Quote of the week
Trump’s electoral fiction floats free of verifiable reality. It is defended not so much by facts as by claims that someone else has made some claims. The sensibility is that something must be wrong because I feel it to be wrong, and I know others feel the same way. When political leaders such as Ted Cruz or Jim Jordan spoke like this, what they meant was: You believe my lies, which compels me to repeat them. Social media provides an infinity of apparent evidence for any conviction, especially one seemingly held by a president.
The New York Times
It is not unusual for powerful political entrepreneurs to launch self-serving, acerbic attacks on the black middle class for daring to comment unfavourably about the ruling elite. It is also common for the same politicians to launch racially charged attacks on so-called white capital while accepting back-handers in the form of lucrative business opportunities from the same purported enemy. They use their proximity to power in the ruling party and the state as a lever to gain access to these opportunities, while fooling the public into believing they are in a war on behalf of the poorer classes. In short, the convergence point of political, business and social interest of the elite is nothing more than a marketplace in which influences get traded for personal gain under the guise of social consensus. This situation is unsustainable and needs to change if this country is to achieve the level of the cohesion required to make great strides in social, scientific and economic development. – Zongezo Zibi in Business Day
