Wednesday, February 22, 2017
Tuesday, February 21, 2017
Resist American, Resist!
The politics of blame and shame.
I am sure you may have noticed, but just in case you missed it, there is nothing, and I mean nothing, positive about Donald J. Trump's message. Even his signature slogan, "Make America great again! " is perjorative. It implies that something insidious was afoot over the last several years which somehow derailed the greatest nation on earth from its lofty perch, and he and only he can fix it. Nonsense. Unless he has a foil, he has nothing to say. Unless he is pitted against some adversary, real or imagined, the Donald is a rhetorically windless bag of bloviation and self adulation.
He does not operate based upon any sound ideological footing, nor does he seek to implement a comprehensive well thought out agenda. He is totally reactionary and his end game is pointed in only one direction: winning, at whatever the cost. And that, for the American people is not a good thing. We have always labored under the assumption that our nation has a moral compass, and that we have ideals which we are striving to achieve. Trump has shred bare those ideals and left us with a philosophy of me first, self aggrandizement that seems to have no limit.
Somehow we need to collectively abandon this detour he has put us on, and reassert our pride, our values, and the essential goodness of America, before he drives this country into a very deep ditch, or even worse, off a cliff from which we will have no parachute to insure a safe landing. We must be vocal and vigil, and anything but silent in the process of this resistance. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of our country. We must form a resistance and stick to it. Only then will this mighty shroud crumble. If we stay strong and fight for our beliefs, this too shall pass, sooner rather than later. America must stand up and confront this bully at every turn. It is the only way we can maintain our freedom and dignity. We are beyond " Give him a chance, he's new." He is not going to change, so we must. Resist, America, resist!
Monday, February 20, 2017
Humorless
Being able to effectively use self deprecating humor is the sine qua non of any successful President. Trump's problem, among others, is that he has none. He cannot poke fun at himself. Any slight, real or imagined is a serious threat to his virility. He has virtually no sense of humor. He doesn't drink, so he's not going to mellow out after a few beers, and he has no intellectual curiosity. He does not read books or briefing papers, which is why he winds up quoting Fox TV sound bytes as reality. This is not going to change. That's the bad news. The good news? I don't see any yet.
Stupid is as stupid does. Just as Forrest Gump. As each day goes by, it is increasingly. Lear that our new President is limited and /or handicapped, emotionally, and intellectually. He does not read books. He reacts off the cuff to the last thing he sees in cable news programs ( e.g. Sweden) , and he brags as naseum about how special he is and how much he has done, often ignoring the facts and simply fabricating stuff out of whole cloth. This, to say the least. Is very unpresidential. Starting today, this blog will take on Trump and his braggiodocious comments, as well as his actions. We must all be vigilant, lest we lose our democracy.
ANNOUNCEMENT
New editorial policy--
As most of my friends know, I am very vocal when it comes to my political views, and the recent installation in office of our 45th President has only heightened that reality. That being said, I don't want my Facebook postings to be a continuing screed against Trump. There are lots of other topics to pay attention to, and that are deserving of comment. His constant barrage of baloney deserves separate and distinct treatment. So, from now on, I will attempt to restrict my posts about anything Trump related to my political blog: WWW.pdq22.blogspot.com . I will post a link on FB to my blog. However, I will not post the comment on FB. The reader will have a choice to click or ignore.
I will need to change my blog to achieve this, so, instead of posting full blown essays, I will be posting shorter dissertations of a paragraph or two instead. This should provide more content to those who seek to follow political commentary. It will become a chattier , less formal opinion site, and hopefully engender comment from others.
Thursday, December 15, 2016
Breaking News v. Broken news
Breaking News. Nary a day goes by without seeing that term flash across our tv screens, and pop up on our smart watches . Watches used to actually just tell time, and newspapers used to actually print the news. As one highly regarded news purveyor, the New York Times, so presciently put it in way back in 1896: We print " All the news that is fit to print". That quote from publisher Adolph Ochs is still emblazoned on the masthead of the nation's most respected news source. Today, the word "print" has taken on multitudinous forms, with most of us now getting our information from non- print sources and hand held mini computers. It is tough to figure out what information is reliable, and what is not. With the emergence of Cybernews, we have lost our reliable filters as to what is and is not fit to "print" .
Back in those days of robber barons and major media moguls , Ochs was responding to his competitors tendency to publish salacious headlines and half truths twisted in a way to push forward a particular ideology or agenda. That was labeled "Yellow journalism" back then, when tabloid publications were owned by, among others, William Randolph Hearst. Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, another NY newspaper publisher, focused on crime and sensationalism, and their newspapers were sold on the street for a penny or two. Indeed, that's where the term '"my two cents" came from. These bold new tabloids garnered hundreds of thousands of new readers and recruited lucrative advertising revenue from department stores to enhance their profitability. Presenting the facts as news became secondary to advancing agendas. Our involvement in Cuba at the time, the Spanish American war and the assassination of President McKinley in 1896 were directly attributable to these yellow journalism "rags". Fast forward 110 years, and we see the same scenario playing out, only this time, in the context of "fake news" , and social media, such as Facebook and Twitter. We now have a toxic mix of misinformation and disinformation available, which can adversely affect the outcome of elections.
Guess what? That toxic mix of news, non-news, and fake news worked. And to add insult to injury, this time a foreign government, to wit: Russia , played a significant role in the disinformation campaign. We had cyber-hacking of e mails from foreign spying agencies , and selective leaks of those e mails intended to influence the election . Everything old ala 1896 became new again, and news networks like Fox News have taken the place of the Pulitzers and the Hearsts, and the casualty of these efforts has been the American electoral system.
When you can't separate fact from fiction, and when facts don't matter as much as the belief systems of the media presenting those alleged facts, you have a recipe for disaster . Not only have we been hacked, we have been had.
In order to function properly, a democracy must have an informed electorate. Without that , it doesn't work. It becomes mob rule. Just ask Thomas Jefferson who famously said, " A people who believe they can be both free and ignorant, believe that which never has been and never can be". Without the ability of an informed electorate to make intelligent and critical choices in the voting booth, we are destined to become the pawns of those who would dupe us. Yes, it has come to pass. Demagoguery has triumphed in the person of our President-elect, and how and if our system will actually survive is a question that hangs precariously in the balance. Only vigilance and paying persistent attention to the machinations of our newly chosen leader can save us from perfidy.
Hopefully, in the end, the truth will prevail, but at the moment , determining what is true and what is not is an increasingly elusive goal. The Fourth estate has an incredibly important role to play in the next four years. If breaking news becomes broken news, then woe be we.
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