Comments of the Week: Inaugural Edition

Since Truthdig’s launch just over a decade ago, our staff has always considered our comment community to be an integral part of the site. We’ve been given pointers, feedback, story tips, links and — yes — sometimes heat from commenters, and we’ve read along and learned from countless discussion threads.

In that spirit, we’re launching a Comments of the Week feature to highlight just a few of the entries that caught the attention of our staffers. Below is our first roundup, starting with this one by OldTulsan, posted Sunday under Chris Hedges’ latest column:

Americans have accepted so many things that would have people in other countries taking to the streets.

To name a few:

1. Increasing income inequality 2. Exporting manufacturing and white-collar jobs 3. College educations becoming unaffordable 4. The most-expensive healthcare system in the world per capita 5. Runaway spending on defense that cannot be audited 6. Corporate media controlled by six corporations 7. Crumbling infrastructure 8. Poisoned public water systems 9. A political system that is dominated by a two-party duopoly 10. Realization that their children will have a worse life

The only thing that will get Americans to take to the streets is a severe shortage of affordable food and safe water.

“Civilizat­ion and anarchy are only seven meals apart” — Spanish proverb

Next on our list comes RTIII’s comment from Wednesday in response to the ProPublica story “How Typography Can Save Your Life”:

Good article.

I’ve considered these questions several times in my 50-ish year [career] as an engineer and have wondered why there weren’t better guidelines for various contexts.

These guidelines – in particular the NASA guidelines listed near the article’s end – are useful for virtually every purpose. Even marketeers should pay attention! …Unless it’s literally for artistic reasons, text should be as legible as possible!

JimmyOlsenCubReporter brought up a good point after reading this Ear to the Ground news item about Budweiser’s curious decision to change its brand name to “America” for the duration of the election season:

Anheuser-Busch is owned by Inbev–a Belgian-Brazilian company. So, maybe “America” refers to South America?

Maybe. Next, we have a brief but useful history lesson from Ward One, added Sunday to the thread under this report about Noam Chomsky:

In 1964, when Hillary Rodham supported Governor Barry Goldwater, she was supporting a radical right wing candidate of the Republican party. She has not changed her position one whit, yet she is being touted today as a left-leaning moderate Democrat. That is a clear indicator of how far right this entire country has moved over the past fifty two years.

Finally, this zinger from Tom McGaffey, who weighed in on Sunday with proof of the benefits of shorter workdays:

I agree, wholeheartedly, with this article…ever since I retired, my productivity has gone through the roof.

That’s just a quick first lineup to kick things off. We’ll be on the lookout for more insights throughout the coming days. Stay tuned, and keep us posted.

–Posted by Kasia Anderson