David Remnick reminds us of George Orwell’s famous words –
““The point is that
the relative freedom which we enjoy depends of public opinion,” Orwell wrote in
his essay “Freedom of the Park.” “The law is no protection. Governments make
laws, but whether they are carried out, and how the police behave, depends on
the general temper in the country. If large numbers of people are interested in
freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech, even if the law forbids it;
if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even
if laws exist to protect them.””
Meanwhile,
Garrison Keillor notes:
“To all the
patronizing B.S. we’ve read about Trump expressing the white working-class’s
displacement and loss of the American Dream, I say, “Feh!” — go put your head
under cold water. Resentment is no excuse for bald-faced stupidity. America is
still the land where the waitress’s kids can grow up to become physicists and
novelists and pediatricians, but it helps a lot if the waitress and her husband
encourage good habits and the ambition to use your God-given talents and the
kids aren’t plugged into electronics day and night. Whooping it up for the
candidate of cruelty and ignorance does less than nothing for your kids.”