Dimming the lights of democracy

The news that Jeff Bezos has stopped the editorial board of the Washington Post from publishing an endorsement of Kamala Harris reminded me of a piece I wrote back in 2021 entitled ‘Upstanding and Bystanding – Time for some Personal Corporate Social Responsibility’, which seems even more relevant now. This was inspired by a visit to the Dallas Holocaust Museum which categorised people during the holocaust as; perpetrators; bystanders; upstanders and of course victims.

It is clear, as it has been for a long time, that Donald Trump is a narcissistic psychopath who is threat to democracy, the rule of law, the global economy and global security, as well as many other bad things. He has created a cult that supports him, aided and abetted by Republican politicians like Mitch McConnell and many others who made the decision that supporting Trump was in their best interest, even though they knew full well what he was like and what he stood for. Even if they are not direct perpetrators they are collaborators.

The events in the USA since 2016 demonstrate clearly how any country can slowly slide towards authoritarianism, and answers once and for all the old question: how did Hitler and the Nazis came to power in pre-WW2 Germany? The process must have been very similar. Now we have leading newspapers, the Washington Post and the LA Times, spiking endorsements because their owners don’t want to upset Trump. If Trump is elected, next they will be publishing positive pieces about him and spinning news stories to make him look good. What comes after that? Amazon sourcing and delivering the modern equivalent of SS uniforms or AWS providing data services for the equivalent of the Stasi Records Agency?

The real irony of course is that The Washington Post is the newspaper that broke the Watergate story, and that four years after the takeover by Jeff Bezos the paper adopted the masthead ‘Democracy dies in darkness’. Bezos has at the very least dimmed the lights on democracy.

The original piece is here.
https://www.onlyelevenpercent.com/upstanding-and-bystanding-time-for-some-personal-corporate-social-responsibility/