Quote of the Day (Bill McKibben, on Threats Made Over Social Media)

"Threatening to kill or rape someone shouldn’t be banal. It should shock everyone who comes across such a threat. And that should go without saying, except that increasingly it doesn’t, not in a world where the president has said that he longed for the days when disruptive protesters were carried away from the scene ‘on a stretcher.’ It’s perversely heartening to see that the apparent murder of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi seems to have temporarily interrupted business as usual. Such shock and outrage is crucial, because in a world where dissenters are dismembered, there’s no hope for change. The prospect that you’ll be killed for what you say makes discussion essentially impossible. A society in which critics fear death is a society with fewer critics, and hence with fewer chances for change.”—Environmental activist Bill McKibben, after online posting of his home address with death threats made against him, in “Let’s Agree Not to Kill One Another,” The New York Times, Oct. 21, 2018