Time Magazine Has Run Out of Admirable People to Honor

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With Silvio Berlusconi out of the picture, Angela Merkel is arguably the worst leader among the major democracies. But Time magazine apparently disagrees:

Time magazine has named German chancellor Angela Merkel its Person of the Year, citing her resolve in leading Europe through this summer’s Greek debt crisis, and her encouragement of other countries to open their borders to migrants and refugees….By the beginning of 2015, Time said, “Merkel had already emerged as the indispensable player in managing Europe’s serial debt crises; she also led the West’s response to Vladimir Putin’s creeping theft of Ukraine”.

Yeesh. Merkel’s role in “managing Europe’s serial debt crises” has been astonishingly destructive, and if what she did about Ukraine counts as “leading,” Time and I have very different ideas of what that word means. Her government nearly succeeded in scuttling any agreement about Greece, and even her refugee policy, which is morally praiseworthy, probably wasn’t very sensible.

Then again, apparently it was a lean year:

Other finalists included the founder of Uber, the $62.5bn ride-sharing app that has been met with both resistance and enthusiasm; Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Isis terror cell; Iranian president Hassan Rouhani and Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump.

Against competition like that, I guess I’d vote for Merkel too.

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“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things they don’t like—which is most things that are true.

No one gets to tell Mother Jones what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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