01-12-2017, 12:10 PM
(01-12-2017, 10:28 AM)SomeGuy Wrote: Yeah, cable news in general (Fox, CNN, MSNBC, etc.) is pretty terrible in general. Of course, I really don't watch it because I don't own a television. Reading became my pastime of choice at a young age, and that is how I prefer to receive information. My only quibble now with reading the news is that it necessarily comes through the filter of the author's perceptions and biases, and I have simply lost trust in journalism as a profession.
Berlusconi is at least a decent comparison. These incessant "Trump is Hitler, no, Trump is Mussolini... He's Hitlerini! memes going around are the worst sort of garbage.
The Fourth Estate failed us miserably during the presidential campaign. The movie Network has proved so prescient. When TV news departments became profit centers, ratings became the name of the game, the truth be damned. Look up the comments of the CBS executive when pressed as to why Trump was getting the lion's share of TV news coverage. I recently watched the movie Truth about the fall of CBS news anchor Dan Rather, with Robert Redford in the starring role. Of course, Rather comes off looking like a hero. But the dramatization of events tends to gloss over the sloppy journalistic work of him and his assistants in developing their expose of George W. Bush's alleged "absence without leave" while serving in the Texas Air National Guard. The film simply reinforced my jaundiced view of modern journalism--its depiction of the rush to get a "scoop" right before the re-election of Bush. It's becoming harder and harder to discern the truth from "fake news," and I'd like to think that I'm a discriminating reader, as I assume some posters on this forum are as well. But even I must admit that the blurring of truth and "truthiness" has posed an especial challenge for me in our "post-fact" world. That, coupled with what I perceive to be a growing civic ignorance, is a dagger aimed at the very heart of our democracy.
As for the imminent prospect of tyranny (Shame on you, Robert Reich; you should know better)... How will we know when fascism has truly arrived on American shores? When people in the streets holding up signs saying "Trump Is a Fascist" are suddenly "disappeared," that's how. Of course, by then the proverbial "frog in the pot" will already be hardboiled, and it will be much too late to mount any real resistance. (Even for those paramilitary types dressed in camouflage and running around in the woods with their assault rifles.)
My fear all along is not so much Trump the man, but the Trumpism that may survive him. After all, McCarthyism has reared its head now and again, long after that disgraced senator from Wisconsin passed from the scene. Once we allow any space at all for political leaders-- above all, our presidents--to defy the Constitution or international law, we set ourselves on a very dangerous path. I remember the chill that shot down my spine when David Frost interviewed a not-too-chastened Richard Nixon, post-Watergate:
Frost:...Would you say that there are certain situations - and the Huston Plan was one of them - where the president can decide that it's in the best interests of the nation, and do something illegal?
Nixon: Well, when the president does it, that means it is not illegal.
Of course, Nixon's widely quoted response since then has been taken out of its proper context. Still...
As for me, I will simply watch for the signposts of an emergent fascism--as I understand it from my reading of history--knowing that we have only briefly flirted with it in the past. We are some ways yet from any real menace. Conditions are not yet ripe enough, though they may be slowly ripening all the same.