Even in today’s media landscape, the New York Times is not known for running stories, headlines, or photographs meant to stir up its audience for the sake of numbers. It is a place known for and built on standards.
So it should not go without notice that the Times has allowed this headline on a Charles Blow opinion piece:
“We’re Edging Closer to Civil War”
Blow’s article is hooked to last week’s U.S. Supreme Court decision that let stand an anti-abortion law in Texas and would seem to set in place a pathway for state legislatures to supersede federal law. Blow writes:
“There are enormous, obvious differences, of course. The civil war I see is not the kind that would leave hundreds of thousands of young men dead in combat. That is not to say that we aren’t seeing spats of violence but rather that this new war will be fought in courts, statehouses and ballot boxes, rather than in the fields.
And this war won’t be only about the subjugation of Black people but also about the subjugation of all who challenge the white racist patriarchy.”
