I am prepared. I know what I'm going to do.
"Taking a Stand in Baton Rouge" leshia Evans, nurse, Pennsylvania, July 9, 2016. Photo by Jonathan Bachman, Reuters.
"It is a far, far better thing...It is a far, far better rest..."
...people seem to be both misdiagnosing and underestimating what happened at the Washington Post. This isn’t about censorship or the media. It’s catastrophic failure of the rule of law.
No. What?
This is a watershed moment that suggests we are in greater danger than we realized.
I agree. Bezos did it because he is convinced that trumpie will be the next POTUS. It is democracy that is both the cause and the casualty of a second trumpie presidency. I understand that that is not spiffy for the rule of law, but first things first. The people are preparing to democratically throw off democracy.
It’s time to get organized and get ready. To prepare for what’s to come.
...
What we witnessed on Friday....was something much, much more consequential. It was about oligarchy, the rule of law, and the failure of the democratic order.
When Bezos decreed that the newspaper he owned could not endorse Trump’s opponent, it was a transparent act of submission borne of an intuitive understanding of the differences between the candidates.
Bezos understood that if he antagonized Kamala Harris and Harris became president, he would face no consequences. A Harris administration would not target his businesses because the Harris administration would—like all presidential administrations not headed by Trump—adhere to the rule of law.
Of course a Harris admin wouldn't "target" Amazon or Blue Origin, but the Post? The Post already has been hurt by Bezos. It is a money-loser anyway but has had one editor resign and has had canceled subscriptions. If a newspaper falls in the forest and there was no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? No. A newspaper exists to be heard, to have influence. No one in a Harris admin would read the Post, give them an interview, return their calls. The writer here, Jonathan V. Last both goes too far and doesn't go far enough. He goes too far in the consequences to the Post from a Harris admin. He doesn't go far enough in not recognizing that Bezos knows that Kamala is not going to win. Bezos would not have taken this action, which may destroy WaPo as we know it, if he believed Kamala would win.
Bezos likewise understood that the inverse was not true. If he continued to antagonize Trump and Trump became president, his businesses very much would be targeted.
...
What Trump understood was that Bezos’s submission would be of limited use if it was kept quiet. Because the point of dominating Bezos wasn’t just to dominate Bezos. It was to send a message to every other businessman, entrepreneur, and corporation in America: that these are the rules of the game. If you are nice to Trump, the government will be nice to you. If you criticize Trump, the government will be used against you.
Which is why Trump met with Blue Origin on the same day that Bezos yielded. It was a demonstration—a very public demonstration.
...
The Bezos surrender isn’t just a demonstration. It’s a consequence. It’s a signal that the rule of law has already eroded to such a point that even a person as powerful as Jeff Bezos no longer believes it can protect him.
So he has sought shelter in the embrace of the strongman.
Bezos made his decision because he calculated that Trump has already won—not the election, but his struggle to break the rule of law.
Last has a reasoned position, I just don't think it's the rule of law that has been broken. Bezos is using the rule of law to sue trumpie for not giving Amazon government contracts. I assume that it is not a baseless suit, that there are laws that trumpie broke or distorted. I just don't think you have to go all the way to "he broke the rule of law". I am 100% sure that Bezos didn't sit down and calculate, "Well, the law can't protect my business, I better seek "shelter" from the strongman." I'm pretty sure Bezos made a more pedestrian calculation. He read the tea leaves, followed the polls, saw the trend line, talked to some people and concluded, as I did, that trumpie was going to win. I don't think it was 50-50 in Bezos' mind. "Well, I don't know, 538 says it's a toss up!" No. Bezos was convinced, convinced to a standard that he was willing to sacrifice WaPo, that trumpie was going to win.
