Letters from Our Readers

Jahan Chowdhry, BAR Comments Editor

23 Jan 2019

🖨️ Print Article

This week we present readers’ thoughts on Kamala Harris, fact checking in the media, and possibilities for the Green New Deal. We received comments for “Evoking Muckrakers: Hannah Giorgis’s Devastating Critique of Senator Kamala Harris,” “How a Neocon Backed ‘Fact Checker’ Plans to Wage War on Independent Media,” and “Raising the Bar on the Green New Deal.”

In “Evoking Muckrakers: Hannah Giorgis’s Devastating Critique of Senator Kamala Harris” Teodrose Fikre commends the Atlanticjournalist’s expose on Kamala Harris’ sordid history as a prosecutor.

William Bogy comments on an incident from Harris’ prosecutorial career:

“Refusing to let second time nonviolent offenders out of prison because that would decrease the prison labor pool! Sounds like something an old Southern segregationist might say.”

In “How a Neocon Backed ‘Fact Checker’ Plans to Wage War on Independent Media” Whitney Webbdetails the plans of a deep state-connected organization to censor alternative news and analysis on the internet under the guise of “fact checking.”

Aumonte Payne writes:

“The problem is people are lazy. Real thorough research existed before the Internet and those principles and skills are still relevant. Anyone not willing to cross-reference and check sources have to at least recognize that they are reading opinion pieces not factual content. So-called fact checking sites that do not incorporate these processes are bogus.”

Paul Burley replies:

“True. We have to dust off those pre-1995 research skills. While we all romanticize old-fashioned effort, this poses a deep problem accessing digital media because print is getting scarce.”

Bob Johnson responds:

“The real problem is you are blaming the victim. People are too busy with this thing called lifeto studiously look up every factoid from an NPR piece like they are a high school teacher grading a term paper.”

“In Raising the Bar on the Green New Deal” Bruce Dixon highlights the origins of the Green New Deal, its appropriation by insurgent Democrats, and proposes a strategy for its implementation.

Garrett Connelly writes:

“As Earth life support systems falter, ossified and sheltered seniority system legislative log jams will become more evident. People's eyes open wide to understanding at different rates. Distributed human intelligence focuses and now clearly sees that representative democracy mostly represents capital, as it was specifically designed to do. The seniority system adds even more separation between abstract representation and reality. For example, those elected officials with the most seniority have been helping guide the United States in eternal war against Earth and humanity longer than the others.

“Democrats with seniority have sidelined political voices with accurate descriptions regarding health of Earth life support systems. They do this as capitalists in a representative democracy designed to protect and enhance capital. That is their vision of the world. They cannot see why anyone should worry that every living cell of every living animal and plant is loaded with chemical soup from the exhaust pipes of corporate capitalism.”

The last comment highlights the seriousness of the situation humanity faces. All of us will have to keep thinking about the questions raised by BAR writers with the same seriousness in order to stop the trajectory we are on.

Jahan Choudhryis Comments Editor for Black Agenda Report. He is an organizer with the Saturday Free School based in Philadelphia, PA.

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