Op-Ed

Re “The Tragedy of Fox News,” by Bret Stephens (column, April 26):

We’ve heard this plea before: If only there were a rational, honest, center-right party or news source!

Mr. Stephens and similar lamenters don’t indicate what such a party’s positions would be, other than general shifts to more liberal democratic ideals.

The fact is, the agendas of these center-right Republicans have already won the day. We live in a country dominated by their policies, which today’s Democrats either acquiesce to or try vainly to mitigate, while occasionally passing a measure that’s inadequate to solve a problem.

So the wealth gap steadily increases; the rich continue to evade fair taxation; the prospects of the poor continue to worsen; the judicial system incarcerates disproportionate numbers of minorities; military-style weapons continue to proliferate, resulting in an absurd rate of mass shootings; debt handicaps the young and the poor; and the list goes on.

Recent developments in Washington relating to Ukraine and the Middle East remind me that there is a big difference between maintaining secrecy when a situation warrants it and lying over issues where there is no compelling reason to do so beyond political expediency. Having spent more than twenty years in American intelligence agencies where secrecy was the operative norm, I would illustrate that difference as follows: a legitimate secret would be something like not revealing information that would place people or vital national interests in jeopardy, while a lie would be committing a crime and fabricating a narrative that would deny or obfuscate that anything dire had actually taken place. When it comes to lying, I am, of course, referring to the bizarre behavior by the United States government, most particularly ever since 9/11, to commit war crimes and then come up with reasons for its foreign and national security policies to have taken a singular aggressive and coercive turn not justified by reality or by any real threat.

Hey China, quit threatening us! We’ll kick your ass.

Yeah, bad China, maybe worse than Russia, e.g.:

“The People’s Republic of China, which is increasingly challenging the United States economically, technologically, politically and militarily around the world, remains our unparalleled priority.”

The words are those of Avril Haines, director of national intelligence, addressing a Senate committee recently. As the New York Times noted, she “reinforced the message that President Biden and his top foreign policy aides have been sending on China. . . . that while Russia is a medium-term challenge, China is the greatest long-term rival of the United States and is the only nation with the power and resources to reshape the American-led international order.”

Can we form a circle big enough to fit 330 million Americans? Do we have enough folding chairs? I don’t know, but somehow we’ve got to launch a national conversation about . . . war, security, guns, fear and, oh God, the global future.

Ultimately we need to pull the whole planet into it — this is, after all, one planet, not 193 separate entities — but a circle of Americans, citizens of the most militarized and, perhaps, fearful nation on Earth, is a good place to start. We have to reach into our collective soul, folks!

When’s the last time you had your mind blown? Was this something that only happened in the 1960s?

Well, I had my mind blown a few days ago, when I took part in a sort of reunion I could never have imagined. It wasn’t a “reunion” so much as a reopening of the counterculture — specifically, the revival of a publication from the late ’60s called the Western Activist, a renegade (you might say) student newspaper that emerged at my college, Western Michigan University, in 1966.

Once again . . . once again . . . once again . . .

I’m sure you know what I’m referring to. Yeah, another — the latest (?) — mass shooting in the United States, this one at Old National Bank in Louisville, Kentucky, on April 10, two days ago as I write. Five killed, eight injured. The shooter, an employee of the bank, was killed in a shootout with police. Three officers were injured, including a rookie officer (ten days on the job), who was shot in the head and is struggling to survive. The gunman’s weapon was a nice, reliable AR-15-style rifle, legally purchased at a local gun shop a week earlier.

That’s the basic data.

The Ron DeSantis led Florida Republicans are working faster than the speed of light in trying to dismantle the inner structure that have sustained Florida’s middle-class society in a liberal democracy. The team is working in almost every aspect of our society in doing so. For example:

A- Gutting public sector labor unions with the exception of those that are tied with law enforcement (pretty clever maneuver since Republicans are going to need those workers to crack the heads of other workers); now in DeSantis’ Florida majority in Labor Unions is defined as 60% of the membership. Florida is a right-to-work state, and nobody is forced to become a labor union member.

B- DeSantis has declared a war on education that includes culture wars against Black history, LGBTQ+ community, and whatever makes white people feel uncomfortable about American history, “woke” people issues, etc. African American history has been banned as an AP course.

C- Women's reproductive choice is being hit with an abortion ban after six weeks of pregnancy and is almost certain to become law.

D- Attacks on LGBTQ community meant to take away their right to exist in dignity.

“At school he was told he would never write . . .”

Here was a kid – here was a man – who refused to listen to the authorities, and refused to be anything but fully human. And yeah, he could write. His spelling may have been iffy, but he could write. His name was Taro Joy. He drowned three years ago, in Bali, where he was living, at age 48 – but thanks to his mother, Penny (quoted above) and the rest of his family, his words and thoughts and deep reaches into the collective soul live on. They have just put out a book of his lifetime of writings, a book of his prose and poems: The Tao of Taro.

The phrase 'fake news' continues to be deployed routinely in US politics. In a polarized political atmosphere, both Republicans and Democrats distrust media organizations affiliated with opposing parties. This means that most of what is uttered or written by CNN is 'fake news' for Republicans, and much of what appears in Republicans-affiliated media is 'fake news' for Democrats. 

 The phrase is now so prevalent and has multiple meanings to the point that it is impossible to agree on a common definition. Even 'fact checking' organizations or news desks contribute to the troubling phenomenon of 'fake news' by selectively fact-checking news and information affiliated with one side of the political aisle, while ignoring the other. 

Today (4/1/23) The Wall Street Journal had as a front-page article on its REVIEW section titled “How Florida Became America’s GOP Hot Spot.” Written by several authors, it is a magnificent gloating piece celebrating GOP electoral accomplishments and becoming one of the major hubs of conservative heavyweights in the nation.

Florida not only has living in it the two top Republican presidential candidates but has also many other luminaries of the conservative world. The article to its credit recognizes that Florida once was one of the nation’s biggest swing states, but that now it is solidly conservative. 

They give credit to the vibrancy and creativity of conservative thinking in the state. I say hogwash. The reason that the Republican Party enjoys such reputation has much to do with the betrayal of Democratic economic principles by the Democratic Party leadership in the last few years.