May I just say we have some lessons to re-learn?

May I just say we have some lessons to re-learn?

We can begin with last Saturday evening’s CNN broadcast of a live Broadway production of George Clooney’s “Good Night, and Good Luck.” It retold the story of newsman Edward R. Murrow’s struggle with “the Junior Senator from Wisconsin,” Joseph McCarthy. In his witch hunting for communists in the government and elsewhere, McCarthy’s greatest skill was the art of intimidation.

Clooney’s production was based on a play written twenty years ago. Strange, because it felt as if it was written today. Truth was being twisted into lies. Fear was being promoted for political advantage. Those who dared speak out against McCarthy immediately tasted his wrath, his drive for revenge, his desire (and capacity) to destroy reputations, careers and lives.

Following the broadcast, former “CBS Evening News” anchor Scott Pelley was interviewed by Anderson Cooper. Among other things, Pelley offered this lesson from the era of McCarthy: “The most important thing is to have the courage to speak, to not let fear permeate the country so that everyone suddenly becomes silent. If you fall silent, the country is doomed.” I thought we had learned this lesson earlier, but perhaps not.

I live in Los Angeles where patriotic women and men have taken to the streets to protest the brutal tactics of ICE, the inhumane policies of Trump and the violent suppression that’s spreading across America. The protests are justified. Many protestors are models of courage.

But if Trump has proven any skill it’s the use of lies to throw a blanket over truth. So when cars are set aflame on the edge of the protests, were they burning as acts of protest or as staged photo ops to justify sending in troops? Who knows? What we know is that Trump has ordered in the National Guard and the Marines. And even before they arrived, he announced that they had put down the “rebellion” of “violent insurrectionists.” Really? The couple from Pasadena marching with two school-aged children are “insurrectionists”? Let’s learn now that we won’t find truth in a snake pit of lies.

In my newly published book, Uneasy Silence, I remember that after the 2020 election, Trump

went on the attack. He picked on innocent people with false claims intended to smear their integrity and crush their lives. In Georgia, election workers Shaye Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, had done their jobs with distinction and gratitude. For their service to the Atlanta community, and owing to their unwillingness to bend either the rules or the truth, they were pilloried by right-wing liars led by Trump who said Ms. Moss was ‘a professional vote-scammer and hustler,’ falsely claiming that the mother-daughter duo had cheated to help Democrats.

Giving testimony to the US Congress some months after the 2020 election, Ms. Freeman said through tears, ’I’ve lost my name, I’ve lost my reputation, I’ve lost my sense of security.’ And then she added the haunting question, ‘Do you know what it feels like to have the president of the United States target you?”

The lesson Scott Pelley drew from Clooney’s retelling of the McCarthy-Murrow drama is that we need to speak the truth courageously. Seems right.

Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman were vindicated in the court of law. But their suffering couches the lesson I draw from their experience, namely, that power brokers care much less about the truth than about promoting their own lies. If someone objects, they are bludgeoned with falsehoods.

Woven throughout these lessons is the need to break any uneasy silence. We can seek justice and honor through marches on the street, by way of words on pages, or sermons from the pulpit. We can demonstrate a hundred actions that add up to justice for the poor and protection of the innocent.

But we must never, never, never cower before the bullies. By whatever strategy best suits your gifts or mine – marching in the streets, writing letters to your Congressperson, voting – we need to heed the words of the late Congressman John Lewis: “Speak up, speak out, get in the way. Get in good trouble, necessary trouble, and help redeem the soul of America.”

Amen, John. Amen.

News about "Reform"

The Trump Musk co-presidency is doing so much damage to so many people that the tally of blood, agony and corruption is almost immeasurable. It isn’t being done under cover of darkness. The heartless co-executives are smashing and cutting in broad daylight with no one apparently able to curtail their cruelties.

The obviously false justification for causing such pain is that they are “correcting” the government, “adjusting” the budget and “getting rid of dead weight.” It isn’t true. They’re exercising crude power for their own aims. They lie with a reckless abandon because they can.

How did we get here? It didn’t start with the unholy alliance of Musk and Trump, or even with Trump’s first or second election. For years, we’ve watched media – both traditional and social – grow less and less capable, or willing, to speak truth to power. Instead, media has sold out to what holds an audience’s attention and what chalks up some profit. When billionaire Jeff Bezos purchased The Washington Post, he intended to make money and control reporting, including the report that he was contributing $1 Million to Trump’s inaugural extravaganza. (It’s a paltry sum next to Musk’s $290 Million for Trump’s campaign, the apparent price that can buy a co-presidency.)

The product now called “news” is sold for profit and persuasion, and the persuasion is fueled by dubious or out-right false stories rooted in fear: childhood vaccinations cause autism, there’s a war on Christians and Christmas, DEI is sand-bagging white people, immigrants are mostly rapists and murderers, Ukraine started a war with Russia, Democrats drain the blood of children in a DC pizza joint, and…more. A population fed the steady diet of lies by the media is a population ripe to believe that Trump and Musk are helping America become more American. (Deep breath.)

More than a decade ago Psychology Today showed that what’s driving most modern media’s “news” is a combination of two things: profit, and fear. Here's what I suggest in my forthcoming book, Uneasy Silence:

“The media’s drive for profit outpaces the media’s interest in truth. The goal is profit, and the strategy is persuasive storytelling. Truth is nice but not necessary; the news needs to make money.

…According to the Psychology Today report, fear-based news programming has two aims. The first is to grab attention. In the news media, this is called the “teaser.” The second aim is to persuade the viewer that the solution for reducing fear will be in the news story. Usually, there’s no solution. There’s just a story. If the “news” can hold my attention by keeping me afraid, that’s as good as money in the bank.

…We’ve been treated to years in which lies and immorality sold as well as, if not better than, honesty and honor. What I now know is that the reliability, or “factuality,” of reports depends on who’s controlling the reports. For many newsmakers, if lies could bring a crowd, bring on the lies.”

So here’s the current whopper: We’re told that the Administration is cutting 83% of USAID’s programs. This mainstay of US foreign policy since 1961 will now enjoy what Secretary of State Marco Rubio called an “overdue and historic reform.”

Nicolas Enrich, Acting Assistant Administrator for Global Health at USAID begs to differ. In a confidential internal memorandum, he predicted that one million starving children will lose access to food and nutrition. That’s one million, and counting.

I’ve been looking for the headline that says “Trump Musk Lie, A Million Children Die.” So far, no headlines. Which leaves me once more shocked at the power of a million lies and the ability to knowingly ignore the deaths of a million hungry children.

Bridging the Gap

I didn’t so much boycott President Trump’s Joint Address to Congress as dread it. My expectations were sufficiently low: a campaign-style speech, too long and too full of half-truths and un-truths. My expectations were, unfortunately, about right.

But it set me to wondering what it will take to recognize and slow the torrent of false messaging and divisive strategies that drive wedges between the American people, keeping us separated, gnawing at each other’s ankles before we finish our first morning coffee.

In a few weeks, my new book (Uneasy Silence) will be available. Here’s part of a reflection on that question as framed there:

“We need, as a society, to find a way to bridge the news gap between MSNBC and Fox, and between many of the thousands of voices shouting on social media. Unless we can reach across the divide, we’ll never find a way to talk to one another. I’d like to think that truthfulness will be the basis of trustworthiness. But we have a long way to go. You hold your truth; I hold mine. The battle being waged in both traditional and social media is to win our loyalty that the truth is being told whether it is or not. When nearly half of the nation’s voting adults are willing to accept a torrent of lies in place of honest storytelling, we’re evidently in some trouble.

Perhaps it’s because I served President Gerald R. Ford, who was at once truthful and humble, that I bleed over the lies told by some so-called ”leaders.” I long for the moment in which every news outlet will bring us a single message:

“My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over. Our Constitution works; our great Republic is a government of laws and not of men. Here the people rule….”

It’s a half-century since President Ford took office, and once more we’re struggling to “bind up the internal wounds.”

To stitch us back together, we need to find a way to share a common truth, resist motives of profit and fear, and reach out to people with whom we disagree, sometimes strenuously. But my behavior shows that I’m staying home, close to friends and family whose life views are close to mine.

Reach out to strangers who stormed the Capitol? Listen to someone who votes against my priority? Try some social stitching that’d pull together our divided population? Oh…I don’t know. I’m not confident it’s worth the price in time and emotional energy. So I stay home, as comfortable as I can be, listening to news stories I trust.

I may be part of the problem. I need to become part of the solution. I’ll definitely need your help on this.”

 — Excerpt from my forthcoming book, Uneasy Silence, coming soon wherever online books are sold.