Read Why Trump Supporters Can’t Admit Who He Really Is by Peter Wehner (The Atlantic)
Nothing bonds a group more tightly than a common enemy that is perceived as a mortal threat.

A powerful tribal identity bonds the president to his supporters. As Amy Chua, the author of Political Tribes: Group Instinct and the Fate of Nations, has argued, the tribal instinct is not just to belong, but also to exclude and to attack. “When groups feel threatened,” Chua writes, “they retreat into tribalism. They close ranks and become more insular, more defensive, more punitive, more us-versus-them.” 

Annotated on September 06, 2020 at 10:34AM

“Motivation conditions cognition,” Jonathan Rauch, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a contributing writer at The Atlantic, wisely told me. Very few Trump supporters I know are able to offer an honest appraisal of the man. To do so creates too much cognitive dissonance. 

Annotated on September 06, 2020 at 10:36AM

That they are defending a person who is fundamentally malicious, even if he makes judicial appointments of which they approve, is too painful for them to admit. 

But surely in the multi-millions of Republicans, they could find someone who could also appoint those judges, but not have the myriad moral failings that Trump does. For surely if they can’t, then they’re doomed to failure and misery sooner or later.
Annotated on September 06, 2020 at 10:38AM

But what’s different in this case is that Trump, because of the corruption that seems to pervade every area of his life and his damaged psychological and emotional state, has shown us just how much people will accept in their leaders as a result of “negative partisanship,” the force that binds parties together less in common purpose than in opposition to a shared opponent. 

Annotated on September 06, 2020 at 10:41AM

🎧 Senator Bill Bradley on How We Can All Do Better | Clear+Vivid with Alan Alda

Listened to Senator Bill Bradley on How We Can All Do Better by Alan Alda from Clear+Vivid with Alan Alda

Senator Bill Bradley has an amazing life. He was a Gold medal Olympian, a Rhodes Scholar, a legendary star with the Knicks for 10 years, a United Sates Senator for 12 years. He ran for the Democratic party’s Presidential nomination, and to top it off, he’s the host of the long-running SiriusXM Satellite Radio program – “American Voices.” In this episode, Alan Alda speaks with Sen. Bradley about leading a life of curiosity, learning and service. His stories are fun and he has a lot to say about our fellow Americans. This episode is sponsored by Athletic Greens, visit athleticgrrens.com/alda

🎧 ‘The Daily’: Why Peter Strzok Wanted to Testify | New York Times

Listened to ‘The Daily’: Why Peter Strzok Wanted to Testify from New York Times

We look at what happened when the embattled F.B.I. agent appeared before lawmakers to explain his controversial text messages.

👓 Most major outlets have used Russian tweets as sources for partisan opinion: study | Columbia Journalism Review

Read Most major outlets have used Russian tweets as sources for partisan opinion: study by Josephine Lukito and Chris Wells (Columbia Journalism Review)
In a new study at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, we look at how often, and in what context, Twitter accounts from the Internet Research Agency—a St. Petersburg-based organization directed by individuals with close ties to Vladimir Putin, and subject to Mueller’s scrutiny—successfully made their way from social media into respected journalistic media. We searched the content of 33 major American news outlets for references to the 100 most-retweeted accounts among those Twitter identified as controlled by the IRA, from the beginning of 2015 through September 2017. We found at least one tweet from an IRA account embedded in 32 of the 33 outlets—a total of 116 articles—including in articles published by institutions with longstanding reputations, like The Washington Post, NPR, and the Detroit Free Press, as well as in more recent, digitally native outlets such as BuzzFeed, Salon, and Mic (the outlet without IRA-linked tweets was Vice).
How are outlets publishing generic tweets without verifying the users actually exist? This opens up a new type of journalistic fraud in which a writer could keep an army of bots and feed out material that they could then self-quote for their own needs without a story really existing.

📺 Divided States of America, Part 2 | Frontline

Watched Divided States of America, Part 2 from FRONTLINE | PBS, aired January 18, 2017
FRONTLINE investigates the partisanship of the Obama era, and the polarized America that Donald Trump inherits as president.
The second part of this wasn’t as fraught as the first half, but both are simply scintillating and well worth watching.

📺 Divided States of America, Part 1 | Frontline

Watched Divided States of America, Part 1 from FRONTLINE | PBS, aired January 17, 2017
FRONTLINE investigates the partisanship of the Obama era, and the polarized America that Donald Trump inherits as president.

Ahead of Donald Trump's inauguration, "Divided States of America" looks back at events during President Barack Obama's years in office that revealed deep divisions in our country. The documentary offers an in-depth view of the partisan gridlock in Washington, the rise of populist anger on both sides of the aisle, and the racial tensions that erupted throughout the country.
What a stunning overview of the last eight years of partisan politics. In particular I had forgotten about a lot of the rancor and racism stemming from the far right when Obama took office. This two part documentary does a terrific job of reminding us where we’ve all been and puts a lot of our current situation into perspective. The first part here was particularly brutal in its coverage. It seems almost too balanced to the point that the subtext of the documentary is that politicians need to find a better way to get along to do more good for their constituents.