In the last week, the LA Times and the Washington Post—both owned by billionaires with no newspaper experience—gave notice they wouldn’t publish an editorial endorsing a presidential candidate.
Both publications had endorsements ready to go. Both endorsed Kamala Harris. But in each case, the rich guy owning the paper defaulted to his personal financial interests rather than uphold editorial independence and integrity. And both have suffered losses, as employees have quit and subscribers have cancelled. More importantly, the have lost credibility.
The excuse given is some form of ‘neutrality’, which comes across as disingenuous, at best. There is no neutrality in this election. We have two candidates whose vision for this country differs so drastically, one can’t help wonder if we’ve crossed into another dimension of space and time when comparing the two.
Kamala Harris is for a country to remain strong into the future, while Trump has built his campaign on lies, more lies, and an ugly view of the country and its people that should sicken any decent human being.
When you have all but a few of the nation’s economists coming out in favor of the Democratic candidate, you know the Republican contender is bad. Really bad. His economic proposals based on deporting millions of migrant workers and setting massive tariffs on all goods coming into the country will send us beyond a recession directly into a depression.
(Not to mention setting the Social Security fund clock back several years, so that we face a crisis in funding in a scant six years from now.)
Morally, Trump is corrupt. He’s a malignant narcissist. And he’s consistently demonstrated how dangerously incapable he is of leading our country.
He literally cares for no one but himself, and has surrounded himself with self-serving toadies such as Elon Musk and RFK Jr, both whom can’t wait to destroy our country’s foundations. As for his co-partner in crime, JD. Vance, this man isn’t even liked by his own party—a vapid, gormless chimera basically considered the also-ran of the Trump ticket.
And potentially the next President if Trump decides to serve out his term doddering around his golf courses.
Our precious civil rights have suffered unbelievable damage solely because of the judges Trump has appointed to courts. The only thing that has held back this slide into the dark ages has been President Biden and his administration, as well as Democratically-elected state leaders and nonprofit organizations. And a few good judges, even Republican-appointed ones, who remembered they’re actually here to serve the law, not their own ideological fantasies.
With a Trump Presidency, the destruction of our country will be complete. He will continue to remove rights for women, for the LGBTQ+ community, for people of color, and even for people of religions other than the dominant evangelical religion. He will continue to appoint the worst judges, who will gleefully pull down Madam Justice and kick her into the dirt.
He will destroy what is now a booming economy, and he will sledgehammer our civil rights.
If he wins, white racist bigots will celebrate in the streets, while the rest of us desperately search for safe havens. And he will pursue us in these safe havens in his quest for revenge…promising to use both the DOJ and the military against us.
This is no time for faux ‘neutrality’. This is a time for all good and decent people to realize that we are at a decisive moment: one choice leads to hope and a determined effort to stitch together the torn fabric of our society; the other choice leads to a darkness I can’t even comprehend.
The LA Times and the Washington Post have failed in their duty to their readers. I hope that the Georgia media does not follow their lead.