Social Media – Years Of Being

Support Trump? Hie Thee Away From Me

Consider this blog post as a stone marker on the ground, an adamant declaration of “here and no further”. It comes down to this:

If you support Donald Trump, you and I will no longer have any association. If you are voting for Trump in November, you and I can no longer share any sort of friendship or even casual interaction.

By supporting Trump, you have revealed yourself as a person morally bankrupt, or intellectually damaged, or both. And the most damning thing you have revealed is that you hold absolutely no regard for the fundamentals of American democracy, nor freedom, nor justice, nor decency, nor the rule of law, nor the Constitution, nor any of the norms upon which the greatest country in history was built.

Instead, you have surrendered your independent thought and liberty to a sociopathic, narcissistic, lying, corrupt authoritarian, a man who cares not a whit for you or your well-being, or any goddam thing in the world other than Donald Trump. That being the case, and since I maintain a set of standards that determine whom I consider a friend, or even with whom I will exchange words, be advised that you no longer rise to any level I will accept.

Furthermore, I have no use for any attempt at explanation for your support of Trump, no willingness to listen to your “reasoning” or “rationale”. If you support Trump, that is demonstrated proof that you have no capacity for reason. Like everyone else in the country, you’ve had the same four years to experience his complete lack of human decency, his endless lying, his imbecilic pronouncements, his idiotic and embarrassing lack of even the basics of how our government works, his sadistic cruelty and bullying, his willingness to not just ignore, but to trample the precepts set out in the Constitution, his greed, his stonewalling and coverups, his corruption that continues to line his pockets in direct violation of the emoluments clause, and on and on and on. So there is no possible reason that you could provide for supporting this monster.

But if you do support him, either you are hopelessly blind, or else you agree with his words and actions. If you are indeed that blind, then you must be willfully so; the sheer extent of Trump’s abominations make it impossible to ignore or deny them without actively working hard to do so. And be advised: if the gods strive in vain against stupidity, they rage in righteous anger against willful ignorance.

If you agree with what he has said and done, then you are, like him, a worthless excuse of an American, much less a human being. To agree with Trump is to have forsaken every basic building block upon which this great American Experiment rests. You are denying the critical principles of justice for all, individual liberty, and equal treatment under the law. You are forsaking the basic humanity which all our better angels forever compel us to promote: work for the common good, care for the least among us, feed the hungry, protect the children. Not put them in cages.

So, again: if you support Trump, if you plan to vote for him, put us in the category of “No Longer Connected”. Unfriend me on FB, or send me a message, and I’ll unfriend you. As Henry told Eleanor in “The Lion In Winter”, “We do not touch at any point.”

And we never will.

Television News: A Brief History

Here is one of those factoids that historians may find pivotal when they look back on this era (assuming there are historians: if Trump wins 2020, one fears for the very existence of such people, not to mention what unimpeded climate change may do to fate of civilization. But I digress). At one point in the late 70’s and early 80’s, two fundamental changes occurred in news reportage, and they were not unconnected. One of course was the advent of 24/7 cable news (CNN being the original). The other was the fact that network news came under the same umbrella as network entertainment. Prior to that, news departments in the Big 3 networks actually existed as independent corporate entities. ABC led the charge when Roone Arledge was promoted from managing sports to being the network head. He decided news should make money just like sports did, and the other major networks followed suit.

The main impact of that separation had been that news was NOT part of the ratings/commercial aspect of the networks. Before these mergings, network news organizations generally operated at a loss, which the networks felt was a reasonable expense. Given this freedom, they were not accountable to ratings and sponsors. And this allowed them to simply report the news. Period. They did not have to justify their existence by a ratings competition.

By combining them with the entertainment wing of their respective networks, news programs were suddenly in need of “ratings”. Meaning they needed audience share. News became entertainment. At the same time, CNN (and the subsequent cable news channels) had to justify a 24/7 coverage of news. You can imagine the challenge. Instead of audiences being content with the Today show and Good Morning America and then 30 minutes of the evening news shows, it was necessary to try and keep viewers watching ALL THE TIME. Only shocking, tittilating news would suffice.

So all the news outlets were, in one fell swoop, suddenly in the “business” of news. That, plus the daily deluge, and the immediacy provided by our global connectivity, has resulted in news being NEWS: it’s ALWAYS breaking, it’s ALWAYS on, and it’s ALWAYS trying to shout louder and to be more shrill. Naturally the end result is that we are now inured to horror, immune to shock, indifferent to disaster. And something like Fox “News” was able to worm its way into existence.

BTW: If you ever find yourself in Britain, watch the BBC news. The have what are called “news readers”. That’s what they do: they read the news. It’s amazingly refreshing. And purely informative.

“Where did you go, Walter Cronkite?
Our nation turns its bleary eyes to you, woo-woo-woo
What’s that you say Mrs. Robinson?
Cronkite’s dead and now we’ve gone astray, hey, hey hey.
Hey, hey hey.”

Pollyanna

On Sunday, my wife Carol got me to watch a movie I had somehow missed in my childhood. I watched almost all of the Disney canon, from Old Yeller to Darbie O’Gill & the Little People (w/ Sean Connery!), from The Shaggy Dog to The Parent Trap. Swiss Family Robinson, Treasure Island, The Love Bug… not to mention all the classic animated films.

But I had never seen Pollyanna.

And having missed it as a child, as young teen and adult, I had already dismissed it as, well, Pollyannish, and the notion never again crossed my mind. Which was my loss.

It is easy to dismiss so much of the Disney vault as pure syrup. And as the years went by, I think perhaps that the studio indeed fell into formula. But there can be no question that so many of those early films, crafted elegantly and masterfully, had a tremendous impact on the morals and ultimately the hopeful outlook of an entire generation (mine, the Boomers). There was ALWAYS an essence of goodness, and it was juxtaposed against self-centered meanness, with an element of danger (and fear). Good had to be more than merely “good”, it had to have the power to overcome adversity.

The movie Pollyanna was the quintessence of that combination of elements. I confess to being moved and touched. The film spoke past my adult cynicism and reached back to resonate with the child I hope we all keep safely stored away, ready to rise strong.

The Glad Game, on the face of it, does seem hopelessly “Pollyannaesque”. But in its essence it holds a great truth, one that we should all wake up to every morning: If you look for the bad in people expecting to find it, you surely will.

Pollyanna and Anne Frank both believed something that is very, very hard to see: people are good at heart.

There are of course, some beings that look like people but probably are not. But let’s not discuss politics this today.

Worldview Bubble Bath

These days, we all tend to live in self-amplifying bubbles. We have opinions and world views, and the shows we watch and (God forbid!) the books we read, unless we are that rare breed of “open-minded, yet discriminating” folk, tend to reinforce those opinions. Facebook pretty much acts as a further enabler in this isolationism. I know many who have defriended those with opposing views. I personally try to keep many separate viewpoints in my FB universe (and this has not always led to pleasant exchanges 🙂 ), but the workings of FB itself seems to keep like-minded postings in my feed. Or else the unlike-minded simply post less, which is doubtful.

But even with my “big tent” philosophy of FB frienddom, I’m still living in a bubble. Not necessarily of political and philosophical and religious homogeneity, but rather one of cogitation and involvement and attention. I watched Obama’s final State Of The Union speechon Tuesday. I know a great many in my FB universe also watched, and with varying responses and reactions. BUT THEY WATCHED. Agreeing or not. Just like I used to do with W.

The point is, I can thus be fooled into thinking that a great many Americans watched. My FB universe skews me to that perception. But I expect the reality is quite a bit different. Instead, to the extent that many even care, they will get their SOTU fed in sound bites and talking head recaps, all patently guaranteed to continue to reinforce whatever world view they’ve “chosen”. FOX and MSNBC and CNN, etc., will condense and regurgitate whatever editorial emphasis has been agreed on.

But I fear that, for the much wider population, even those outlets will be ignored. Facebook leads me to the perception that most Americans are engaged and care and try to stay informed. The truth is probably much closer to the majority staying informed mainly on Kardashians and the NFL playoffs.

Jefferson would be distressed, don’t you think?