Religion gets some well deserved brickbats in the press. Various religious animosities lead to bloodshed throughout the world. Pedophile priests are not sufficiently or justly reprimanded. Clergy badly misbehave in other ways. It all creates bad press.
Nevertheless, every now and then religion received journalistic kudos.
GOP & DJT: Beware the Ides of March!
On or about the Ides of March, 2019, Robert Mueller may at last complete his lengthy investigation of President Donald J. Trump. It may or may not have a major effect on the growing uproar about the President and his tactics while in office. Only when the report is made public, if it is made public, shall we understand its effects.
The Trump Code
The NFL as a Perpetual Pro-Bowl
I gave up the Pro Bowl because it did not look like football. Having now watched it again, it seemed like a captivating and much less lethal sport. No one would get chronic brain-scrambling disorder if football rules were like Pro Bowl rules. There would be almost no knee ligaments transformed into small frayed strands of crushed cartilage. No Joe Theissmanns would ever have a compound femur fracture before an aghast audience of millions on Monday Night Football (who will ever forget it?).
GrandCHILDREN of God
The Greatest Threat to Democracies
At the turn of this century, there were over seventy democracies scattered throughout the globe, representing a quarter of the world’s people. Now, almost half those nations have either reverted to autocratic government or seem to be quickly headed in that direction. Why? Why would anyone choose autocracy, especially when they have tasted the freedoms of democracy?
Taxing Our Way to Atmospheric Improvement
Every time the price of gasoline goes down, the sales of SUVs and trucks go up. Therefore, in the last few months, crossover trucks (those with four doors and space for six passengers, plus a large flat bed behind) and big SUVs have been selling at a land-office clip. In fact, some of the auto manufacturers have announced they will cease producing certain models of small cars in 2019.
The Population Implosion
Fifty years ago the famous Stanford demographer and futurist Paul Ehrlich published an influential book about rapid population expansion. He called it The Population Bomb. In it he postulated that world population was about to get out of control, and that widespread starvation awaited certain parts of the planet. Other parts would be faced with great political upheavals as result of too many countries having too many residents to be able to govern adequately.
December 7, 2018: Robert Mueller’s Day of Infamy
On the evening news shows of all three of the Big Three cable news networks, December 7, 2018 was a bombshell. On CNN and MSNBC, the commentators referred almost exclusively to what they forecast as the inevitable end of the Trump presidency. On Fox News, however, the talk was all about how the politically motivated Robert Mueller consistently avoids references to the obvious crimes of Hillary Clinton, and that evening Donald Trump was only occasionally mentioned.
A Plague on ALL Their Houses: Cable News Networks as the Primary Political Polarizers
The OLD Philosopher – John M. Miller
It is stated over and over; “America has never had such political polarization as we have now.” However, it isn’t politicians or the political process that primarily have rendered our nation so divided. It is cable news networks which virtually guarantee our national divisiveness.
The three 24/7 networks that are the most responsible for the polarization are, in alphabetical order, CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC. Every hour of the day each of these news organizations has programming which elicits emotional and viscerally responses from viewers on a vast variety of political subjects.
Smaller-audience partial-news networks such as BBC World News, Bloomberg, CNBC, HLN, and NWSMX also contribute to the extremist political views of millions of Americans. But their participation in our polarization is miniscule compared to The Cable Big Three.
Marshall MacLuhan was correct half a century ago when he observed that television is a “hot medium.” It influences the thinking of people more instantaneously than anything else in the media. Intellectually and psychologically, we absorb news differently from television than from any other news medium.
The process of our political separation may have begun years ago when Fox News adopted their “Fair and Balanced” slogan. They were not then nor are they now either fair or balanced. In order to distinguish themselves from perpetually conservative-leaning Fox, liberal-leaning CNN and MSNBC make no serious pretense of being essentially fair or balanced either.
The problem is greatly exacerbated by all three major cable news networks claiming to be broadcasting “news.” They do not. Almost exclusively they broadcast news commentary. Political news is, or ought to be, presented as objectively as possible. By its very nature, news commentary is unavoidably subjective.
The Three make veiled attempts to appear objective. Each day, numerous liberal talking heads from “the other side” are seen on Fox programs, and numerous conservative talking heads from their “other side” are seen on MSNBC and CNN. Nevertheless, it always evident what the news “slant” is.
Should news be slanted? Can’t news just be news? Must news be interpreted by someone in order to be news? Ought not the viewers be encouraged to interpret for themselves what is happening rather than to have a “news show personality” telling them what the news really means?
In order to maintain their viewer numbers, Fox has a programming agenda. It is to maintain their “base,” which is similar if not equal to President’s base. Fox rarely gives Mr. Trump any serious or thoughtful critiques. Their motto seems to be “Donald Trump Yesterday, Today, and Forever.”
In the same way, CNN and MSNBC each want to keep their coteries of viewers, so their commentators regularly attempt to illustrate how the President is engaged in impeachable and/or criminal activities. They seek to wound the President in every conceivable manner. Obviously they also present other news, but their main stock-in-trade has become the undermining of Donald Trump. Thus the national polarization only deepens.
In following their chosen policies, the three major cable news networks have openly declared themselves primarily to be partisans for or against the President. All other news, including whatever Republicans or Democrats in Congress are doing, almost always takes second place. But presumably their chosen course keeps their ratings as high as possible in their particular sector of the news business.
However, is it ethically or epistemologically possible to turn “news” into “the news business?” Is it truly valid, at the deepest level, philosophically to yoke the profit motive to the video production of news?
Obviously if we are to have “news” at all we must have a successful means of delivering it to the populace. Unless news is funneled to the people solely by the government, and at tax-payers expense, no less, somebody has to pay for the funneling. No one in a democracy could opt for that. Thus it is inevitable that a profit, or at least no financial loss, must support the presentation of “the news.”
It is the race for ratings which drives the televised news market, however. For years Fox has outdistanced CNN and MSNBC in the ratings department. Currently there apparently are more self-identified Democrats than Republicans among the American people, but the television ratings agencies do not support that supposition by their ratings. The conservative base remains more steadfastly conservative than does the liberal base.
Roger Ailes shrewdly turned Fox News into a money making monster until he, along with a few other highly placed Foxes, lost their jobs over a variety of similar corporate infractions. Still, Fox forges ahead, as do MSNBC and CNN. Although it is a cutthroat business, the news business thrives, and its news shows still garner vast audiences.
There is a revolving door for numerous politicians and other government employees who appear on the news shows, where they display their political wares. But politicians and government experts are not responsible for the greatest degree of political polarization in the country. That dubious distinction must be placed upon the news shows themselves. Unintentionally, they turn centrists into extremists of the left or right, depending on which networks the viewers choose to watch.
If “news” inevitably results in political polarization, then it is mainly news, as presently portrayed, and neither politicians nor politics, which is the primary problem. Politics and politicians purposefully divide the people as a whole into smaller groups. Nevertheless, when the majority of the people get the majority of their news from cable news networks, they are bound to become polarized, because the news networks themselves are so polarized.
In the past few years, an increasing number of busy, frazzled people have turned to Facebook, Twitter, and other social media for their news. They have convinced themselves they do not have time to watch televised news. However, that choice moves from the supine to the ridiculous. Mentally and psychologically, genuinely comprehensive news reports cannot be contained on very small screens. And objective news coverage has all but ceased to exist on cable news network screens.
Americans should eliminate some of the hours they spend each week watching cable news by spending more of their free hours reading newspapers, magazines, and books. When they do that, they can decide for themselves where their politics rests on the scale from far-right to far-left. They do not need very gifted, intelligent, and astute commentators to tell them where they should stand.
The political center should be very wide, and the far-right and far-left should be very narrow. Inadvertently, “cable news” has shrunk the center and broadened the extremes.
The Montagues and the Capulets were two warring clans in Shakespeare’s powerful tragedy Romeo and Juliet. When speaking to a large crowd of both families gathered in a public space, one of the characters says to them, “A plague on both your houses!” To the Big Three with their deliberately slanted programming, we say, “A plague on all your houses!”
Too many people get too much of their news from the cable news networks. They would be much better off watching the early evening half hour news programs on the traditional Big Three networks, ABC, NBC, and CBS, plus that of the newcomer network, Fox. An even wiser choice might be to include the PBS News Hour, which also is broadcast in the early evening. It might be tempting altogether to forego a daily search for news, but probably that is a dereliction of duty for any citizen. Reading the news is the best option.
As long as the American people stay fixated on cable news, where ratings are paramount to success, the American people shall remain politically polarized. When there are so many good alternative news sources, what a pity that is.
John Miller is Pastor of The Chapel Without Walls on Hilton Head Island, SC. More of his writings may be viewed at www.chapelwithoutwalls.org.
The Price of Political Timidity
Courage was a hallmark in almost none of the midterm elections for United States Senate or House of Representatives seats. Very few candidates proclaimed what they honestly thought or felt about the most important issues facing the American electorate in November of 2018. Office holders in both political parties were loath to admit their personal complicity or that of their particular party in the shameful dysfunction of Congress from January of 2016 to November of 2018. The people deserved to hear ideas about what steps could be followed to overcome this dysfunction, but seldom was heard such a discouraging word.
The End of the War to End All Wars
It was widely called “The Great War” in Britain and the British Empire, both when it was being fought and long after it was over. It was anything but great. It was a colossal disaster whose effects are still with us. Millions of people latched onto a phrase that its termination made “the world safe for democracy.” But in retrospect the war and the calamitous treaty which officially declared it finished slowed the inexorable march toward world democracy for at least three generations. Democracy would have flourished far more widely had neither World Wars I nor II occurred.
Thoughts on the Day of Brett Kavanaugh’s Confirmation
Since the preliminary Senate vote in favor of confirming President Trump’s nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, and then the final vote which made it official, my internal disruptions proceeded from alimentary upset to extreme heaviness of heart. I have truly been very dispirited by this political/judicial process.
Is Clerical Celibacy a Reasonable Ecclesiastical Policy?
Celibacy became officially ratified for all Catholic clergy at the First Lateran Council in 1123.
A powerful but unrealistic conviction was constructed beneath the insistence on clerical celibacy. It was the belief that priests could more effectively perform their clerical duties if they did not have the additional responsibilities required by marriage and family life. In theory that seems logical. In practice it demands a physiological status that is at once both supra-natural and unnatural.
Memory As a Fickle Faculty
Anyway, without looking back into books, newspapers, or magazines of that period, it is impossible for me, and I suspect for anyone else, accurately to reconstruct a clear and valid summary of all the salient facts of one of our nation’s most emotional and damaging political controversies. Though I do not remember it, I am quite sure that early on, Joseph McCarthy caused Republicans to circle their wagons in their best defensive mode. By the end, however, only absolute diehards still sided with McCarthy. Though this has long since faded from memory, I suspect even Dad had given up on him.
An Analysis of Donald Trump
Why are not all historically conservative-Republican publications following the lead of the WSJ? Apparently it is because they are still attempting to appeal to the Trump base. They are still convinced the very untraditional newly-formed legions of anti-politics Trump fans, plus traditional Republicans who will back any Republican President, no matter how unorthodox, represent the wave of the future.
It is Trump’s very unorthodoxy which the Journal has opposed from 2016, before, and since. The Dow Jones mouthpiece knows he is severely damaging traditional Republican values and positions, and that his erratic behavior and decisions are a clear and present danger to the GOP.
Ethnicity, Demography, and Immigration
Most of earth’s human inhabitants are somewhere between being either profoundly conservative or profoundly liberal in their thinking about ethnicity, demography, and immigration. Some are vitally interested in their own personal ethnic backgrounds, and others are not. Some are threatened by demographical changes, and others are not. Some resist the very idea of immigrants, and others do not.
The American Idolatry of the Founding Fathers
Two articles on the second page of the July Fourth edition of The Island Packet and the re-printing of the Declaration of Independence on the editorial page prompted this essay to be written on Independence Day in 2018. The first was a story about what the President legally and constitutionally can and cannot do with respect to the Mueller investigation regarding Russian interference in the 2016 election. The second was how difficult it has become for Prof. Alan Dershowitz to live among his liberal neighbors on Martha’s Vineyard for the summer. He has insisted that constitutionally the President can pardon anyone he wants, including the President himself, should things get too dicey for him in the Russia investigation.
The Psychology of Salespeople: An Analysis of Donald J. Trump
Personality disorders are encountered in people all around us, but they are very difficult to pin down with precision. Most professional psychologists say that a personality disorder is not necessarily a sign of insanity. The President’s sanity as such is not at issue here. Instead, the concern is the nature of his highly singular personality.
21st Century Populists Are 20th Century Fascists Without the Uniforms
Fascism occurs when a gifted leader convinces a group of disaffected people to rally around his leadership. A few people cannot make big things happen, but many people, united by the leader, can become an overpowering force in a nation or society. All that is necessary is for many individual slender sticks (people) to form the bundle (fascio) who, together, become a powerful weapon (axe) in the hands of The Leader. In the twentieth century, various fascist leaders were known as El Lider, El Caudillo, Der Fuehrer, or Il Duce.