In an article on the situation in Venezuela in the Washington Post that I was otherwise predisposed to quote this sentence pulled me up short and caused me to change my mind:
The authoritarian nature of the current leadership in Venezuela and the United States militates against that solution, however.
That is so stupid, fatuous, destructive, and vile I can hardly express it. The last time I checked Nancy Pelosi was not in jail, Jim Acosta had not been assassinated, and Robert Mueller’s investigation of whether Donald Trump and the Trump campaign had “colluded with Russia” was still proceeding in its methodical, plodding way as it has for two years. Were the Trump Administration authoritarian things would be very different. By comparison the Chavez and now the Maduro government have murdered hundreds of their own citizens, engaged in arbitrary arrests and prosecutions, and imprisoned and tortured its political opponents.
Just because you disagree with someone’s actions, opinions or rhetoric does not make them an authoritarian. To be an authoritarian you’ve got to, you know, do authoritarian stuff and to date the Trump Administration has not.
The editors and publisher of the Washington Post should be ashamed of themselves for publishing such tripe.
I used to consider WaPo center-left, less partisan than the NYT, but it seems to me that they took a hard left since 2016.