We are about to be ruled by raving nutcases who have our national security in their hands as the president-elect refuses to be bothered with briefings on the topic.
The Trump transition, with its appointments and nominations of totally paranoid crackpots like Michael Flynn and totally unqualified people like the FOX commentator and blatant liar KT McFarland to back him up and a huge cast of other such horrors should be a golden opportunity for our great free press to shine but they are in on the con job and those who aren't are either hoping to get something out of it or they're cowards who won't point out that the ship of state is about to hit the rocks.
I can't think of anything that would more please the enemies of the Unites States, more please our rivals and more horrify our allies and friends than the insanity that the Trump transition is exposing.
That our Constitutional system can produce this - FOR THE LOSER OF THE POPULAR VOTE - and not leave us with any means of preventing it is an indictment of the final and fatal inadequacy of that worshiped document. That our "free press" not only created Donald Trump but enabled his installation by the corrupt electoral college system as he lost the election is the final indictment of it, as well. They have supported a series of the worst presidents in recent history and the corruption of the Supreme Court. The popular myth of liberals built up in the Warren Court years that the Supreme Court was going to save us from the worst inclinations among us is entirely delusional. It was as much a part of creating this horror as FOX or CNN or NBC.
I am not terribly hopeful that even the coming horrors will be enough to overcome the corruption of the American character over the past half-century, though that is the only hope. The temporary turn around in that after the Republican crash of 1928 was turned around by the regime of lying as TV took hold of our dominant force in formation of that character. I think this entire thing lays out one of the greatest challenges for egalitarian democracy. Democracy is only possible when its prerequisites are in place, it can exist only within a certain range of tolerance for deviation from good will and truthfulness, both of which we have allowed the media to destroy, entirely and cynically as its owners game things for their economic advantage.
Our media is one of the things that deserves to be junked and replaced by things that tell us the truth. I think the most likely candidate for that is a coalition of religious journalists who have a deep and abiding reluctance to lie or to cover up even the most horrifying truth. It would require institutional support of the kind that such churches might be able to provide, no shoe-string effort could hope to mount such an effort from scratch, depending on donations. I doubt anything else can save us. The secular press has failed to provide that, it is the greatest champion of its permission to lie which has brought us to where we are now.
I realized this morning that there is no federal agency which announces the collated results of the election in November. The FEC doesn't do it (from the name you would think they would). No government agency does it.
ReplyDeleteThe Associated Press does it.
In the days following the election, it was the Associated Press that announced how many electoral college votes Trump and Clinton each had. Of course, they don't have any until the electoral college votes, but that vote is superfluous to the reports of the AP. It's a foregone conclusion. The meeting of the college and the casting of their votes is quaint tradition from times gone by. It's vestigial.
Why is the AP right? I'm not introducing a conspiracy theory, I'm just asking: why does our democracy work this way? We don't look to the AP to decide who won Senate races, House races, races in local elections. Sure, they predict winners, down to a certain level; but that announcement doesn't mean someone won. Except in the case of the POTUS.
AP has announced the results; the only thing left is the inauguration. When did the AP become the official arbiter of who won the White House? Because if the EC doesn't vote the way AP says they should, it will be a "Constitutional Crisis" because: AP has already called the race.
How dare the EC challenge the AP?
"Our media is one of the things that deserves to be junked and
ReplyDeletereplaced by things that tell us the truth. I think the most likely
candidate for that is a coalition of religious journalists...."
Maybe we can get Father Guido Sarducci. Former gossip columnist for the Vatican newspaper.