I have a Tesla that I love to drive. Would I buy another one? Not on your life. Can I give up using Amazon? It will be difficult but I shall try. I can no longer support Musk and Bezos.
I am truly heartbroken and torn to cancel my subscription. I feel I am abandoning and endangering the journalists I most respect and depend on. But I cannot support Bezos and Lewis in suppressing the Post endorsement of Kamala Harris for President.
Democracy Has Died in The Post C Suite
This is not the venerable Post returning to its roots. This is new Post bosses helping fascism take root in the United States - by killing off independent journalism. This is Jeff Bezos joining Elon Musk in perverting American media - preemptively capitulating and placing their bets and putting their fists on the scale for a TrumpProject2025ChristianNationalist win. Or worse.
Please Fact Check William Lewis' assertions concerning his decision to suppress the Editorial Board's endorsement of Kamala Harris for president.
Lewis asserts that his decision is:
1. "consistent with the values The Post has always stood for"
His decision is demonstrably inconsistent with the Post's past values and actions.
2. " Our job at The Washington Post is to provide through the newsroom nonpartisan news for all Americans, and thought-provoking, reported views from our opinion team to help our readers make up their own minds."
2a. Lewis elides the job of the Editorial Board
2b. Suppressing the Editorial Board's endorsement actually impedes readers' ability to make up our own minds by denying us the opinion of knowledgeable and trusted journalists.
3. "...our job as the newspaper of the capital city of the most important country in the world is to be independent.
And that is what we are and will be."
Certainly it is WaPo's job to be independent.
Even presenting the appearance of self-policing as capitulation to threats by fascist powers is exactly the opposite of independence. And seeming to adopt the methods and advance to agenda of fascists is even worse.
I understand, that coming from Murdoch media, Lewis expects his consumers to swallow any swill wrapped in high minded sounding rhetoric. In this, Lewis reveals his: Murdochian modus operandi; disdain for journalistic ethics; ignorance of the notion of an independent press; and disregard for Washington Post journalists and readers. Most damning, Lewis asserts and appropriates the language and ideals of an independent press, while in fact negating those exact ideals. I believe George Orwell termed what Lewis is doing newspeak.
What you are doing when you cancel these news sources is cutting yourself off from excellent reporting and analysis in the process. If this is enough if a movement it jeopardizes the jobs of many good people and works to kill the papers or entities or force drastic change not necessarily good ones. I read here how people are going to rely on these substacks etc which use these primary sources! They link to them. Secondary sources and independent journalists, historians don’t and can’t cover everything of interest and importance. They too have bias. They too have a bottom line. It’s good to check primary and secondary sources to be well informed. You have to curate wisely. But here I read anger and the need to punish … Bezos Musk ( Amazon Twitter too? ) Murdoch, Sulzberger, etc and help further CHANNELING and Bias in this country.
I think that the Washington Post's veteran journalist, Dana Milbank, expressed how we may consider our relationship to this most valuable paper from a deeply considered perspective: 'Opinion Why I’m not quitting the Post And why I hope you don’t, either.' (excerpts)
On Thursday night, at the Pulitzer Prize Awards Ceremony in New York, my Post colleagues were feted for winning top honors in three categories. A series, assembled by more than 75 Post journalists on the AR-15’s singular capacity to kill, won for national reporting. And on the editorial side, The Post had a double win: In the commentary category, Vladimir Kara-Murza, writing from prison in Russia, won for his columns demanding democracy in his country; in the editorial writing category, David E. Hoffman won for his series on the “Annals of Autocracy” and the global battle for democracy.
Yet the next day, my colleagues and I were deluged with emails and messages from readers on social media. Many said they love our work but are canceling their subscriptions. Still others demanded that we all quit:
“Your lack of resignation is a silent endorsement of Donald Trump for President.”
“The Washington Post has gone from All The President's Men to All The Dictator's Lapdogs.”
What happened between Thursday night and Friday afternoon, of course, was the Post’s non-endorsement in the presidential race. As The Post reported, owner Jeff Bezos, in effect, directed the newspaper not to publish its endorsement of Kamala Harris.
I get the anger, and I share it. I helped organize the statement Post columnists published calling Bezos’s action “an abandonment of the fundamental editorial convictions of the newspaper that we love.” Most of my colleagues, I’m sure, agree with our revered former editor, Marty Baron, who called the decision “cowardice, with democracy as its casualty.” It’s certainly the owner’s prerogative to adopt a general no-endorsement policy, and it might well have been reasonable if it had been done outside of the political cycle (such endorsements long ago stopped swaying voters), but coming 11 days before the election, it gave the appearance of cowering before a wannabe dictator to protect Bezos’s business interests — particularly because Donald Trump met with executives from Bezos’s aerospace company, Blue Origin, the same day.
But I can’t endorse the calls to cancel The Post. Boycotting the newspaper won’t hurt Bezos, whose fortune comes not from Post subscribers but from Amazon Prime members and Whole Foods shoppers. His ownership and subsidization of The Post is just pocket change to him. And if readers want to strike a blow for democracy, they’d achieve more by knocking on doors and making calls for Harris for the next eight days. But boycotting The Post will hurt my colleagues and me. We lost $77 million last year, which required a(nother) round of staff cuts through buyouts. The more cancellations there are, the more jobs will be lost, and the less good journalism there will be. (WAPO, by Dana Milbank) See gifted link for the entire Opinion below.
Bezos saved the paper. But now he is being whacked around and rightfully so. We need the NYTimes and the Washington Post to survive as organizations that support American journalists and reporters. Their work reverberates here and abroad. We did not cancel either, but think it was a terrible transparent move by Bezos and probably "obeying in advance" as per Tim Snyder's comment on this. Whereas I have been thankful for Amazon and Whole Foods, no fool am I to cut myself off from what I need in this age of shops going out of business for vatious reasons and needing the convenience, I also indulge in criticizing those who do cancel just to "get even" with Bezos or the Times because they don't like one thing or another (headlines, stories editorials etc). The movement to cancel makes me think they are being lemmings. This side of the divide also has some unthinking going on and this is ironic.
To Lin and David: This is the only tool we have to use. Consider how Musk manipulates Starlink after talking to Putin and look how worried Bezos is to lose favor with The Bloated Yam. Scary
In the words of Jedi master Yoda, "Do. Or do not. There is no try." We in this household have almost never used Amazon. Here's a simple trick to use when searching for an item on the internet: In the search window type (item name) -amazon -amazon.com
The search results will then exclude the Bezos system, freeing you from the temptation.
So you find everything you need with enough running around and time devoted to this boycott. You must live in a big city with lots of all kinds of stores
Our friend in California is a very principled guy whom we admire. He loved his Tesla, but once Elon Musk began strongly supporting Donald Trump our friend decided to dump his Tesla. He replaced his Tesla with a different electric car; I think the new one is made by BMW. Just an idea 💡 that you can consider.
Yes. Even with that tariff protection, Elon wants more. More. More and more. There is something wrong with many of these billionaires, more money, more power. They didn’t get this rich and powerful on their own or by playing by the rules, or because the market is a ‘free’ market. They trade their $ for favors. A free market would reward innovation, consumers buy the best choice, performance, price, quality. Playing the tariff game supports Tesla at the expense of foreign brands, but also other domestic brands that have innovations, yet can’t get them to market fast enough because Tesla has an advantage.
I don’t think that answer is a certain amount. It’s always about more, more, more. It is like a disease some billionaires get. They all are not afflicted. Look at Warren Buffet giving billions to Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation investing in the eradication of Malaria. Bloomberg’s endowment to Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. I read last night Taylor Swift has donated 100 million to charities and good causes. At some point, the taxes should be so great, forces charity, but also at some point nearly all of new gains should be taxed. This is how it was for much of our history until 1980.
A billionaire I once worked for - at the time, maybe only a hundreds of millions-aire - claimed to me that the environmental movement was all about control. I pushed back, I disagreed and said how would he know their motives? There's a lot of projection amongst the rich, with the objective of somehow self-justifying or concealing their own control of resources, including press.
I think it's nice that the mega-rich do philanthropy. My question is why do they get to decide what's good for society? In a democracy, WE the People make those decisions. It's high time we eat the rich. They've been eating us for at least the last 40 years of the neoliberal order. Think about it...If a person made $100,000 and could keep every penny of it, they would have had to start BEFORE Homo Erectus had evolved to have as much as just Elon Musk. Worse yet, Musk is not even the richest person on Forbes list. Something is seriously wrong with a system that allows this to happen. We have both the ability and the moral duty to change that.
Bezos paid a pittance for the WaPo, compared to estates all around the Nation he barely lives in and a super yacht. It is not that they need any of this, it is the power of "oh, look, what I can do, never in my wildest dreams" that is addictive.
(His fiancés brother, a sleazy Hollywood manager of reality-tv personalities, has been a known Trumpist before Bezos started dating her.)
The thing about these rich fucks is that they don't want to have the most money, they want to have ALL the money. If they could get your labor for free, they would gladly make you a slave. They're trying as we speak.
see my above.... please. this is not the answer... not yet. I think there is a sticker that you can put on your Tesla car that goes 'bought it before we knew how awful he is"
Kit, as disgusted as I have become with Elon Musk, I not only shall not buy another Tesla, I have traded in the Model S I have owned reasonably happily for a new electric vehicle from a different manufacturer. Giving up Amazon, as ubiquitous as it has become in our modern lives, is as you describe quite difficult, especially as I note their early adoption of all electric (non Tesla) delivery vehicles. But we should be tgrying to do our shopping at local stores. Shopping from the comfort and ease of online ordering is NOT good for our planet!
I have unsubscribed to the Washington Post and am going to break my dependence on Amazon, including its VISA card. This will be difficult. A good first step would be to figure out how to buy a copy of On Freedom in such a way that the profits go to Ukraine. Any suggestions?
Your shooting yourself in the foot and not doing much if anything. But hey if it makes you feel like you are…..
The problem is not Amazon or Visa which has made life so much easier for so many! But maybe it’s a good exercise for some to run around looking for what you need spend time and gas and shipping plus … this is what made Bezos rich. The problem is mass wealth interfering in politics .
In 1936, the Nazis murdered my mother's first husband, Friedrich Hublitz, a Berlin high school principal, because he refused to allow Hitler-Youth activities in his school. The Nazis installed a Hitler-Youth organizer to succeed Hublitz as HS principal.
Friedrich Hublitz left behind my mother, a 2-year-old daughter and 4-month-old son. My mother, a blond and blue-eyed Finnish-Swede, would soon be forced to flee Germany to escape being "farmed out" to Nazi officials as part of their “Lebensborn” Aryan-breeding program!
Friedrich Hublitz was a dedicated educator, a German hero, a WW I veteran pilot, who authored a book about his WW I air reconnaissance missions, for which Hermann Göring wrote the intro... But none of that mattered to the Nazis, who were consolidating their power and institutionalizing their hate-filled, murderous, fascist, master-race mission, by purging all opposition, including from within their own SA leadership in 1934. ... All this to say that no one--not even these cowardly oligarchs-- will be spared a Trump/ Vance/ Musk/ Miller authoritarian regime's wanton and capricious vengeance if and whenever they deem it useful and/or necessary.
There should be a compilation made of history like this to try and reach every day people. Along with authoritarian stories from Communist Russian times.
Thank you for this. I cancelled my WaPo subscription immediately on hearing the news of this craven appeasement, with the owner Bezos scuttling to position his own interests over those who always trusted the paper always to stand forth like a beacon in the paper's own self-professed light of democracy. I am sorry for the many excellent journalists and editors, and I will miss reading their views, but quite frankly my trust in that institution was immediately broken on hearing both the decision and the timing of it. Trump has done his best to destroy people's trust in their institutions, and I'm afraid he's done a fine job with WaPo and the LA Times. Because the billionaire owners of these papers obeyed in advance, they have placed themselves on the slippery slope they hoped to avoid by trying to mollify a rising dictator. And by standing out in this way, they place themselves in the focus of a bully. Bullies do not say thank you; they double down.
Knock on doors in swing States if you can. I have been in Pennsylvania for a week and busloads come in on Saturday and Sunday, but there are WAY fewer volunteers picking up turfs during the week. The work is easy and it beats sitting home agonizing. People will put you up if you want to stay overnight. They can use door knockers and drivers. Www.mobilize.us. if that website doesn't work for you reach out to Democrats in the location of interest to you.
Yay, Lin!!!! I would just love to hear about your door knocking experience in Wisconsin after you've done it or when you take a break. Share here or offline. My partner and I are having some memorable conversations.
I've done GOTV there every two years since 2012. But not since 2019. I've walked areas within 7 miles or so of downtown. And have been driven to various suburbs. And on election day to visit various polling places.
Neighborhoods and voters across all socioeconomic and ethnic divides. We don't canvass or phone or text during Packers games. One interesting part of the work is to help voters, who volunteer that they've been incarcerated, understand their voting rights.
Racine has a great historical society (Racine was on the Underground Railroad.) SC Johnson's Frank Lloyd Wright corporate headquarters. Kringel (Bendtsen's, unless you live on the other side of town.) Weird, to this New Yorker, midwestern pizza - like little saltine cracker canapés. Great Mexican, Korean, and Indian food. A Great Lake! And really fine people - they keep us well fed and in good spirits during long hours at headquarters.
I've lived in really Blue areas and now in a Blue dot, in a purplish circle, in a vast Red desert going up to the Canadian border - so campaigning in a really diverse swing state - it's great! And especially GOTV weekend when so many people are really working hard.
So much juicy and wonderful information, Lin! Tim Snyder will be very interested in your work to explain voting rights that the formerly incarcerated have but might not understand. I held when I read the bit about the pizzas that taste like Saltine cracker canapés. I'm spoiled by New York and New Haven style pizza and remember having the absolute worst Pizza of my life in Wyoming. How do they make it taste so much like cardboard? Thank you for sharing about your work. We're between houses right now on a very rural turf.
I am a historian currently teaching a seminar on the political culture of the USA at the University of Vienna, Austria, and have published commentaries on the elections in daily and weekly newspapers here, and have also been invited to comment on radio and TV shows. Austrians have an expression, "vorauseilende Gehorsam", which is the exact equivalent, and might well be the source, of Prof. Snyder's "obedience in advance". People here know how this works very well indeed. Unfortunately, the commentaries are in German. Anyone who is interested and can read German is welcome to e-mail me (mitchell.ash@univie.ac.at), and I will send you the relevant links.
The Washington Post turned dark with Bezos’ decision not to endorse a presidential candidate, more precisely, Kamala Harris, who had been approved by editorial board members.
This noted newspaper with an excellent history of journalistic service to the American people now, tragically, looks to be in the shadow of one of the country’s billionaires.
‘…every little thing that we do has consequences for those around us.’
Bezos' Blue Origin execs met with Trump in TX, & then Bezos orders WaPo editorial bd not to endorse Harris/Walz!
Staff pls hold a massive walkout that would send a resounding message to a spineless &/or corrupt owner.
Democracy Dies in the Darkness: the choice is a lawless, depraved sociopath, convicted felon & fascist to the core vs a former prosecutor AG Senator VP. Spineless &/or corrupt media barons betraying the fundamentals of democracy & the rule of law...CANCELLED my subscription.
'Jeff Bezos has so far declined to comment on the situation, even as his own paper’s journalists reported that it was Bezos who ultimately spiked the planned endorsement. A source with knowledge told CNN on Friday that an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris had been drafted before it was squashed.' (CNN, excerpts)
'In the last 24 hours, at least one editor has resigned, and high-profile Post staffers have publicly expressed their dismay as many in the paper’s Opinion section are furious over how the situation was handled.'
'Former Post executive editor Marty Baron, who led the paper under Bezos during the first Trump administration called the decision an act o'f “cowardice.”
“To declare a moment of high principle, only 11 days before the election that is just highly suspect that is just not to be believed that this was a matter of principle at this point,” 'Baron told CNN’s Michael Smerconish on Saturday morning.'
“Bezos has other commercial interests, a big stake and Amazon, he has a space company called Blue Origin,”' Baron said. ' “Trump has threatened to pursue his political enemies and he rewards his friends and he punishes his perceived political and think there’s no other explanation for what’s happening right now.”
'Robert Kagan, a Post columnist and opinion editor-at-large who had been with the paper for 25 years, publicly resigned on Friday as a direct result of the non-endorsement.'
“This is obviously an effort by Jeff Bezos to curry favor with Donald Trump in the anticipation of his possible victory,” 'Kagan told CNN’s Erin Burnett OutFront on Friday.'
“Trump has threatened to go after Bezos’ business. Bezos runs one of the largest companies in America. They have tremendously intricate relations with federal government. They depend on the federal government.”
'On Friday, Trump met with executives from Blue Origin, the space exploration company owned by Bezos, hours after the Post announced its decision Friday. The company has a $3.4 billion contract with the federal government to build a new spacecraft to scuttle astronauts to and from the moon’s surface.'
'Trump advisers and supporters have been crowing since both the Post and the Los Angeles Times’ 'billionaire owners stepped in to prevent their papers from endorsing Harris. (CNN) See link below.
Thank you Fern—it’s so great seeing your post! I “unsubscribed” to WaPo last night so that I could sleep knowing I was NOT going to continue to support the higher echelons of that once great paper. It saddens me beyond my feeble words because of the many fine journalists that I will miss (Carol Lenonnig, Jonathan Capehart, Deborah Rubin, Philip Rucker, etc., etc.). Thank goodness for Dr. Snyder and Heather Cox Richardson.
So good to 'see' you Linda. I'm am grateful to you for mentioning several of WAPO's outstanding journalists, and I would add the investigative and natural science work done by the paper. It was with particular sadness about the paper's journalists and journalism in America that I absorbed the decision made by Bezos.
We need a powerful campaign in the US in support of local, statewide and national 'Free-Press'. It is crucial that the people know the facts. There are various ways to get news based on journalistic principles to Americans. This needs to be a top priority. With technology, colleges and universities ... there are ways to afford the truth...where is the will!
This is how we hurt many other people and channel ourselves for this satisfaction of dubious effect. The paper was and is doing good work other than this shameful act by its owner which is having plenty of reverberation. I think you mean Jennifer Rubin.. but so many others.
Fern I so love your posts—your excellent explanations are so helpful 🗽
There hasn’t been but a very few days that I have been able to recommend Dr. Snyder and HCR Substack sites. I volunteer for the Metro St. Louis League of Women Voters and the opportunities for sharing information has been encouraging for me. That said, I’m in the blue dot of a red state so can only hope that our extremely hard work registering voters this year makes a difference.
I refuse to be a victim of our state’s “minority ruled” legislature—fighting back the best way I know by being part of an organization that simply presents FACTS, and hoping I live long enough to see some sanity return to a state that gave us Harry Truman.❤️🤍💙
WAPO is a paper with an excellent history and an organization of people, good people, excellent reporting and opinion writers. We will not cancel. Bezos decision does not wipe away that serve or the value we need to continue..value that reverberates. Bezos is getting duly shamed. I will not obey in advance to punish along with punishing everyone else and myself. Ditto for Amazon/Whole Foods. Tesla? hesitating about that. I have no idea how many are making themselves feel good by cancelling and boycotting. This takes a massive and long term sustained response. We don't have the time nor, I think, the communal will. And what will it change?
After learning that Jeff Bezos' cowardice preventing the editorial staff of the Washington Post from publishing an endorsement of this year's presidential candidate, I cancelled my subscription. Abandoning freedom of the press and the right of journalists to voice their opinions without constraint because of the fear of retribution towards the owner of the newspaper is abhorrent to me and the first inkling of authoritarian gains. We all know what happened in Germany. The film The Damned by Visconti is a prime example of money and wealth attempting accommodation until they too are swept up in the Nazi maelstrom..
The other fateful aspect about the wealthy & powerful obeying in advance is that it becomes an actual alteration (or at least a likely lever for an alteration) of society in the direction of the society obeying the tyrant and so accelerating the amount of obedience the tyrant needs to be established beyond the reach of non-violent resistance.
Do you mean obeying in advance has a snowballing effect in terms of succumbing to the tyrant/authoritarian? It also produces outrage and disgust and resistance. If obedience accelerates enough there is no need for violence among the compliant, the fearful who will obey to avoid violence. Non-violent resistance becomes useless? Resistance becomes violent of necessity?
I mean that while in principle members of a society obey a tyrant individually and one at a time, the obedience by the owner of two powerful, influential companies is a quantitative shift on the scales of power which adds much more weight to the side that is obeying so that it becomes an alteration of that society. Non-violent resistance is a matter of arithmetic. The number of non-violent resisters must be or represent a number of people higher than the number of people enforcing obedience times the force multipliers at the disposal of those enforcers. Either resisters must be shown that resistance is futile, or enforcers of obedience must be shown that enforcement of obedience is futile.
Thank you for addressing this crisis, sir. When the wealthiest begin to “obey in advance,” they are showing us that wealth does not buy courage or moral values.
Jeff Bezos was smart enough to see the power of going from selling books online to selling literally everything and anything online. And that made him incredibly wealthy. I also happen to know he’s a lifelong fan of Star Trek. But somehow he is not smart enough to have learned the core values that show has tried to teach us since 1966, including the value of Resisting Domination By Authoritarians (from Trelane to Apollo to Vol to Landrau to Khan in the original series to The Borg in modern day Trek). Bezos has demonstrated he’s willing to be assimilated by The Borg freely. I can only imagine what he would’ve done, had he been alive during the early days of Hitler’s rise to power. He is a disgrace as an American and as a human being.
I had previously canceled my WaPost subscription. Today, I will cancel my Amazon account (which I first opened when all Amazon was selling was books). Bye bye Bezos!
And also thank you for coming to Full Circle Bookstore in OKC last night. It was an honor to meet you!
It's a good paper. I will not punish the good people that work on it. They are rebelling. Bezos is getting shamed more widely. I won't shoot myself in the foot and be deprived of a good news source for this. Same goes for the NYTimes also at times disappointing. But they come through. Those who cancel if in enough numbers *maybe* make a dent, but I think more harm is done this way. Bezos is getting duly slammed... and staff have left. Stay tuned.
Hello and thank you for your many comments here. I am hoping you are well.
Your point of view here is understandable. Not in any way am I detached from these events, and, as my comment makes clear, I am fully supportive of Prof Snyder's reminder to not "obey in advance"; others who share here that they are among those cancelling subscription and openly criticizing the Post, the Times, and so on are also making understandable choices.
My sense is that these many approaches, when made public, shared openly and widely and with the reasoning for them, provide important evidence of stern and reasoned opposition to the aspiring autocrat and the autocrats willful followers. Also all these public and explained acts of opposition influence others who want to act against the trends of submission and act in support of continued constitutional democratic government; these are real people making real choices to not become resigned to either the anti-democratic trend nor the submission and obedience in advance trends.
Resistance takes some thought and requires conscious courage. Just the demonstration of these -- independent thought and choice and courageous action in the face of very real dangers -- is immeasurably uncomfortable for both the aspiring tyrant and obedient followers. There is lots of historical evidence.
This resistance also changes the political and human landscape for people, e.g., JD Vance, who think that they are very much smarter than any of us and much much smarter than Trump, Bannon, and other Trump apologists and promoters. JD Vance and his crowd in the intellectual cadre of the conservative right community see this sort of resistance as a real problem for realizing their more elite agenda, because, while Trump is all about using the tear-down method to satisfy his narcissist needs and to acquire surrogates to do the financial plundering for him [they get a small 'cut' and ,if they are very loyal, some short-lived personal fame], JD Vance and company are watching the tear-down in order to seize the opportunities to build in their forms, instiutitonal and normative, as replacement infrastructure. Trump is their person for the 'untidy' part of the actions that, once begun and well on the way, provide the needs for the real functional repair of institutions and replacement of personnel.
Like most other opportunities in human living, the appearance of the need to act, in this case in Re these changes of editorial behavior, invite resistance. The coherence of the thinking and the courage to act on it are, for all the variety of them, what is making plain many many Americans conscious refusal to be intimidated, to be co-opted, to give up the American constitutional democratic system. This wave of many resisters, this conscientious objection and counter-action, invites others to join, and such courageous mix of forms of active resistance put the Trumps and JD Vances on notice that they may just, in time over time, not succeed. All of this resistance is observed in the mix of other forms of defense of democracy and constitutional government [really good exs are at Joyce Vance's Civil Discourse, "Is DOJ Doing Enough to Protect the Election?", Oct 24, and "Five Questions with Voting Rights Lawyer Danielle Lang", Oct 26.]
Thanks again for your comments herein. I actively look for them from you. And to everyone else in this comments session, thank you very much for your efforts. As Prof Snyder reminds us, what each of us does does matter.
I have a Tesla that I love to drive. Would I buy another one? Not on your life. Can I give up using Amazon? It will be difficult but I shall try. I can no longer support Musk and Bezos.
My cancellation letter to The Washington Post:
I am truly heartbroken and torn to cancel my subscription. I feel I am abandoning and endangering the journalists I most respect and depend on. But I cannot support Bezos and Lewis in suppressing the Post endorsement of Kamala Harris for President.
Democracy Has Died in The Post C Suite
This is not the venerable Post returning to its roots. This is new Post bosses helping fascism take root in the United States - by killing off independent journalism. This is Jeff Bezos joining Elon Musk in perverting American media - preemptively capitulating and placing their bets and putting their fists on the scale for a TrumpProject2025ChristianNationalist win. Or worse.
Please Fact Check William Lewis' assertions concerning his decision to suppress the Editorial Board's endorsement of Kamala Harris for president.
Lewis asserts that his decision is:
1. "consistent with the values The Post has always stood for"
His decision is demonstrably inconsistent with the Post's past values and actions.
2. " Our job at The Washington Post is to provide through the newsroom nonpartisan news for all Americans, and thought-provoking, reported views from our opinion team to help our readers make up their own minds."
2a. Lewis elides the job of the Editorial Board
2b. Suppressing the Editorial Board's endorsement actually impedes readers' ability to make up our own minds by denying us the opinion of knowledgeable and trusted journalists.
3. "...our job as the newspaper of the capital city of the most important country in the world is to be independent.
And that is what we are and will be."
Certainly it is WaPo's job to be independent.
Even presenting the appearance of self-policing as capitulation to threats by fascist powers is exactly the opposite of independence. And seeming to adopt the methods and advance to agenda of fascists is even worse.
I understand, that coming from Murdoch media, Lewis expects his consumers to swallow any swill wrapped in high minded sounding rhetoric. In this, Lewis reveals his: Murdochian modus operandi; disdain for journalistic ethics; ignorance of the notion of an independent press; and disregard for Washington Post journalists and readers. Most damning, Lewis asserts and appropriates the language and ideals of an independent press, while in fact negating those exact ideals. I believe George Orwell termed what Lewis is doing newspeak.
Democracy has died in the Post C suite.
And that death threatens democracy itself.
Cancelled.
Lewis is ethically disqualified for the Editorial Board of a major news organization and Bezos knows it..
I'm not sure that Bezos has an ethos register himself.
👋🏼
can I copy that?
What you are doing when you cancel these news sources is cutting yourself off from excellent reporting and analysis in the process. If this is enough if a movement it jeopardizes the jobs of many good people and works to kill the papers or entities or force drastic change not necessarily good ones. I read here how people are going to rely on these substacks etc which use these primary sources! They link to them. Secondary sources and independent journalists, historians don’t and can’t cover everything of interest and importance. They too have bias. They too have a bottom line. It’s good to check primary and secondary sources to be well informed. You have to curate wisely. But here I read anger and the need to punish … Bezos Musk ( Amazon Twitter too? ) Murdoch, Sulzberger, etc and help further CHANNELING and Bias in this country.
I think that the Washington Post's veteran journalist, Dana Milbank, expressed how we may consider our relationship to this most valuable paper from a deeply considered perspective: 'Opinion Why I’m not quitting the Post And why I hope you don’t, either.' (excerpts)
On Thursday night, at the Pulitzer Prize Awards Ceremony in New York, my Post colleagues were feted for winning top honors in three categories. A series, assembled by more than 75 Post journalists on the AR-15’s singular capacity to kill, won for national reporting. And on the editorial side, The Post had a double win: In the commentary category, Vladimir Kara-Murza, writing from prison in Russia, won for his columns demanding democracy in his country; in the editorial writing category, David E. Hoffman won for his series on the “Annals of Autocracy” and the global battle for democracy.
Yet the next day, my colleagues and I were deluged with emails and messages from readers on social media. Many said they love our work but are canceling their subscriptions. Still others demanded that we all quit:
“Your lack of resignation is a silent endorsement of Donald Trump for President.”
“The Washington Post has gone from All The President's Men to All The Dictator's Lapdogs.”
What happened between Thursday night and Friday afternoon, of course, was the Post’s non-endorsement in the presidential race. As The Post reported, owner Jeff Bezos, in effect, directed the newspaper not to publish its endorsement of Kamala Harris.
I get the anger, and I share it. I helped organize the statement Post columnists published calling Bezos’s action “an abandonment of the fundamental editorial convictions of the newspaper that we love.” Most of my colleagues, I’m sure, agree with our revered former editor, Marty Baron, who called the decision “cowardice, with democracy as its casualty.” It’s certainly the owner’s prerogative to adopt a general no-endorsement policy, and it might well have been reasonable if it had been done outside of the political cycle (such endorsements long ago stopped swaying voters), but coming 11 days before the election, it gave the appearance of cowering before a wannabe dictator to protect Bezos’s business interests — particularly because Donald Trump met with executives from Bezos’s aerospace company, Blue Origin, the same day.
But I can’t endorse the calls to cancel The Post. Boycotting the newspaper won’t hurt Bezos, whose fortune comes not from Post subscribers but from Amazon Prime members and Whole Foods shoppers. His ownership and subsidization of The Post is just pocket change to him. And if readers want to strike a blow for democracy, they’d achieve more by knocking on doors and making calls for Harris for the next eight days. But boycotting The Post will hurt my colleagues and me. We lost $77 million last year, which required a(nother) round of staff cuts through buyouts. The more cancellations there are, the more jobs will be lost, and the less good journalism there will be. (WAPO, by Dana Milbank) See gifted link for the entire Opinion below.
https://wapo.st/3AfXD7m
Bezos saved the paper. But now he is being whacked around and rightfully so. We need the NYTimes and the Washington Post to survive as organizations that support American journalists and reporters. Their work reverberates here and abroad. We did not cancel either, but think it was a terrible transparent move by Bezos and probably "obeying in advance" as per Tim Snyder's comment on this. Whereas I have been thankful for Amazon and Whole Foods, no fool am I to cut myself off from what I need in this age of shops going out of business for vatious reasons and needing the convenience, I also indulge in criticizing those who do cancel just to "get even" with Bezos or the Times because they don't like one thing or another (headlines, stories editorials etc). The movement to cancel makes me think they are being lemmings. This side of the divide also has some unthinking going on and this is ironic.
To Lin and David: This is the only tool we have to use. Consider how Musk manipulates Starlink after talking to Putin and look how worried Bezos is to lose favor with The Bloated Yam. Scary
It hurt to cancel my 50+ year subscription. But there are other media outlets that are not compromised including many here on Substack.
Ditto.
Cancelled my WaPo subscription the day Bezos obeyed in advance.
In the words of Jedi master Yoda, "Do. Or do not. There is no try." We in this household have almost never used Amazon. Here's a simple trick to use when searching for an item on the internet: In the search window type (item name) -amazon -amazon.com
The search results will then exclude the Bezos system, freeing you from the temptation.
Thanks for that advice.
So you find everything you need with enough running around and time devoted to this boycott. You must live in a big city with lots of all kinds of stores
Thanks.
Our friend in California is a very principled guy whom we admire. He loved his Tesla, but once Elon Musk began strongly supporting Donald Trump our friend decided to dump his Tesla. He replaced his Tesla with a different electric car; I think the new one is made by BMW. Just an idea 💡 that you can consider.
Buy a Rivian, a Toyota Prius, anything but a Tesla.
Not everyone can afford a BMW, but there are options...
Patricia, DITTO! Dumped my Tesla Model S for a BMW electric (i5), actually a better car in so many respects!
So someone else will drive the Tesla and probably get a good price!!! duh! Just a thought.
Maybe, but the person who dumped the Tesla WILL be making a statement and the previous Tesla owner will no longer be supporting Musk.
China has a brand of electric vehicles with twice the range at less than half the price. Currently It has a 100% tariff.
Tariffs in the US and EU due to massive Chinese state subsidies for their EV industry.
Yes. Even with that tariff protection, Elon wants more. More. More and more. There is something wrong with many of these billionaires, more money, more power. They didn’t get this rich and powerful on their own or by playing by the rules, or because the market is a ‘free’ market. They trade their $ for favors. A free market would reward innovation, consumers buy the best choice, performance, price, quality. Playing the tariff game supports Tesla at the expense of foreign brands, but also other domestic brands that have innovations, yet can’t get them to market fast enough because Tesla has an advantage.
What I do not understand about the truly wealthy: How much money do they really need? Surely Musk and Bezos have enough.
I don’t think that answer is a certain amount. It’s always about more, more, more. It is like a disease some billionaires get. They all are not afflicted. Look at Warren Buffet giving billions to Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation investing in the eradication of Malaria. Bloomberg’s endowment to Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. I read last night Taylor Swift has donated 100 million to charities and good causes. At some point, the taxes should be so great, forces charity, but also at some point nearly all of new gains should be taxed. This is how it was for much of our history until 1980.
A billionaire I once worked for - at the time, maybe only a hundreds of millions-aire - claimed to me that the environmental movement was all about control. I pushed back, I disagreed and said how would he know their motives? There's a lot of projection amongst the rich, with the objective of somehow self-justifying or concealing their own control of resources, including press.
I think it's nice that the mega-rich do philanthropy. My question is why do they get to decide what's good for society? In a democracy, WE the People make those decisions. It's high time we eat the rich. They've been eating us for at least the last 40 years of the neoliberal order. Think about it...If a person made $100,000 and could keep every penny of it, they would have had to start BEFORE Homo Erectus had evolved to have as much as just Elon Musk. Worse yet, Musk is not even the richest person on Forbes list. Something is seriously wrong with a system that allows this to happen. We have both the ability and the moral duty to change that.
A good explanation. Thanks.
There’s an essay by Brian Klass that explains what wrong with some billionaires and why there’s never enough more.
https://www.forkingpaths.co/p/billionaire-villains-and-the-evolution?r=44kjm&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=audio-player
Bezos paid a pittance for the WaPo, compared to estates all around the Nation he barely lives in and a super yacht. It is not that they need any of this, it is the power of "oh, look, what I can do, never in my wildest dreams" that is addictive.
(His fiancés brother, a sleazy Hollywood manager of reality-tv personalities, has been a known Trumpist before Bezos started dating her.)
The thing about these rich fucks is that they don't want to have the most money, they want to have ALL the money. If they could get your labor for free, they would gladly make you a slave. They're trying as we speak.
(Car stickers for Tesla)
I DON'T SUPPORT THE TOOL WHO OWNS THE COMPANY
BUT THIS CAR IS PRETTY GREAT!
BOUGHT BEFORE WE ALL KNEW
HE WAS A JERK
see my above.... please. this is not the answer... not yet. I think there is a sticker that you can put on your Tesla car that goes 'bought it before we knew how awful he is"
(stickers) NOT AN ENDORSEMENT {ELONZ}
"MAKE THIS CAR NOT EMBARRASSING AGAIN"
I like the second one particularly.
Kit, as disgusted as I have become with Elon Musk, I not only shall not buy another Tesla, I have traded in the Model S I have owned reasonably happily for a new electric vehicle from a different manufacturer. Giving up Amazon, as ubiquitous as it has become in our modern lives, is as you describe quite difficult, especially as I note their early adoption of all electric (non Tesla) delivery vehicles. But we should be tgrying to do our shopping at local stores. Shopping from the comfort and ease of online ordering is NOT good for our planet!
I have unsubscribed to the Washington Post and am going to break my dependence on Amazon, including its VISA card. This will be difficult. A good first step would be to figure out how to buy a copy of On Freedom in such a way that the profits go to Ukraine. Any suggestions?
As well you cut yourself off from good reporting and are jeopardizing jobs and journalism and reporting that is not done by the channels of opinion.
Blogs snd substacks rely on the major news sources that are out in the world reporting first hand and conducting polls and surveys.
Your shooting yourself in the foot and not doing much if anything. But hey if it makes you feel like you are…..
The problem is not Amazon or Visa which has made life so much easier for so many! But maybe it’s a good exercise for some to run around looking for what you need spend time and gas and shipping plus … this is what made Bezos rich. The problem is mass wealth interfering in politics .
In 1936, the Nazis murdered my mother's first husband, Friedrich Hublitz, a Berlin high school principal, because he refused to allow Hitler-Youth activities in his school. The Nazis installed a Hitler-Youth organizer to succeed Hublitz as HS principal.
Friedrich Hublitz left behind my mother, a 2-year-old daughter and 4-month-old son. My mother, a blond and blue-eyed Finnish-Swede, would soon be forced to flee Germany to escape being "farmed out" to Nazi officials as part of their “Lebensborn” Aryan-breeding program!
Friedrich Hublitz was a dedicated educator, a German hero, a WW I veteran pilot, who authored a book about his WW I air reconnaissance missions, for which Hermann Göring wrote the intro... But none of that mattered to the Nazis, who were consolidating their power and institutionalizing their hate-filled, murderous, fascist, master-race mission, by purging all opposition, including from within their own SA leadership in 1934. ... All this to say that no one--not even these cowardly oligarchs-- will be spared a Trump/ Vance/ Musk/ Miller authoritarian regime's wanton and capricious vengeance if and whenever they deem it useful and/or necessary.
There should be a compilation made of history like this to try and reach every day people. Along with authoritarian stories from Communist Russian times.
Thank you for this. I cancelled my WaPo subscription immediately on hearing the news of this craven appeasement, with the owner Bezos scuttling to position his own interests over those who always trusted the paper always to stand forth like a beacon in the paper's own self-professed light of democracy. I am sorry for the many excellent journalists and editors, and I will miss reading their views, but quite frankly my trust in that institution was immediately broken on hearing both the decision and the timing of it. Trump has done his best to destroy people's trust in their institutions, and I'm afraid he's done a fine job with WaPo and the LA Times. Because the billionaire owners of these papers obeyed in advance, they have placed themselves on the slippery slope they hoped to avoid by trying to mollify a rising dictator. And by standing out in this way, they place themselves in the focus of a bully. Bullies do not say thank you; they double down.
Knock on doors in swing States if you can. I have been in Pennsylvania for a week and busloads come in on Saturday and Sunday, but there are WAY fewer volunteers picking up turfs during the week. The work is easy and it beats sitting home agonizing. People will put you up if you want to stay overnight. They can use door knockers and drivers. Www.mobilize.us. if that website doesn't work for you reach out to Democrats in the location of interest to you.
Finishing up the last of around 2000 postcards/letters to potential voters.
Then heading to Racine WI.
And the wonderful thing - this is not at all extraordinary. We are all doing everything we can. ThankYou!!!
Yay, Lin!!!! I would just love to hear about your door knocking experience in Wisconsin after you've done it or when you take a break. Share here or offline. My partner and I are having some memorable conversations.
I've done GOTV there every two years since 2012. But not since 2019. I've walked areas within 7 miles or so of downtown. And have been driven to various suburbs. And on election day to visit various polling places.
Neighborhoods and voters across all socioeconomic and ethnic divides. We don't canvass or phone or text during Packers games. One interesting part of the work is to help voters, who volunteer that they've been incarcerated, understand their voting rights.
Racine has a great historical society (Racine was on the Underground Railroad.) SC Johnson's Frank Lloyd Wright corporate headquarters. Kringel (Bendtsen's, unless you live on the other side of town.) Weird, to this New Yorker, midwestern pizza - like little saltine cracker canapés. Great Mexican, Korean, and Indian food. A Great Lake! And really fine people - they keep us well fed and in good spirits during long hours at headquarters.
I've lived in really Blue areas and now in a Blue dot, in a purplish circle, in a vast Red desert going up to the Canadian border - so campaigning in a really diverse swing state - it's great! And especially GOTV weekend when so many people are really working hard.
So much juicy and wonderful information, Lin! Tim Snyder will be very interested in your work to explain voting rights that the formerly incarcerated have but might not understand. I held when I read the bit about the pizzas that taste like Saltine cracker canapés. I'm spoiled by New York and New Haven style pizza and remember having the absolute worst Pizza of my life in Wyoming. How do they make it taste so much like cardboard? Thank you for sharing about your work. We're between houses right now on a very rural turf.
https://www.mobilize.us/
I am a historian currently teaching a seminar on the political culture of the USA at the University of Vienna, Austria, and have published commentaries on the elections in daily and weekly newspapers here, and have also been invited to comment on radio and TV shows. Austrians have an expression, "vorauseilende Gehorsam", which is the exact equivalent, and might well be the source, of Prof. Snyder's "obedience in advance". People here know how this works very well indeed. Unfortunately, the commentaries are in German. Anyone who is interested and can read German is welcome to e-mail me (mitchell.ash@univie.ac.at), and I will send you the relevant links.
Post links; automatic translation is effective.
Sorry, I prefer not to do that for security reasons. People kindly e-mailed me, and I sent them the links.
Mitchell, listen to the audio Tim just dropped (2:25 pm 10/30). He mentions vorauseilende Gehorsam:))
Thank you for this lesson and reminder.
The Washington Post turned dark with Bezos’ decision not to endorse a presidential candidate, more precisely, Kamala Harris, who had been approved by editorial board members.
This noted newspaper with an excellent history of journalistic service to the American people now, tragically, looks to be in the shadow of one of the country’s billionaires.
‘…every little thing that we do has consequences for those around us.’
___Timothy Snyder
Thank you, Timothy Snyder.
We shall not obey in advance.
VoteVets.org Masters of the Air: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zr_tKAQ20Dg&t=5s
Bezos' Blue Origin execs met with Trump in TX, & then Bezos orders WaPo editorial bd not to endorse Harris/Walz!
Staff pls hold a massive walkout that would send a resounding message to a spineless &/or corrupt owner.
Democracy Dies in the Darkness: the choice is a lawless, depraved sociopath, convicted felon & fascist to the core vs a former prosecutor AG Senator VP. Spineless &/or corrupt media barons betraying the fundamentals of democracy & the rule of law...CANCELLED my subscription.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUZl26wJm5A
'Jeff Bezos has so far declined to comment on the situation, even as his own paper’s journalists reported that it was Bezos who ultimately spiked the planned endorsement. A source with knowledge told CNN on Friday that an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris had been drafted before it was squashed.' (CNN, excerpts)
'In the last 24 hours, at least one editor has resigned, and high-profile Post staffers have publicly expressed their dismay as many in the paper’s Opinion section are furious over how the situation was handled.'
'Former Post executive editor Marty Baron, who led the paper under Bezos during the first Trump administration called the decision an act o'f “cowardice.”
“To declare a moment of high principle, only 11 days before the election that is just highly suspect that is just not to be believed that this was a matter of principle at this point,” 'Baron told CNN’s Michael Smerconish on Saturday morning.'
“Bezos has other commercial interests, a big stake and Amazon, he has a space company called Blue Origin,”' Baron said. ' “Trump has threatened to pursue his political enemies and he rewards his friends and he punishes his perceived political and think there’s no other explanation for what’s happening right now.”
'Robert Kagan, a Post columnist and opinion editor-at-large who had been with the paper for 25 years, publicly resigned on Friday as a direct result of the non-endorsement.'
“This is obviously an effort by Jeff Bezos to curry favor with Donald Trump in the anticipation of his possible victory,” 'Kagan told CNN’s Erin Burnett OutFront on Friday.'
“Trump has threatened to go after Bezos’ business. Bezos runs one of the largest companies in America. They have tremendously intricate relations with federal government. They depend on the federal government.”
'On Friday, Trump met with executives from Blue Origin, the space exploration company owned by Bezos, hours after the Post announced its decision Friday. The company has a $3.4 billion contract with the federal government to build a new spacecraft to scuttle astronauts to and from the moon’s surface.'
'Trump advisers and supporters have been crowing since both the Post and the Los Angeles Times’ 'billionaire owners stepped in to prevent their papers from endorsing Harris. (CNN) See link below.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/26/media/washington-post-jeff-bezos-endorsement-turmoil/index.html
Cowardice.. and shameful..
Thank you Fern—it’s so great seeing your post! I “unsubscribed” to WaPo last night so that I could sleep knowing I was NOT going to continue to support the higher echelons of that once great paper. It saddens me beyond my feeble words because of the many fine journalists that I will miss (Carol Lenonnig, Jonathan Capehart, Deborah Rubin, Philip Rucker, etc., etc.). Thank goodness for Dr. Snyder and Heather Cox Richardson.
So good to 'see' you Linda. I'm am grateful to you for mentioning several of WAPO's outstanding journalists, and I would add the investigative and natural science work done by the paper. It was with particular sadness about the paper's journalists and journalism in America that I absorbed the decision made by Bezos.
We need a powerful campaign in the US in support of local, statewide and national 'Free-Press'. It is crucial that the people know the facts. There are various ways to get news based on journalistic principles to Americans. This needs to be a top priority. With technology, colleges and universities ... there are ways to afford the truth...where is the will!
This is how we hurt many other people and channel ourselves for this satisfaction of dubious effect. The paper was and is doing good work other than this shameful act by its owner which is having plenty of reverberation. I think you mean Jennifer Rubin.. but so many others.
Fern I so love your posts—your excellent explanations are so helpful 🗽
There hasn’t been but a very few days that I have been able to recommend Dr. Snyder and HCR Substack sites. I volunteer for the Metro St. Louis League of Women Voters and the opportunities for sharing information has been encouraging for me. That said, I’m in the blue dot of a red state so can only hope that our extremely hard work registering voters this year makes a difference.
I refuse to be a victim of our state’s “minority ruled” legislature—fighting back the best way I know by being part of an organization that simply presents FACTS, and hoping I live long enough to see some sanity return to a state that gave us Harry Truman.❤️🤍💙
WAPO is a paper with an excellent history and an organization of people, good people, excellent reporting and opinion writers. We will not cancel. Bezos decision does not wipe away that serve or the value we need to continue..value that reverberates. Bezos is getting duly shamed. I will not obey in advance to punish along with punishing everyone else and myself. Ditto for Amazon/Whole Foods. Tesla? hesitating about that. I have no idea how many are making themselves feel good by cancelling and boycotting. This takes a massive and long term sustained response. We don't have the time nor, I think, the communal will. And what will it change?
Maybe the shaming will have effect.
WAPO just suspended me 24 hours for calling North Koreans, Commie dog eaters.
I’m cancelling my WAPO subscription when it expires on Nov 24 as Bezos doesn’t endorse any presidential candidate. Shameful! Kudos to editor Kagan 👏🏻
Democracy dies in darkness ✍🏻
It's possible that your characterization is inaccurate. Not sure the North Koreans have any dogs left to eat. /s
Looks like Russian soldiers aren’t too happy about the K-Batalion 🤭
Link ?
CNN YouTube.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ee72CuqHaow
Thanks!!
Sad 😔
After learning that Jeff Bezos' cowardice preventing the editorial staff of the Washington Post from publishing an endorsement of this year's presidential candidate, I cancelled my subscription. Abandoning freedom of the press and the right of journalists to voice their opinions without constraint because of the fear of retribution towards the owner of the newspaper is abhorrent to me and the first inkling of authoritarian gains. We all know what happened in Germany. The film The Damned by Visconti is a prime example of money and wealth attempting accommodation until they too are swept up in the Nazi maelstrom..
The other fateful aspect about the wealthy & powerful obeying in advance is that it becomes an actual alteration (or at least a likely lever for an alteration) of society in the direction of the society obeying the tyrant and so accelerating the amount of obedience the tyrant needs to be established beyond the reach of non-violent resistance.
Do you mean obeying in advance has a snowballing effect in terms of succumbing to the tyrant/authoritarian? It also produces outrage and disgust and resistance. If obedience accelerates enough there is no need for violence among the compliant, the fearful who will obey to avoid violence. Non-violent resistance becomes useless? Resistance becomes violent of necessity?
I mean that while in principle members of a society obey a tyrant individually and one at a time, the obedience by the owner of two powerful, influential companies is a quantitative shift on the scales of power which adds much more weight to the side that is obeying so that it becomes an alteration of that society. Non-violent resistance is a matter of arithmetic. The number of non-violent resisters must be or represent a number of people higher than the number of people enforcing obedience times the force multipliers at the disposal of those enforcers. Either resisters must be shown that resistance is futile, or enforcers of obedience must be shown that enforcement of obedience is futile.
Makes a lot of sense. Mathematics and physics.
This was echoed in Heather Cox Richardson's latest post.
Great minds think alike in this instance anyway, and if it's repeated often enough perhaps even the dullards among us will get the point.
WAPO says subscription cancelations (2,000 as of yesterday) aren't significant. You can change that. Make it so.
Thank you for addressing this crisis, sir. When the wealthiest begin to “obey in advance,” they are showing us that wealth does not buy courage or moral values.
Jeff Bezos was smart enough to see the power of going from selling books online to selling literally everything and anything online. And that made him incredibly wealthy. I also happen to know he’s a lifelong fan of Star Trek. But somehow he is not smart enough to have learned the core values that show has tried to teach us since 1966, including the value of Resisting Domination By Authoritarians (from Trelane to Apollo to Vol to Landrau to Khan in the original series to The Borg in modern day Trek). Bezos has demonstrated he’s willing to be assimilated by The Borg freely. I can only imagine what he would’ve done, had he been alive during the early days of Hitler’s rise to power. He is a disgrace as an American and as a human being.
I had previously canceled my WaPost subscription. Today, I will cancel my Amazon account (which I first opened when all Amazon was selling was books). Bye bye Bezos!
And also thank you for coming to Full Circle Bookstore in OKC last night. It was an honor to meet you!
Just cancelled my WaPo subscription. Everyone should do the same.
Democracy dies in darkness and Jeff Bezos turned off one of the more important lights.
It's a good paper. I will not punish the good people that work on it. They are rebelling. Bezos is getting shamed more widely. I won't shoot myself in the foot and be deprived of a good news source for this. Same goes for the NYTimes also at times disappointing. But they come through. Those who cancel if in enough numbers *maybe* make a dent, but I think more harm is done this way. Bezos is getting duly slammed... and staff have left. Stay tuned.
Hello and thank you for your many comments here. I am hoping you are well.
Your point of view here is understandable. Not in any way am I detached from these events, and, as my comment makes clear, I am fully supportive of Prof Snyder's reminder to not "obey in advance"; others who share here that they are among those cancelling subscription and openly criticizing the Post, the Times, and so on are also making understandable choices.
My sense is that these many approaches, when made public, shared openly and widely and with the reasoning for them, provide important evidence of stern and reasoned opposition to the aspiring autocrat and the autocrats willful followers. Also all these public and explained acts of opposition influence others who want to act against the trends of submission and act in support of continued constitutional democratic government; these are real people making real choices to not become resigned to either the anti-democratic trend nor the submission and obedience in advance trends.
Resistance takes some thought and requires conscious courage. Just the demonstration of these -- independent thought and choice and courageous action in the face of very real dangers -- is immeasurably uncomfortable for both the aspiring tyrant and obedient followers. There is lots of historical evidence.
This resistance also changes the political and human landscape for people, e.g., JD Vance, who think that they are very much smarter than any of us and much much smarter than Trump, Bannon, and other Trump apologists and promoters. JD Vance and his crowd in the intellectual cadre of the conservative right community see this sort of resistance as a real problem for realizing their more elite agenda, because, while Trump is all about using the tear-down method to satisfy his narcissist needs and to acquire surrogates to do the financial plundering for him [they get a small 'cut' and ,if they are very loyal, some short-lived personal fame], JD Vance and company are watching the tear-down in order to seize the opportunities to build in their forms, instiutitonal and normative, as replacement infrastructure. Trump is their person for the 'untidy' part of the actions that, once begun and well on the way, provide the needs for the real functional repair of institutions and replacement of personnel.
Like most other opportunities in human living, the appearance of the need to act, in this case in Re these changes of editorial behavior, invite resistance. The coherence of the thinking and the courage to act on it are, for all the variety of them, what is making plain many many Americans conscious refusal to be intimidated, to be co-opted, to give up the American constitutional democratic system. This wave of many resisters, this conscientious objection and counter-action, invites others to join, and such courageous mix of forms of active resistance put the Trumps and JD Vances on notice that they may just, in time over time, not succeed. All of this resistance is observed in the mix of other forms of defense of democracy and constitutional government [really good exs are at Joyce Vance's Civil Discourse, "Is DOJ Doing Enough to Protect the Election?", Oct 24, and "Five Questions with Voting Rights Lawyer Danielle Lang", Oct 26.]
Thanks again for your comments herein. I actively look for them from you. And to everyone else in this comments session, thank you very much for your efforts. As Prof Snyder reminds us, what each of us does does matter.
My slogan for today: I am not voting for "he" or "she", I am voting PRO-DEMOCRACY 🇺🇸🗳🗽
Thank you, once again,
Professor Snyder.