is the author, most recently, of the novella collection “If It Bleeds.”

It’s not 2016 anymore.

As Americans prepare to go to the polls, they are facing a crossroads moment like no other in the nation’s history. One fork leads to Trump and a validation of the id and all the dark beliefs it harbors. The other fork leads to Biden. A vote for Biden isn’t a vote for the superego — Biden is not blameless — but it’s at least a vote for the ego: the part of us that is rational and willing to take responsibility (however reluctantly) for individual actions and societal ills.

It took me four years, but I get where Annie was coming from in 2016, and I get where all those yelling, unmasked, red-hatted partisans at Trump’s rallies are coming from. I understand the desire to kick over the apple cart and then just walk away. But I also understand the need to move forward in a rational, if sometimes plodding and painful, manner. Trump kicked over the cart. Millions of American voters helped him. Biden is promising to right it again … but we’ll all have to pick up the apples.

Amanda Marcotte: In the last days of the campaign, Trump wallows in his contempt for his supporters

It’s no surprise that Trump thinks his supporters are a bunch of morons. Now he isn’t even pretending any longer

Sen. Martha McSally, an Arizona Republican, has paid her bootlicking dues. She’s repeatedly gone out of her way to show obeisance to Donald Trump, most famously in January when she yelled “liberal hack” repeatedly at a CNN reporter who asked her if the Senate should consider evidence before rushing to acquit Trump during his impeachment trial.

But despite years of bowing and scraping and, of course, voting to acquit Trump despite his obvious guilt, McSally has earned no loyalty in return from her orange master. She’s in a tough race against former astronaut Mark Kelly, a Democrat, and has consistently trailed in the polls. At a recent Arizona rally, Trump didn’t bother to hide his disdain for McSally’s standard political desire to address her own potential voters. [..]

Trump gets away with this because Republicans have treating their own people like a bunch of suckers for years, which is why right wing media is awash in conspiracy theories and snake-oil salesmen. They get away with it because their marks always assume, like good marks should, that they’re in on the con, and that somebody else is the sucker. So when Trump insults his own voters right to their faces, telling them they live in some Podunk burg he hoped he’d never have to visit again, many in the crowd are thinking, “He’s not talking about me, but these other yahoos.”

In truth, those folks are the biggest suckers of all, imagining that they’re the exception to Trump universal contempt. He really does see his supporters as a herd of gullible idiots. By swallowing it and voting for him anyway, they’re only confirming his worst assumptions.

Robert Kagan: It’s up to the people to foil Trump’s plot against democracy

Anyone who believes they have America’s best interests at heart isn’t paying attention.

As American democracy hurtles toward what could be its final crisis, we continue to hope that someone will ultimately rise up to save us, that somehow our institutions will protect us, that people in positions of authority will finally do the right thing. This faith in the resilience of democracy is endearing, but unfortunately all it has done these past four years is blind and paralyze us. Believing that the only problem was President Trump and his authoritarian inclinations, we have looked to those around him — in the White House, in the Justice Department, in Congress and in the courts — to control and contain him, presumably out of some innate love of democracy.

It did not occur to us that men and women with respectable résumés might be just as willing to subvert the democratic system as Trump himself, as if U.S. officials alone were immune from the temptations of power. The consequence of this self-delusion is that we have now almost run out of chances to stop them. [..]

Now all we have left is the people. The voters, for all their failings, may prove more trustworthy than their supposed guardians. They may deliver us by delivering an irrefutable landslide to Biden. Or, failing that, by going out into the streets in an American version of “people power” to foil the plot against their democracy. A republic, if we can save it.

Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news media and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Pondering the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Paul Krugman: Trump Killed the Pax Americana

There are, I suppose, some people who still imagine that if and when Donald Trump leaves office we’ll see a rebirth of civility and cooperation in U.S. politics. They are, of course, hopelessly naïve. America in the 2020s will remain a deeply polarized nation, rife with crazy conspiracy theories and, quite possibly, plagued by right-wing terrorism.

But that won’t be Trump’s legacy. The truth is that we were already well down that road before he came along. And on the other side, if the Democrats win big, I expect to see many of Trump’s substantive policies reversed, and then some. Environmental protection and the social safety net will probably end up substantially stronger, taxes on the rich substantially higher, than they were under Barack Obama.

Trump’s lasting legacy, I suspect, will come in international affairs. For almost 70 years America played a special role in the world, one that no nation had ever played before. We’ve now lost that role, and I don’t see how we can ever get it back.

You see, American dominance represented a new form of superpower hegemony.

Charles M. Blow: The Loss of Naïveté

How could we have been so blind? How could we have been so naïve? How did we not believe that the worst was possible until we plummeted into it?

We didn’t believe that a demagogic tyrant-worshiper could rise to the presidency.

The founders of this country worried obsessively about the rise of a demagogue, and the power of foreign influence on our democracy. And yet somehow, over the years, after centuries of American presidents behaving in ways that at least demonstrated a fealty to the country and its institutions and the power of precedent and legacy, those fears waned to a whisper.

Having a demagogue, partially installed by a Russian disinformation campaign no less, who exalted our enemies in the world and hammered our friends, was somewhat unthinkable. This was America. We would only go so far. We might race up to the precipice, but we would never hurl ourselves into the abyss. Wrong.

With the election of Donald Trump, America did the unthinkable, shocking itself and the world: It put the most powerful country in the world under the control of a lying, grifting, shady carnival ­­­­­conductor. He had no experience in governance and no expertise. His entire life was a game of smoke and mirrors, double talk and double-dealing.

Tim Wu: So, Russia, You Want to Mess With Our Voting Machines?

The United States should threaten to retaliate — and I’m not talking about economic sanctions or legal indictments.

Put yourself in the shoes of Russian or Iranian leadership for a moment. Why not interfere with the voting in the U.S. presidential election? What could be more advantageous than catalyzing a bitter and protracted battle over the results of the election, with a chance of igniting civil unrest throughout the country? Sure, it might not work — but with little to lose and so much to gain, why not try? [..]

The risk is not hypothetical. American intelligence agencies, having hacked into Russian computer networks, report that Russia recently infiltrated some voting systems in the United States. If Russia or another country were to alter tallies or voter information in just a few swing states, it could threaten our confidence in the results of the election.

That is why this week, Joe Biden and President Trump should threaten punishing retaliation should another nation attempt such forms of electoral interference. They should stress that by “interference” they do not mean propaganda or influence campaigns, but rather direct attacks on the election, which are attacks on political independence and thus a form of illegal aggression. And they should warn that such attacks will lead to destructive consequences — as permitted by international law — for the offending nation and its leadership.

Amanda Marcotte: Trump White House takes credit for “ending” the pandemic — even as hospitals are overflowing

Trump’s latest ludicrous lie isn’t some brilliant campaign strategy — it’s just ego-fluffing, and it won’t work

Donald Trump’s stalwart belief that he can make the coronavirus pandemic disappear through the magic of bullshit has permeated all levels of his administration. Even so, it was a bit of a shock to see the White House Office of Science and Technology put out a press release on Tuesday giving credit to Trump for “ending the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Meanwhile, in the real world, hospitalizations are up 46% from a month ago. A reported 983 people died of the disease on the same day the White House crowed about “ending” the pandemic. On Wednesday, according to the Johns Hopkins University COVID-19 Dashboard, the U.S. will pass 8.8 million cases and 227,000 deaths.

It remains unclear how this language about “ending” the pandemic even got into an official White House press release, since the report it’s announcing doesn’t say anything the end of this disaster, even though it features a lot of hilarious puffery of Trump for signing a couple of bills that were passed by Congress to provide money for research. That’s certainly proof that federal bureaucrats know the importance of flattering Trump’s massive ego, but nothing more.

All signs point to this being yet another situation where the White House is pressuring formerly-apolitical federal offices to serve as propaganda outlets for Trump’s disinformation machine.

Catherine Rampell: Trump didn’t build his border wall with steel. He built it out of paper.

The country’s immigration infrastructure may remain crippled long after Trump leaves office.

n the middle of his first year in office, President Trump endorsed a bill so radically anti-immigrant that even most Senate Republicans couldn’t stomach it.

Trump claimed the bill would create a “merit-based immigration system that protects U.S. workers and taxpayers.” The measure would have replaced the country’s current employer- and family-centered system with a points-based program, awarding immigrants points for criteria such as age and “extraordinary achievements,” though the only two achievements that would have earned points were Nobel Prizes and Olympic medals. [..]

As it turns out, the president didn’t need Congress after all. Without ever signing a single immigration law or completing his famous wall, Trump has cut the flow of foreigners by executive fiat. This fiscal year, the United States is on track to admit half the number of legal immigrants it did in 2016. This would bring levels of legal immigration down to what they were in 1987 — when the U.S. population was about a quarter smaller, substantially younger and less in need of working-age immigrants than it is today.