comments of the week: here comes trouble posted on oct 26, 2016 torbakhopper / cc by-nd 2.0 




as is to be expected, if not applauded, the closer we get to the nov. 8 election, the more debates and divisions have appeared in discussions about the headlines of the moment. 




during the week that ranged from oct. 16-23, those headlines included additional revelations from wikileaks<u+2019> trove of pedesta emails regarding hillary clinton<u+2019>s campaign, as well as various writers<u+2019> takes on how to vote this time around, and news of the ongoing dakota access pipeline protest. 




as for the how-to-vote issue, jonathan mitchell posted a short and direct comment under this story about clinton<u+2019>s famous hawkishness when it comes to envisioning and enacting american foreign policy on the world stage: 









reader helen hanna, like many others who took in robert reich<u+2019>s piece titled <u+201c>the incalculable damage of doing whatever it takes to win,<u+201d> noticed and remarked upon reich<u+2019>s gloss-over of democratic party leaders<u+2019>, and in particular hillary and bill clinton<u+2019>s, proclivity for doing damage in the interest of maintaining power: 









that said, it<u+2019>s not as though commenters were about to give donald trump a pass, either. take ignatius j. reilly<u+2019>s rejoinder to trump campaign manager kellyanne conway<u+2019>s <u+201c>5-point plan to defeat islam,<u+201d> as trump and his team conceived of it (and juan cole wrote of it): 









touch<u+00e9>. 




another point of contention on the comment boards last week had to do with how to evaluate wikileaks<u+2019>, and by extension julian assange<u+2019>s, latest release of documents in the pedesta emails. though some commentators like naomi klein and glenn greenwald have spoken up about particular aspects of wikileaks<u+2019> current m.o., in the thread under alexander reed kelly<u+2019>s truthdigger of the week column on assange , reader jjg noted how, like him or not, assange and his organization are providing a public service that professionals working in the mainstream press (who are supposed to be skilled in curating and redacting sensitive material) are not generally delivering on these days: 









we<u+2019>ll give opa westphal the last word this time, ending on an up note (in terms of the shout-out to other commenters) and a cautionary note at the same time. this one was posted under chris hedges<u+2019> latest column , <u+201c>how power works<u+201d>:
comments of the week: here comes trouble
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