AN OPEN LETTER

Junk journalism is partly to blame for the sham outcome of Election 2016.  Citing examples of incompetence, I have taken it upon myself to compose a letter which I am putting in the public domain. If you wish to join in protest, please feel free to use the letter below and send to any network of your choosing:

TO THE EXECUTIVES OF CNN, FOX, AND NBC:

A presidential candidate defames minorities, mocks disabled persons, and demeans women.  In a normal world, such misconduct would sink any candidate.  I blame your news network for normalizing the abnormal.

Bombastic and malicious rhetoric earned the candidate an estimated $5.2 billion in free airtime (source: MediaQuant).  Complicit in opportunism, your network reaped a massive ratings windfall.  Suckered by a con artist, you sacrificed objectivity and integrity on the alter of craven self-interest.

A notorious bigot addresses a Trump victory dinner in Washington.  Journalists depart early and miss the Nazi salutes.  Over 700 hate crimes in two weeks go unreported (source: SPLC.  Imbalanced coverage is ethically indefensible and reprehensible.

“It’s not my job to be a truth squad,” disclaims Chris Wallace of Fox News. Nor is it the job of NBC News Correspondent Chuck Todd. Their refusal to discern fact from fiction contradicts the Society of Professional Journalists whose mission statement reads: “Seek the truth and report it.”

I blame you for the shoddy state of broadcast journalism today:

— For outright falsehoods reported as newsworthy events,

— For petty Twitter feeds that distract from meaningful news,

— For panelists comprised of shills and crosstalk without substance,

— For moderators who fail to fact-check competing claims,

— For deceptions and defamations legitimized on a national stage.

When the Fourth Estate abdicates responsibility and surrenders to demagoguery, the politics of malice wins over common decency.  News content should never be calibrated to accommodate sensationalism or political whims de jour.  You failed in your mission to inform the public.  Millions of concerned citizens are outraged.  You have betrayed our trust, and I am determined to hold you accountable.

A free press, a watch dog press, a check against unbridled power will be more vital than ever before. Hold their feet to the fire. Here is a suggested list of addressees (or chose your own):

Jeff Zucker, President

CNN News Worldwide

10 Columbus Circle

New York, New York 10019

Tony Maddox

Executive VP and Managing Director

CNN News Worldwide

One CNN Center

Atlanta, GA, 30303.

Bill Shine, Co-President

Fox News Channel (FNC)

1211 Avenue of the Americas

New York, New York 10036

Jay Wallace, VP - News Editorial

Fox News Channel (FNC)

1211 Avenue of the Americas

New York, New York 10036

John Moody, VP and Executive Editor

Fox News Channel (FNC)

1211 Avenue of the Americas

New York, New York 10036

Steve Burke, President and CEO

NBC Universal News Group

30 Rockefeller Center
New York, New York 10112

Andrew Lack, Chairman

NBC Universal News Group

30 Rockefeller Center
New York, New York 10112

l'etat c'est moi

Memory is a funny thing when it applies to the world of politics. I wonder how many remember Dick Cheney's statement that the actions of a president are ipso facto legal.  That would sound very strange coming from the Republican machine that has been trumpeting the opposite for 8 years: that everything Obama does is illegal, scandalous and unconstitutional.

Truth, legality and morality apparently are time dependent, are time specific and situational. but don't look for anyone to confirm the obvious, because the core value is, that it's not illegal (fascist, racist, unconstitutional or deplorable) when we do it.

Donald Trump told us, his soon to be subjects, in an interview in the New York Times yesterday that profiting in business using your presidency is legal because there is no such thing as a conflict of interest when one is president, or should we say El Presidente.

“The law's totally on my side, meaning, the president can't have a conflict of interest.”

Is that true?  I'm not a lawyer, but Title 18 Section 208 of the U.S. code seems to exempt presidents from the requirement to, for instance, not steer the country for his own profit.  Maybe it's a new era coming. Maybe all that shall be changed, or maybe not. Congress has yet to challenge Trump's declaration that l'etat c'est moi as Louis IV the Sun King once told the world.  We shall see. We shall see how congruent the rule of law and the will of Trump shall be in our boisterous, sheet wearing, cross burning, minority deporting, religiously conformist, all white and all great America.  We shall see what we have done.

A CALL TO ACTION — Vive La Résistance!

No doubt, president-elect Trump represents an existential threat to our democratic values and traditions. His first cabinet announcements are terrifying: An anti-Semite, a racist and white nationalist, and an unhinged war hawk.

Newt Gingrich wants to bring back the House of UnAmerican Activities — thus signaling a return to McCarthy era witch hunts and persecutions. Trumpism has unleashed a troubling populism reminiscent of fascism.

What can we do? Use social media to network, share information and ideas, organize and and strategize. Call leaders in Congress. Write letters. Join peaceful protests. Support advocacy groups such as the ACLU and ADL. Vote with your pocketbook and boycott. Hold our news media accountable!

Demand honesty and transparency. Condemn the culture of demagoguery that panders to bigotry, hatred, and violence. Condemn nepotism, kleptocracy, and conflicts of interest. Demand citizenship, not partisanship.

For my part, I will write precisely focused letters of protest and post these online. I will publish boycott lists of corrupt corporations and their CEOs. I will support La Résistance in every way possible ... with anger and determination.

I welcome your comments, suggestions, and feedback.

STORMFRONT — Making America Hate Again

Reserve judgement. Keep an open mind. Close ranks behind our new leader. Rationalizations? Or willful self-deceptions! Frankly, I am alarmed by dismissive attitudes following Donald Trump’s Electoral College win last week. All are variations on a self-serving theme: “I’ve got mine, screw you.” Here is what our country has become:

Ku Klux Klan rally in Anaheim erupts in violence; 3 are stabbed and 13 arrested:

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-klan-rally-in-anaheim-erupts-in-violence-one-man-stabbed-20160227-story.html

Trump supporters brutally attack gay man in California: 

http://usuncut.com/news/trump-supporters-brutally-attack-gay-man-california/

Muslim Women Wearing Hijabs Assaulted Just Hours After Trump Win:
http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/muslim-women-wearing-hijabs-assaulted-just-hours-after-trump-win-n681936

Sieg Heil — swastikas and racist Trump graffiti appear in South Philly:
http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/clout/400560361.html

Post-election hate crimes worse than post-9/11:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/11/12/post-election-spate-hate-crimes-worse-than-post-911-experts-say/93681294/

Over 200 Incidents of Hateful Harassment and Intimidation Since Election Day:

https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2016/11/11/over-200-incidents-hateful-harassment-and-intimidation-election-day

Meanwhile, fascist-elect Donald Trump remains silent. No denouncement of the violence, no moral message, and no responsibility for the climate of hatred his campaign has unleashed.

Newt Gin Stench says he wants to resurrect HUAC, the former House of Un-American Activities. Scarcely a month before inauguration, already the trappings of an oppressive surveillance and police state are taking shape. Joseph McCarthy Redux (on steroids), to be more precise.

None of these news accounts leave me in a Kumbaya frame of mind. I have feared this dark turn of events for months, and now my worst fears have been realized.

LET'S MAKE AMERIKA WHITE AGAIN

Welcome to the new normal.

Desperate people threw away their moral integrity, if they ever had any, and their sense of decency to vote for a PT Barnumesque shyster filled with empty promises and plenty of hateful rhetoric. He managed to degrade women (and still 57% of women voters voted for him), threaten Muslims (many of whom are peaceful and legitimate citizens of the once United States), persons of color (also many who are full citizens of this country), persons with disabilities and the marginalized group known collectively as the LBGT community (and also most of all who are citizens of the once United States).

Many women of the Muslim faith are afraid to wear their hijabs in public even though their religious beliefs compel them to do so (that's the scarf they wear around their head). Muslim women are afraid.

And their fears are not without validation. Muslim woman attacked on campus.

Many folks will tell you that they are not racist and don't agree with the bigotry and hate yet chose to ignore all that hate spewing forth at every rally or just never listened past the part they wanted to hear but unlike them, I listened to most everything Donald Trump had to say. I did want to vote for change, I would have loved to a found a fresh new candidate that could work on both sides of the aisle and see progress in our economic and social status, but Trump is not the one. Like any good carnival huckster, he played to the crowd. One night I listened to him address one group promising a wall and mass deportations, another night I heard him telling hispanics he would make room for them in Trump's America  -- and make no mistake, this IS now Trump's Amerika. This land is NOT your land and is it NOT my land, it is Trump land and the GOP land and they are going to do with it as they please.

Steel mills will not reopen in Pittsburgh, the furniture factories will not be spewing toxic fumes in High Point and the fabric mills of the South will remain silent and unused. Why? Because Trump cannot deliver on his campaign promise to bring back jobs, which, by the way, did not all go overseas. It is more complicated than that.  Why Trump will fail to bring back jobs.

Those tax cuts? Yeah, the middle class will see about $1,000 extra a year while the rich will hang on to another million a year. And he has no plan for offseting these cuts which will ADD 7 TRILLION TO THE NATIONAL DEBT. The cost of Trump's tax plan.

But the one thing we can count on? An ever deeper divide and ever increasing violence and hate.

KKK emerges from under their rocks.

Increased hate crimes after election.

For those who are distressed as I am to what is happening to the social and moral fabric of this country there is a new movement happening now. Pin a safety pin to your clothing where anyone can see it. It is a symbol that attests to you being someone who is safe to talk to and ask for help for any person regardless of color, religion, gender or sexual orientation. It is a small thing but a sea of safety pins on a crowded street may just give our fellow human beings a little hope and let them know they are not alone.

ROCKY IS BACK ON THE BEACH!

DAWN OF THE DEAD

The Trumpocalypse has arrived.  Street demonstrations have started in major cities from coast to coast.  Overnight on Facebook, former friends have “unfriended” themselves along party lines. Progress in human rights and cherished social safety net programs are now at risk. 

Goodbye healthcare. Goodbye environmental protection. Goodbye nuclear non-proliferation. Goodbye hard won rights for minorities, women, and the LGBT community. Goodbye freedom of the press. Those “huddled masses yearning to breathe free” will now be deported.

A GOP sweep of state and federal legislatures has removed all checks and balances.  Hello nativism and xenophobia.  Bigots and white supremacists have won.  Anti-establishment populism has opened the gates of fascism.

Friends tell me to be patient. Give the man a chance. Keep an open mind, they say.  No past words or deeds of the president-elect merits such idiotic and misplaced Kumbaya.  Most shocking of all, 53% of American white women voted for a known serial sex predator and voyeur. Speaking of cognitive disconnects …

Where does this turn of events leave me?  And what are my options?  Join street protests?  Form an underground resistance movement?  Leave the country?  All options are open as far as I am concerned.

Another Republican Collapse

Huffington Post has never seemed an extremist publication, except perhaps to extremists, but today's article about the historic drop in the markets coincident with the recent rise of Trump's prospects is full of flashing lights, klaxon horns and a voice from Das Boot shouting "Dive, Dive!"

We have, if you've been watching markets as closely as I do, the most prolonged sell-off since the financial crisis even though the odds are he will lose. Is that ironic with so many of his lower education level supporters extolling his talents as a business man who will end our "debt problem?" You betcha! as another lowbrow Republican pundit said. It seems like yesterday.

Financial experts and leaders around the world are expecting little short of total world collapse under a Trump administration. "Inconceivable" is the nearly universal reaction to the prospect of President Trump.   Moody’s says Trump’s policies would throw the U.S. economy into the longest recession since the Great Depression. Citigroup thinks a Trump win could cause a global depression.British research firm Oxford Economics thinks Trump in the White House would cause the American economy to shrink by $1 trillion over five years. Is the Nixon Gambit going to work to dismiss the fears of  the most informed conservatives in the Capitalist world by reciting the "Liberal Media" formula?  It will for some; for many in the Denialist/Conspiracy community. But it won't matter. For them it will still be all about emails and Benghazi and Crooked Hillary and if  (please) she manages to win she'll be straightjacketed by investigations and inquiries and impeachment hearings and filibusters and budget crises and shutdowns and the inability to appoint anyone to anything.

Are we damned either way?  Who knows, The best I can hope for is survival. Greatness may have to wait. An out of office Trump is not a dead trump and like Dead Cthulhu in his home beneath the sea, he'll be dreaming of revenge.

No Exit

Hell is other people, said Jean-Paul Sartre. in No Exit, (Huis clos) and so is Democracy, as I was reminded today in the New Yorker.  A third of Americans can't name one branch of government and examples of  the massive failure of education to integrate the population into the process are more than abundant.

Perhaps it's my prejudice speaking but I would guess, in the absence of further data, that this proportion is even higher among supporters of Donald Trump, many of whom seem to think that a president can do almost anything he wants, from "fixing the schools" to changing the tides in the affairs of men and rebuilding the world of the 1950's within our walled borders. All of course without help or hindrance from  the legislature or the Judicial Branch.

The requirements of Democracy include an informed, intelligent, rational electorate and I know I didn't have to tell you that, and I didn't have to tell the Founding Fathers that; seeing that they attempted to follow a sort of hierarchy of decision making that we call a Republic to protect us from the passions, the rages and the foolishness of the people.

I don't think it's working and not only because fewer and fewer potential voters are informed enough to rise above the level required to get on the carnival ride we call our electoral process, and more and more are intentionally and effectively misinformed, propagandized and enraged beyond the point of caring.  The days of hand set and hand printed newspapers ended over a century ago along with the disappearance of a population with the time and inclination to read them. Ten thousand, ten million flowers have bloomed as the tyrant Mao would have said and there is much confusion about who is or isn't likely to be telling the truth.  Every truth, every lie, every observation is buried in an accretion of commentary and although so much information is available, few bother to do more than seek out confirmation of what feels good to believe and scream it loudly in the street. 

Perhaps there truly is no exit and perhaps there are no limits. A candidate we associate with "those" people is soon divorced from his own history and ours and becomes indistinguishable from the Satan who was long ago invented to enable the demonizing process -- while the devil himself can become a hero. There is no damping factor as an engineer might term it and the system flies apart as we see today - right now. 

Is the secret to stall the rush to authoritarianism and a government of men to introduce some authority of information: some referee of last resort?  We can't know because even though it's so easy to check facts, checkers who we don't trust because they tell us we're wrong, become the demons themselves and we trust no one but the anonymous voices of agreeable rage on the web, in our emails, in our minds and on the 24 hour news. We sink into paranoia and into faith at the same time: into separate hermetic universes. Nothing in one can be proved to be true or false in any other frame of reference. Whether or not Hassan really said it, in our world and in his, nothing is true and anything can happen.

Is there really no exit?  How do you say "No Chance" in French?

FINAL COUNTDOWN - Election 2016

As the clock runs down on Election 2016, I am running out of words. Have I covered all points? Left any loose ends? With few days left, here is a quick recap of the year in headlines:

Trump treats sexual assault as a joke and brags about molesting women. Clinton emails. Trump demeans, degrades, and shames women in public. Clinton emails. Twelve sex assault victims — plus dozens of eyewitnesses — come forward and expose Trump. Clinton emails. Trump faces charges of raping a minor. Clinton emails.

Trump University sued for racketeering and fraud. Clinton emails. Trump bribes district attorneys in Florida and Texas. Clinton emails. Trump files bankruptcy six times. Clinton emails. Trump avoids paying taxes over 20 years. Clinton emails. Court orders Trump to stop racial housing discrimination. Clinton emails. Trump submits fraudulent insurance claims. Clinton emails. Trump cheats workers and contractors by refusing to pay them. Clinton emails.

Trump ridicules disabled people. Clinton emails. Trump smears Mexicans as criminals and rapists. Clinton emails. Trump stereotypes black people as inherently lazy. Clinton emails. Trump vows to deport all Muslims without due process. Clinton emails. Trump threatens lawsuits and press censorship. Clinton emails.

Trump supports nuclear proliferation. Clinton emails. Trump praises Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un as strong leaders. Clinton emails. Trump campaign officials have Russian mob ties. Clinton emails. Trump knows nothing of Russian interventions in Syria and the Ukraine. Clinton emails. Trump threatens to undermine NATO and abandon allies. Clinton emails. European allies fear Trump as a threat to world peace and security. Clinton emails.

Does this recap capture the essence of Election 2016? The contrasts? The claims and counter claims? If I have forgotten anything, please add a comment below.  This election represents a true existential moment in our history. Please share with friends who are still undecided and sitting on the fence.

Behind the screen

I never go out without one, usually small - the sort of thing they used to call a "gentleman's knife" or pen knife because it so often comes in handy. I once used a Swiss Army knife to repair a carburetor linkage well enough to get the car home.  I'm as likely to turn around and go home for having forgotten a pocket knife as I am for forgetting my phone or even my wallet. You never know.

A 13 year old kid here faces a felony charge for having a pocket knife. His life may well be ruined. This is no longer my country, my civilization, my culture.

We look around at tools and see weapons. We look at cars and we see death. We look at falling crime and tremble in fear. Nothing is safe enough. We're afraid of our food, our water, our government. Teach your kid to build a fire, make a shelter?  DANGER! Let him walk to school? You're going to jail.

Drive a car on the interstate, the safest roads we have -- hell no. It's too dangerous. Remember kitchen "Strike anywhere" matches?  Some states ban them.  I mean you could burn your finger.

Paranoia strikes deep. Starts when you're always afraid, as the song goes. We're terrified of our phones, our electric meters. We're afraid of freedom and so we let them sell us subjugation wrapped up in a flag and complete with air bags and radar brakes and we build walls to hide behind and the fat men in wigs smile, the lawyers get richer while we watch people have adventures in the only world we aren't afraid to participate in: teh one behind the screen.