A warning to Gove and Johnson - we won’t forget what you did; Guardian, 7/1/16

Jonathan Freedland, Guardian; A warning to Gove and Johnson - we won’t forget what you did:

"Senior civil servants say Brexit will consume their energies for years to come, as they seek to disentangle 40 years of agreements. It will be the central focus of our politics and our government, a massive collective effort demanding ingenuity and creativity. Just think of what could have been achieved if all those resources had been directed elsewhere. Into addressing, for instance, the desperate, decades-long needs – for jobs, for housing, for a future – of those towns that have been left behind by the last 30 years of change, those towns whose people voted leave the way a passenger on a doomed train pulls the emergency cord. Instead, all this work will be devoted to constructing a set-up with the EU which, if everything goes our way, might be only a little bit worse than what we already had in our hands on 22 June.

This week of shock will settle, eventually. Events will begin to move at a slower pace. We will realise that we have to be patient, that we need to wait till France and Germany get their elections out of the way, and hope that a new future can be negotiated – one that implements the democratic verdict delivered in the referendum, but which does not maim this country in the process. But even as we grow calmer, we should not let our anger cool. We should hold on to our fury, against those who for the sake of their career or a pet dogma, were prepared to wreck everything. On this day when we mourn what horror the Europe before the European Union was capable of, we should say loud and clear of those that did this: we will not forget them."

Trump’s lies aren’t unique to America: Post-truth politics are killing democracies on both sides of the Atlantic; Salon, 6/19/16

Brogan Morris, Salon; Trump’s lies aren’t unique to America: Post-truth politics are killing democracies on both sides of the Atlantic:

"“There was a time, not long ago, when we would differ on the interpretation of the facts. We would differ on the analysis. We would differ on prescriptions for our problems. But fundamentally we agreed on the facts. That was then. Today, many feel entitled to their own facts.”

So said Marty Baron, executive editor of The Washington Post, in a speech he gave to Temple University’s newest Media and Communication graduates not two weeks ago. Baron was talking about a new form of politics that’s been taking hold, a kind that brings into question the prospects of these hopeful future journos, a kind that threatens democracy as we know it."