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| What brave new world are you thinking of? |
"Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing."
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing."
- from Shakespeare's "Macbeth"
Are people really bracing for some sort of civil war? The talk is out there. But when "the talk is out there," peel back and see from where it is coming from.
In pre-digital times we had a "gatekeeper" news media that tried to keep guardrails with our collective sensibilities. The media encouraged a proper way of thinking even while allowing a pretty fair latitude of political thought. Fast-forward to today and we see that no guardrails whatsoever exist. We all need to step back, take a deep breath and consider what all that means.
Online is our world of today. It is easy to come upon headlines that simply have "bad language" by our former standards. We have become numb to it.
In the long-ago times, like the '60s and '70s, people who were aspiring to media roles would seek to be "let past the velvet rope." I'm borrowing that expression from the sage morning commentator Joe Scarborough. What a war horse for staring into the camera Joe has been, I mean hosting a show based on politics for three hours every weekday morning. It gives meaning to being "in the arena." Brickbats galore. Scarborough told us of the long-ago times when fortunate souls would get let past the velvet rope (in effect), into the world of well-known media reporters or pundits. So let's stress it wasn't always based on merit.
The Internet is nothing if not a meritocracy. And while it is set up to reward the "best" work, the problem is that the chaff does not simply get discarded. It is all out there, readily accessible so that you can hone in on something that simply pleases you at any time. The proliferation of "podcasts" seems rather laugh-provoking. Who in hell has the time to call up even a tiny sliver of such stuff?
It is still assumed in America that you have a TV set. We hear of the "cord-cutting" but the TV is still pretty standard, although I no longer have one. Going TV-less is becoming more practical with each passing year. I can watch my cable TV news programs pretty reliably through the little screen in front of me. There is a small delay but no big deal. I don't have the whole smorgasbord available but I have enough to feel satisfied. Scarborough is available every day.
In 2018 I wrote a song called "I'm Watching Joe and Mika" and it's on YouTube. Mika is Mika Brzezinski. Their long-running program on MSNBC is called "Morning Joe." You may listen to my song with this permalink:
The gatekeeper days of the media often showed us a world where politics was boring. We'd laugh about it. How quaint to think of the old political show "Capital Gang." Oh my, politics so civil. The arguments of the bygone times would occasionally seem intense by the standards of those times.
Oh, "by the standards of those times." We lost Bob Dole recently. I would have liked to say "Bob, our nation turns its lonely eyes to you." An intelligent and heroic man coming out of WWII, a pillar in American life, but boring even at the time. Boring! Wouldn't we now be blessed by such a state of affairs.
The guardrails are gone for foul language. If our forebears only could have known what was coming someday. (I'm sure they knew all the words.) A president who drops the f-bomb for media and public consumption. He's former president now. And he was ahead of his time for understanding the media and how to use it. This he did as he assembled his building blocks for fame. He understood the media system and had the talent - yes, it's a real talent - of being a demagogue.
Trump stands in front of rally crowds and gets them so enthused, in a manner that would be hard to picture with any other prominent Republican. I have joked about the futility if Jeb Bush attempted this. But it's hard to imagine any other "name" Republican from the current clown car of faces being able to perform this way, to even come close. Let's emphasize that it is truly a performance.
And it takes talent - by this I don't mean the talent of sharing constructive ideas with a sincere strain. I have to break Godwin's Rule here and say the talent was certainly possessed by German's dictatorial leader of the mid-20th Century. Why not say his name? Well, if I do I'll be pigeon-holed. Like I said: Godwin's Rule. And don't you think Hitler assembled associates around him who sought power and importance and the approval of the figure at the top? Which ought to remind you of what? Well, the former president of course.
But I plead with you at present: Are Americans lock-stock-and-barrel buying into this? Is it really an appreciable percentage of Americans who have bought into it, who are willing to start the "civil war" we hear about as a possibility? A certain strong portion of America continues to be Democrats even though they face the predicament of being in the minority now. As for everyone else, how many are truly invested in MAGA, willing to fight for it? How many will start to get scared of what they've created? How many will have a "come to Jesus" moment? How many will wake up as if they've just been slapped in the face or exposed to smelling salts?
How many will slowly wise up to what our news media universe has been doing to us? In the old days we depended on someone like Walter Cronkite to finally straighten us out. He famously did that with the Vietnam war, belatedly of course, and LBJ had to admit he could not face the headwinds any more, not when he had to contest with Cronkite.
Today we are on our own. Do you think you can handle that responsibility? Can you judge Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger without being influenced by how the Republican Party of 2022 is trying to crush them? Can you think for yourselves? Can you ignore Kevin McCarthy?
Mike Pence has suddenly woken up. Holy cow, talk about belated. It's moving at a snail's pace, this enlightenment among the Neanderthal GOPers. You know what this reminds me of? The scene in the old movie "The Time Machine" where the passive "eloys" suddenly learned how to fight again. They had to fend off the "morlocks." Remember the scene of the guy practicing forming a fist? It is a classic Hollywood scene.
Pence is the equivalent of the character finding the latent skill. Is it enough? I feel the jury is still out. A civil war? I really think not. It's overblown media hype. I'm banking on the U.S. people being smarter than they often seem. Call me the optimistic one. Watch your back, especially if the South Dakota attorney general is coming up behind you in his vehicle.
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com
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