Saudi Arabia, Thanksgiving, Trump: 3 Stories You Should Read 11/21/2018

November 21, 2018 Confluence

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Confluence Daily is your daily news source for women in the know.

In the category of: We’ve got to find a way to contain it.

Trump’s Lies Are a Virus, and News Organizations Are the Host

Journalists have become complicit in spreading the president’s falsehoods and conspiracy theories. Here’s how they can do better.

The most recent controversy provides the perfect metaphor for Trump’s part-symbiotic, part-parasitic relationship with the media: infection. In epidemiology, a virus cannot multiply on its own. First, it must find a host, whose cellular machinery it commandeers to reproduce. For a virus, all distribution—all amplification—is infection.

So it is for Trump. The president’s conspiratorial language is an odious virus that has found a variety of hosts in the U.S. media ecosystem. The traditional news media amplify his words for a variety of reasons, including newsworthiness (he is, after all, the president), easy ratings (cable-news audiences have soared in his term), and old-fashioned peer pressure (the segment producer’s lament: “If everybody else is carrying Trump, shouldn’t we?”).

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In the category of: History matters.

Everything You Learned About Thanksgiving Is Wrong

Not to rain on our Thanksgiving Day parade, but the story of the first Thanksgiving, as most Americans have been taught it, is not exactly accurate.

Blame school textbooks with details often so abridged, softened or out of context that they are ultimately made false; children’s books that simplify the story to its most pleasant version; or animated television specials like “The Mouse on the Mayflower,” which first aired in 1968, that not only misinformed a generation, but also enforced a slew of cringe-worthy stereotypes.

High school textbooks are particularly bad about stating absolutes because these materials “teach history” by giving students facts to memorize even when the details may be unclear, said James W. Loewen, a sociologist and the author of “Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong.”

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In the category of: Consequences are real.

Trump’s Khashoggi statement is a green light for murder

A man who would issue a statement like this is not fit for office.

This passage is the green light for murdering dissidents (again, with an exclamation point). Trump is overtly stating that whether or not MBS ordered the Khashoggi hit, it doesn’t matter: He believes Saudi Arabia is an important ally and doesn’t care what they do so long as they help with Trump’s priorities. In this case, those priorities are countering Iran, fighting terrorism, and “keeping oil prices at reasonable levels — so important for the world.”

There’s only one reasonable conclusion from this: The United States doesn’t care how friendly dictators treat their own people, even if that means murdering a US resident like Khashoggi. And indeed, Trump’s final lines all but explicitly say this:

As President of the United States I intend to ensure that, in a very dangerous world, America is pursuing its national interests and vigorously contesting countries that wish to do us harm. Very simply it is called America First!

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