Comments of the Week: Taking Aim at Goliath

Michelangelo’s statue of David stands perpetually vigilant in the Galleria dell’Accademia in Florence, Italy. (Good Free Photos)

Many articles posted on Truthdig point out the myriad pressing issues needing the public’s attention at any given moment, and we frequently hear feedback to the tune of “Right, so now what?”

In other words, there’s an interest, also registered on our comment boards, in exploring solutions and exchanging ideas, along with asking regular columnists to offer their own.

Last week’s collection of comments (Sunday through Sunday) deserving mention and reflection includes a few that grapple with the bigger issues introduced in the stories under which they appeared. What’s more, the writers were willing to push themselves and their co-contributors by venturing into solution territory on both theoretical and concrete levels.

Take this first example, which popped up under Chris Hedges’ newest, reliably uncompromising column, “Fooled Again”:

The week’s news haul also brought additional headlines and developments about the story of San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s symbolic protest of the U.S. national anthem, which he and now other athletes around the country continued to carry out at public sporting events. This post by nom de plume (extra points for a good alias) appeared under Managing Editor Eric Ortiz’ commentary on Kaepernick’s message and its place in a bigger story about high-profile dissent:

Next, responding to Juan Cole’s central question in his 9/11-themed column, “15 Years After 9/11, Can We Recover Our Republic?” PRMaine showed a similarly forward-looking sensibility with this response:

The poll question asking readers to weigh in about which topics they’d like to make sure were included in the first presidential debate, coming up on Sept. 26, drew a good number of responses, as well as some criticism. Point taken about the whole setup of the debate itself being highly problematic for many reasons.

In addition to taking those critiques on board, we’ll highlight below two of the posts that picked up on ideas shared by more than one commenter — starting with Alice X’s concise sum-up of what several others were thinking:

Next, we have a lengthier answer from Boston Harbor, who picked up on another popular topic: defense spending. Along with the two-party system and climate change, this subject loomed large in the discussion on this story page:

That’s all from the annals of makeshift democracy for this edition of Comments of the Week. We’ll be back with the next batch next Wednesday.

–Posted by Kasia Anderson