Mosby
Mosby's JournalThe Complete History of SNL's 'Celebrity Jeopardy'
https://www.vulture.com/amp/article/history-snl-celebrity-jeopardy.htmlRabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, former chief rabbi of Great Britain, has died
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, the much respected former chief rabbi of the UK, has died aged 72.
Sacks was highly esteemed around the Jewish world for his erudition, his wisdom, and his prolific authorship of works on Jewish thought.
Sacks announced in the middle of October that he had been diagnosed with cancer and was undergoing treatment, but passed away on Saturday morning.
https://m.jpost.com/breaking-news/rabbi-lord-jonathan-sacks-former-chief-rabbi-of-great-britain-dies-648341
Trump's Forever Campaign Is Just Getting Started
While you watch Donald Trumps presidency stagger to what appears to be its ugly end, always keep in mind how it began: Trump entered the political world on the back of the birther conspiracy theory, a movement whose importance was massively underestimated at the time. Aside from its racist undertones, think about what a belief in birtherism really implied. If you doubted that Barack Obama was born in the United Statesand about a third of Americans did, including 72 percent of registered Republicansthen that meant you also believed that Obama was an illegitimate president. That meant, in other words, you believed that everyonethe entire American political, judicial, and media establishment, including the White House and Congress, the federal courts and the FBI, all of themwas complicit in a gigantic plot to swindle the public into accepting this false commander in chief. A third of Americans had so little faith in American democracy, broadly defined, they were willing to think that Obamas entire presidency was a fraud.
That third of Americans went on to become Trumps base. Over four years, they continued to applaud him, no matter what he did, not because they necessarily believed everything he said, but often because they didnt believe anything at all. If everything is a scam, who cares if the president is a serial liar? If all American politicians are corrupt, then so what if the president is too? If everyone has always broken the rules, then why cant he do that too? No wonder they didnt object when Trumps White House defied congressional subpoenas with impunity, or when he used the Department of Justice to pursue personal vendettas, or when he ignored ethics guidelines and rules about security clearances, or when he fired watchdogs and inspectors general. No wonder they cheered him on when he denigrated the CIA and the State Department as the deep state, or laughed and smiled when he called journalists enemies of the people.
Not all of this was Trumps doing. Many Americans had lost trust in democratic institutions long before he arrived on the scene. One recent survey showed that half of the country is dissatisfied with our political system; one-fifth told pollsters that they would be happy to live under military rule. Trump not only exploited this democratic deficit to win the White House, but he expanded it while in office. And now his political, financial, and maybe even emotional strategy requires him to damage Americas faith in its democracy further.
He is launching that strategy right now. And to be clear: It is a strategy, not a random reaction to events. Trump is no good at governing, but he has long understood, with the intuition of a seasoned con man, how to create distrust, and how to use that distrust to his advantage. The journalist Lesley Stahl has said he once told her that he attacks the media to discredit you all and demean you all so that when you write negative stories about me no one will believe you. He discredited and demeaned public servants such as the National Security Council staffers Fiona Hill and Alexander Vindman too, so that when they spoke honestly about his behavior, no one would believe them either.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/11/trumps-forever-campaign-is-just-getting-started/617021/
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