Tuesday

21 November 2017

 

 -- just a little rain

Good Morning All,

From this far remove, I've been thinking about America’s social and cultural cohesion. Mind you, I know the picture I get is probably not very accurate for it comes mostly from what I read in the papers and watch on electronic news outlets, plus all too brief summers at the cottage in Wales, Mass., where not a whole lot has changed since I was in short pants.

That said, it does not seem the America of this moment is as cohesive as the America President Eisenhower smiled upon. Lots of reasons, doubtless. One being America’s relentless war-mongering since Kennedy sent those military advisors to Vietnam in 1961. (Remember Ike’s warning about the danger of the military/industrial complex!) The divisiveness of that (non)war and subsequent wars, and the mess America has made of the Middle East. And certainly electing such a truly evil person as Ronald Reagan to the presidency has not helped. Or, just for one more current example, the remarkable hypocrisy of the religious right, where Franklin Graham (Billy’s son) can defend and support the senatorial candidacy of a pervert who apparently abused fourteen year old girls. (A reader contributed this posting at the end of a Globe article on Roy Moore: "New bumper sticker seen on the block: "Evangelicals for child molestation!" And Franklin Graham has the gall to pontificate about hypocrisy."

Another reason for less cohesion today may lie in the media and the phenomenon of the Internet. I grew up with three tv networks. I watched Gunsmoke, as did most of my friends. I watched Chet Huntley and David Brinkley, Harry Reasoner, and Walter Cronkite, “the most trusted man in America”, as did everyone else. There was across the land a commonality of shared social and cultural experience.

Today there are thousands of tv stations and millions of places to go on the Internet. My students at school did not ask each other what they saw last night, because the chances were remote they’d watched the same thing.

My guess would be that there is so much available now that no one ever has to watch anything that  takes him or her out of his or her comfort zone. 

I’d bet money that had Donald Trump run for the presidency when ABC, NBC, and CBS provided most of the nightly news, he would never have gotten the nomination, let alone won the presidency. 

In other words, our advances in communication technology have contributed to the higher levels of ignorance that allow people like Trump to succeed.

The newspapers? The Boston Globe used to be divided into sections: World, Nation, Region (New England), Metro, etc. It no longer has a World, Nation, or Region section. Since January, 170 white farmers in South Africa have been murdered. There has never been word one about that in the Globe. Four days after Mugabe was placed under house-arrest (two days—perhaps coincidentally—after I wrote a letter to the editor), there was a brief article on the subject way down the page.

I do realize publishers have to sell papers (or electronic subscriptions such as mine) to stay in business. They have to survive with an ever shrinking market-share (just as the tv stations must), but one reality of that is having more and more to acquiesce to what readers want to read. Which, for the most part, amounts to an unquenchable thirst for sensationalism and gossip. From a news point of view, the more mass murders and sexual harrassers the better. And Donald, of course, throws gas on those fires to keep the media from reporting on his administration. 

(His bitch about the kneeling NFL players was/is, we must admit, a brilliant stroke. Sports is one of the last areas in America where there is yet a great deal of cohesion. Ergo, why not get sports fans angry at each other? As with everything else—civil rights, women’s rights, health-care—the more disharmony and discord he can muster, the easier is his task of dismantling democracy.)

I still read some of the Globe every morning (the sports page is yet terrific!), but there is less and less of merit in it. More and more do I seek out the BBC, the New York Times,  and The Washington Post.

My apologies if all that sounds so overwhelming obvious and/or simplistic to you Yanks, but—as I say—I live over here in quietly sane Denmark, which still works for the most part the way America once did before Jack got shot and Lyndon did not want to be the first president to lose a war.

Go Well and Stay Well, 

Bhekaron

P.S. Two Holly snaps: