And why I don’t trust the establishment media, or the Orange Felon
It was the weekend before Easter, and 36,000 people gathered in front of the citadel of power, in downtown Los Angeles, to protest the American oligarchy that has taken over our government. Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez came to preach the message of resistance, and change and hope. The crowd, thirsty for that ray of hope, lent to a festival-like atmosphere against a backdrop of daily dread-scrolling for peace through the daily news cycle. But there’s no peace in Gaza, none in Ukraine, a roller coaster of tariffs and trade war, the abduction and rendition of people off our streets to a gulag in El Salvador, and then like a cherry on top, the administration ignores theUS Supreme Court and its 9-0 decision telling the Orange Felon in the Oval Office, “No.”
This is what American fascism looks like: when ICE agents show up at our schools to apprehend children without notification to their parents, when our universities are threatened financially because of student protests. When the president silences the news media with threats when they dare to ask uncomfortable questions.
The establishment news media deserve only so much sympathy, given that in too many cases, when it has been bullied and threatened, it has chosen self-censorship out of fear of financial losses. CBS News Magazine’s 60 Minutes is being sued by the Orange Felon because of the way they edited the interview with Vice President Kamala Harris in the last election. Were they supposed to run the final edit past him before it aired? This is absolutely ludicrous, as he turned down the invitation for the same kind of segment, but no, he didn’t trust them. “They are fake news!” he said.
The problem with most establishment press is that they have lost their way of reporting the news people really need. They are chasing ratings with infotainment, not so real “reality TV” shows, lots of weather reports, spectacle, and sports. Where’s the next Edward R. Murrow when we need him?
On the very night of the Sanders/AOC “Fight the Oligarchy” rally, none of the evening news stations carried any mention that the biggest event in LA had happened, or even why it was happening, or what was said! It wasn’t until the next morning that KTLA news reported that Sanders had shown up at the Coachella Music and Arts festival and warned the young people, “This country faces some very difficult challenges. The future of what happens to America is dependent upon your generation,” he announced. “You can turn away and ignore what goes on, but if you do, you do it at your own peril.”
There was no report of Sanders’ list of grievances against the Oval Office’s lies and deceit. In the following Monday edition of the LA Times, a rather clueless pair of reporters barely scratched the surface of the growing list of anti-democratic actions the Orange leader has taken in just the first 100 days in office. This kind of self-silencing is like a virus that chills free speech and the freedom of the press, all out of fear of reprisals. It takes guts to stand up and speak truth to power, and the more insanely brutish the power is, the more courage it takes. And it doesn’t encourage such when the Times publisher Patrick Soon-Shiong himself along with some others are intimidated, if not willing collaborators.
Not very many of the pretty faces on TV news were trained for this. Occasionally, there’s a lone CNN reporter who asks the obvious but impertinent questions, like the one who questioned the illegally deported man before being verbally attacked by the Orange Felon himself in the middle of a news conference. Does he have no decency?
It would seem to this reporter that nearly every day, with every new executive order, he is breaking his oath of office, which, if the Republican majority in Congress had any spine, would be grounds for his third and final impeachment. Would the Democrats do more if they regained the majority? Would a bi-partisan Senate actually vote to convict this time, realizing the courts couldn’t do the job of putting him away?
We are told that it’s up to us to resist, as the last line of defense of the Constitution but how many of us actually would? Every time I hear the Orange Felon say that the “radical Democrats” want to do such and such, my hands tighten, and I want to scream. This idiot is trying to turn back the clock 100 years to when workers didn’t have a right to organize; when there were fewer civil rights; when there were no child labor laws; when public schools were few; and when the wealthy ruled America with impunity. He has turned DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) and CRT (Critical Race Theory) into bad words and twisted their meanings and then made scapegoats out of transgendered or undocumented immigrants.
All of this wrapped up in the pretense of the American flag and a kind of bigoted religious idolatry that even Jesus Christ would denounce. And while we are on the topic of religion, and this is Easter and Passover, it may be time to reclaim the revolutionary Jesus. Roman imperialism crucified him for his courage and his revolutionary act of defiance for showing the people a liberatory path. His resurrection is his people’s hope (he was a Palestinian Jew)― rising against oppression, from Palestine to the US-Mexico border.
If there actually is a second coming of Christ today, he’d probably end up in an ICE prison (if not in Panama) and be prosecuted and persecuted for exactly the same principles he died for the first time. And the Orange Felon would play the role of a modern-day Pontius Pilate. Something to meditate on, whether you pray or not, this week.