The Arts, the Cold War, and Cultural Investing

         The Arts, the Cold War, and Cultural Investing

               Published in Marietta Daily Journal March 19, 2017

            State school superintendent Richard Woods recently received national recognition for promoting the arts in Georgia’s schools.  Perhaps he believes, as many others do, that the arts carry us out of ourselves: to dream dreams, to learn to look at things from a perspective different from our own.

            One musical artist who dreamed dreams that took him behind the Iron Curtain was the famous pianist, Van Cliburn.  I never met Van Cliburn, but I knew and admired his doting uncle.  The uncle, L.E. Cliburn, was an education professor at East Central Jr. College in little Decatur, Mississippi.  All teacher wannabe’s were required to take Introduction to Education, taught only by Dr. Cliburn.

            If you took Dr. Cliburn’s class, you learned about Van Cliburn.  To illustrate what he called “the art of teaching and the art of life,” Cliburn skillfully wove into his lectures occasional stories about his nephew’s life and work.

            The year was 1963. Cliburn the elder frequently related how his talented nephew developed his art and how “he gave it away freely.”

            “Teachers must do the same,” Cliburn urged, “because you will be just as much an artist as Van is.”

              Perhaps because my father subscribed to four newspapers, I already knew that just five years earlier in 1958, the lanky Texan, Van Cliburn, had traveled to Moscow for a piano competition at age 23.  There he won the First Piano Prize of the Tchaikovsky Competition.  Within weeks, Van Cliburn was internationally known.

            Adoring Russians called him Von Kleeberrn.  According to biographer Abram Chasins, citizens of Kilgore, Texas knew him as the lad who “shot through Kilgore High School in only three years,” and who, as a Baptist boy, “always tithed whatever prize money he earned from his competitions.”  (Cliburn doubled his tithe to Calvary Baptist Church in Manhattan once he became well-heeled and famous.)

             For half a century, L.E. Cliburn and his nephew have perched on my shoulder, whispering to me certain life principles and posing questions, some of which I have found answers for, some not.

            The principles have all dealt with the importance of hard work, the pursuit of excellence, and the development of one’s gifts.  Playing the piano so well that the world applauds you is, I suppose, a lofty gift.  But the ability and willingness to smile and encourage those around you is a lofty gift as well.  Van Cliburn’s uncle said so.

            “Be authentic,” they both have whispered, “and humble.”  Despite concerts all over the world, despite being told by statesmen around the world that his magical music would end the Cold War, Van Cliburn remained Texas folksy and humble.  Unlike so many self-absorbed celebrities of today, he remembered his roots, namely his mother who at his own insistence was his only music teacher until after high school when he headed off to Julliard School of Music, and his father, an unassuming purchasing agent for a local oil company. 

            As for the questions, what should be the place of the arts in a school curriculum and in our federal government’s budget?  Are the arts worth an investment?  I’m persuaded that the arts are a civilizing influence.  Much is made, rightly, of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education.  These disciplines have fed our bodies and our minds.

            Yet, because I have watched the arts serve as a gateway for students to enter the joy of learning in general, I’m persuaded we must guard and transmit both the arts and the humanities which in L.E. Cliburn’s words, “feed the starving soul.”

            But should the federal government (through its National Endowment for the Arts) give millions each year to arts programs?  Columnist George Will says government has no more business giving money to the arts than it has to rodeo.  He cites government-funded works of art that denigrate certain religions and people of faith.  Like Will, I also don’t care for taxpayer-funded demented art.

            Nobody, however, can argue that we have over-emphasized the arts.   In the fifties and sixties while American teenagers were swooning over Chubby Checker, Russian youths were clamoring for Van Cliburn.  That’s something to think about: Chubby Checker’s “Come on Baby, Let’s Do the Twist,” versus Van Cliburn’s “Claire de Lune.”

            YouTube Van Cliburn.  See Khrushchev smiling approvingly.  Ponder whether or not the lanky Texan’s Russian connection cooled the hot words of the Cold War.  (The Soviets did let the American pianist in.)  Ponder what our investment should be.  Consider whether or not we should continue to abandon all things classical – at school, at church, and everywhere else.

Roger Hines

3/15/17

A Few Questions about the State of American Culture

                A Few Questions about the State of American Culture

                Published in Marietta Daily Journal March 12, 2017

            Government.    Was Jefferson right when he said, “That government is best which governs least”?  Was Reagan right when he said, “Government isn’t the solution.  Government is the problem”? 

            Are we more likely to be governed better by people close to us than by people far away?    Are there at least 2 or 3 federal departments and scores of agencies we could get rid of?  Is a 26-year-old too old to be covered by his or her parents’ insurance?

            Education.  Can a child learn to read with just a reading teacher and only a few materials? Can teenagers do well in a high school that doesn’t look like the Taj Mahal?   Is teaching a human activity, as opposed to a completely objectifiable or quantifiable one?  Has our testing mania negatively affected learning’s human dimension (encouragement, inspiration, joy, human interaction)?  Has it made test scores our primary objective? 

            Politics.  Did Donald Trump win the presidential election?  Did Democrats lose?  Does President Trump appear to be pursuing what he campaigned on?  With the exception of the People’s Republic of California, would every state turn out thousands for a Trump rally any day of the week?  Could serious social chaos result if losers resist the will of the people and continue to take to the streets?  Is there a breaking point at which conservatives would also hit the streets, causing things to get ugly?

            The media.  Is it true that the U.S. Constitution provides for a free press but not a privileged press?  Shouldn’t the media be held to account just as much as anyone else?  Has slant poisoned real news to the point of its near demise?  Has the media ignored the Trump-influenced surge in just about everybody’s stock portfolio, opting to cram the unsubstantiated Russian scare down our throats daily? 

            Sex and the Society.  Does everybody on the planet have a mother and father?  If so, doesn’t this fact provide an unquestionable nature-based model, a prototype, on which the broader society should be structured?  In other words aren’t a mother, a father, and a child a little unit of society, indeed a little unit of government in which and for which some reasonable rules must be established and followed?  Are rules and self-restraint still the price we pay for civilization?  Is it possible that legalizing so-called homosexual marriage plus all of the emphasis on transgenderism is confusing otherwise well-adjusted children or teens, causing them to wonder what the truth about sexuality really is?

            If it’s “insensitive” to say that homosexuality is rebellion against nature, should we at least be allowed to say that it is an aberration or that in sexual matters we have normalized the marginal?  Has the LGBT lobby become hyper-intolerant?  Do they not claim that one is hateful just because he opposes homosexuality?  If Heather has two mommies, wouldn’t the optimum for her, given nature’s original model, be her mommy and daddy?   Aren’t male and female differences wondrous and do they not complement each other?

            Entertainment.  Is comedy serious business?  Is making fun of something one of the best ways to undermine it?  Are Hollywood celebrities far less knowledgeable of politics and public policy than they think they are?  Is Disney still moving further and further away from wholesome family entertainment?  Does nudity and crude language in movies and on television matter?  Is porn harmful to young and older men alike?  Have parents and community and political leaders stopped caring that porn is now ubiquitous, grabbing young boys (in their homes) at the very outset of puberty?

            Corporate America.  Is corporate America ironically leaning left?  Have many non-practicing capitalists like myself written and spoken in defense of capitalism and corporations only to have their CEO’s turn on us, their customers and defenders, to fawn over the LGBT lobby?  Are corporations crazy to curry the favor of those who consider the word “corporation” a symbol for evil?  Are Chambers of Commerce complicit in dismissing the social issues because their only concern is the dollar?

            Is it possible that America can ever again have some shared values and cease normalizing the marginal?

            Just asking.  And my own answer is yes for every question, even the last one.  But an effectual yes for the last question will require that traditionalists make some noise, light up some phones, attend some meetings, and write some emails.  Otherwise, oppressive government and cultural hedonism will continue their romp, all because of our own disengagement.

Roger Hines

3/8/17

Catholic Capitalists and a Baptist Debtor

                             Catholic Capitalists and a Baptist Debtor

                Published in Marietta Daily Journal March 5. 2017

            I am indebted to two Catholics who have taught me much about the American way of life and who have given me an example of how to stand firm even if you must stand alone.  It all started in my childhood.

            When I was eleven, a small Catholic church was built on the east edge of town on U.S. Highway 80.  In Forest, Mississippi there were at the time five churches: two Baptist, one Methodist, one Presbyterian, and one Assembly of God.

            The word ecumenical certainly wasn’t in my vocabulary, but ecumenical we were, if only once a year.  When revival time came, normally at mid-summer, the churches all visited each other.  “Revival” had both a functional and a spiritual meaning.  Functionally it was a week of evening preaching services from Sunday through Friday.  Ordinarily the week’s preacher was an evangelist or a pastor from far off.  Spiritually it was a time for concentration on renewal, rededication, and bringing the faithless to faith.     

In terms of decibels, the Assembly of God, pastored by the brilliantly red-headed Sister Robinson, was the loudest.  The Presbyterians were, without question, the quietest.  In fact, the Presbyterians were deathly quiet, but their quiet was penetrating and meaningful.  It taught me that quiet can often afford self-examination in a way noise cannot.

            The Baptists and Methodists were somewhere in the middle on the decibel scale, although we could get down and loud with those wondrous hymns that are now so disrespectfully ignored.  Speaking of ecumenicalism, had it not been for Charles Wesley, that great hymn-writing Methodist, we Baptists would have had very little to sing.

            I don’t know if  Catholics would have joined us or not, but I remember the effect that the new little Catholic church had on a school bus full of energetic children and teenagers.  When St, Michael’s building was finished and a sign was placed near the highway, we realized that “the Catholics” had come to our area.  Set back into thin woods, the chapel-like structure bespoke as much quietness as the Presbyterians.

            Every morning as the school bus approached and began to pass by the new church, everyone grew absolutely silent.  Those on the church side of the bus pressed their noses to the window and stared.  Those on the opposite side of the bus stood up, leaned over toward the church side, and stared in silence as well.  As soon as the church was out of sight, the bus became noisy again.

            This pattern continued for at least two weeks until we finally got used to the church, or more precisely, to the word “Catholic.”

            A few years later, because of a deep interest in politics, I became more acquainted with Catholicism.  At age 16 I saw my first copy of National Review magazine and became a fan of its Catholic editor and columnist, William F. Buckley.  Buckley was not ashamed of his faith.  Having written “God and Man at Yale” while in college wherein he charged Yale professors with being committed anti-capitalists, Buckley never minimized his faith, never gave up on his church, and never viewed politics and faith or science and faith as being mutually exclusive.  Buckley became my teacher.

            A Catholic I admire just as much is the recently departed Michael Novak.  Novak was a theologian, professor, and Democratic speech writer who took a philosophical turn in his 40’s from leftist to staunch defender of capitalism.  “Capitalism has its flaws,” he wrote, “but all other known systems of political economy are worse.”

            With a deep concern for the poor and for immigrants like his Slovak parents, Novak in his “Spirit of Democratic Capitalism,” wrote,” Any hope we have for alleviating poverty and tyranny lies in the much despised system of capitalism.”

            Faulting his own party for not defending the working class, Novak wrote, “If America is going to come apart into those who went to college and those who didn’t, I want to be with those who didn’t, those who don’t want their kids taking acid, sleeping around, or having abortions.”

            It is rare for a Catholic theologian who trained for the priesthood to be a defender of capitalism.  It is even rarer for such a defender to be avid about it and to write, “Socialism is the residue of Judeo-Christian faith without religion.”

            As for St. Michael’s on U.S. Highway 80 that made me start wondering what a Catholic was, it’s still there, sitting pretty.  I hope the school bus route still takes youngsters by the church.  It might lead them to wonder and learn as it did me.

Roger Hines

3/2/17

The United States of Booze

                        The United States of Booze

                         Published in Marietta Daily Journal Feb. 26, 2017

            The reason my father hated alcohol was that his father and only brother loved it.  One reason I hate it is that so many students I’ve taught loved it also.

            My father didn’t like what alcohol led to when his father and brother consumed it.  I never liked what it led to when high school and college students consumed it.  Memories of the deaths of students killed by alcohol on Saturday nights still plague my mind.  What a waste!  What a senseless thing for a nation to have such an intense love affair with a commodity that kills, maims, and destroys.

The ads tell us to drink in moderation.   There’s one thing for sure: there’s no such thing as moderate death.  Dead is dead.  A lost limb is a lost limb.  

            Alcohol-related statistics don’t seem to bother Americans.  We label alcohol an “adult beverage,” pretending our kids understand that they shouldn’t drink until they are of age.  Ha!

            Yes, we love our alcohol.  Gotta have it after work.  Gotta have it in our hands as we stroll around at parties.  Gotta stock it in our homes because it would offend our guests if they weren’t offered wine. 

            Georgia has had at least two governors who didn’t like alcohol.  At a political gathering over a decade ago I told Governor Joe Frank Harris that I appreciated his stand on drinking.  He replied that the only people who ever brought it up were reporters.

            The governor recounted an exchange with a reporter who asked, “When you’re traveling abroad seeking industry for Georgia, don’t you think you should respect your hosts and drink with them?”  Governor Harris said he replied, “Don’t you think any host I visit should respect me if I choose not to drink?”

            At another event, my wife quietly said to First Lady Mary Perdue, wife of Governor Sonny Perdue, “I appreciate the fact that you don’t serve alcohol.”  The First Lady’s reply was, “We don’t serve it in our permanent home, so we don’t think we should serve it in our temporary home.”

 Most public officials simply don’t hold such convictions.  A close political friend said to me once, “If anyone can’t be moderate about their drinking, that’s their problem.”  True, at least until the immoderate drinker gets on the highway.  Then it’s everybody’s problem, including those who preach moderation.

            But Jesus performed his first miracle by turning water into wine.  Yes, and my Italian sister-in-law was appalled when she came to America and observed what we call “drinking.”  In America she saw drinking and drag racing mixed on a flat stretch of road in front of our house.  She frowned to learn about drunkenness and its resulting carnage.

             In her faltering English she declared, “In Trieste, we no do this.  Wine be like water.”  Perhaps ancient Israel’s wine was more like Italy’s than America’s.  If Antonia were still living, she would be aghast that in 2013 over 290,000 “Amedicans” were severely injured by drunk driving crashes.

America is awash in booze.  We’re now even making it at college.  My wife’s alma mater, Middle Tennessee State University, is one of many colleges that now offer a degree in Fermentation Science.  Wonder how many millions the brewing industry is contributing to the university now. 

Located in Murfreesboro about halfway between Jack Daniels country and Nashville (the Baptist Vatican), MTSU has no problem teaching fermentation to undergraduate students who are too young to sample their fermented products legally in Tennessee.    

Oh, I forgot.  In 2016 the Tennessee legislature passed a law allowing college juniors and seniors under 21 to taste the fermented product they created as part of their coursework. Students can’t swallow, though. 

 Dear Lord!  What a message this sends.  Teach students to make a product that they can’t consume.  Sounds like an admission of alcohol’s danger, to me.  Just what we need.  Less emphasis on mathematics, language, history, and pure science and more on producing liquor.  Smoking is bad, bad.  Producing alcohol at college is good.

            According to a 2014 Center for Disease Control report, just over 88,000 deaths each year are traced to alcohol use.  I suppose that out of 321 million people, that’s a moderate number we can accept.  Moderate drinking, moderate number of deaths.  No problem, except the grieving families who lost a loved one.        

So drink up, America.  Just be moderate.  But watch out for the immoderate ones, especially on Saturday nights.  And pray that your kids and grandkids will do the same.  But expect the typical results, because your moderation is not working.

Roger Hines

February 22, 2017

Religious Liberty without Religious Literacy?

   Religious Liberty without Religious Literacy?

                          Published in Marietta Daily Journal Feb. 19, 2017

            If literacy is a pre-requisite for liberty, westerners everywhere – particularly Christians – should be reminded that 2017 is the 500th anniversary of the Reformation.

            In fact, at the time this column was begun earlier this week, we were 258 days, 5 hours, 20 minutes, and 16 seconds from the anniversary of Martin Luther’s stand at the Diet of Worms on October 31, 1517.

 “I cannot do otherwise. Here I stand,” Luther declared as he stood before an angry council that was prepared to excommunicate him for posting his 95 theses on the door of Castle Church in Wittenberg.  Luther’s posting called into question particular beliefs and practices of the Roman Catholic Church.

            For those who dozed during 10^th grade World History or college Western Civilization, the Reformation wasn’t just another event in church history.  Luther’s action shook the European continent and would later affect the very origins of America.  In time it diminished a powerful, religious-social-political institution and grew a vastly different one.

            Without a deep forest of historical detail, suffice it to say that a German monk arrived at a conclusion which he was compelled by conscience to reveal.  From his own reading of Scripture he was persuaded that the Bible alone, not the church, was the guide for doctrine. 

Since the Roman Catholic Church was both the religious and political authority, Luther was treading dangerous ground.  No longer the sect persecuted by emperors for 400 years, Christianity in 1517 was the Way, the Truth, the Life, and the Empire.  From Constantine (337 A.D.) on, most emperors had Christian sympathies.  Long before Luther’s day, the Roman Catholic Church was indeed catholic (pervasive) and also very Roman, that is to say, powerful and authoritative.  It was a state church.

Into this secular-religious milieu came the first protestant, or the first protestant to shake the existing system so profoundly.  Soon thereafter, European kings, who owed their allegiance to the Pope, began to break with Rome, the most notable being Henry VIII of England.  Protestantism, born of protest, was spreading.

And why should modern working people whose days are spent laboring to pay bills know about Martin Luther? Because literacy aids liberty and a better life. Because knowledge of courageous people who turned history around can inspire those who think they are trapped.  Knowing about unlikely heroes can encourage us to be heroic.

No elite, Luther was an unlikely hero or reformer.  Unlike his fellow reformer John Calvin whose view of God matched his dictatorial, iron-fisted rule over Geneva, Luther was an humble scholar.

   Because of Luther’s stand, the Christian world today is made up of Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox believers.  Catholics still have a pope, Orthodox Christians still honor their icons, and Protestants still splinter off as quickly as one can say “church conference.”  But this is freedom and Luther birthed it.

If America isn’t a Christian nation, she is, as Supreme Court Justice William O. Justice observed, “a religious people.”  But according to a 2010 Pew poll, we are religiously ignorant. Particularly is Christian literacy in decline.  Only 46 percent of Americans know that Martin Luther initiated the Reformation.  Roughly 45 percent of Catholics don’t know that their church teaches that the bread and wine in the sacrament of the Eucharist have been transformed into the actual body of Christ.  Interestingly enough, 62 percent of Americans know that Hinduism is India’s majority religion.

Like once-Christian Europe, America has a case of cultural amnesia.  I suspect the growth of “nones” in Europe and America indicates forgetfulness as much as it does intellectual or religious choice.  If “faith cometh by hearing … ,” and children and youth don’t hear, then the chain of history (of cultural, religious memory, actually) is broken.  How shall they know of Martin Luther without a parent, teacher, or preacher to tell them?  Individuals and nations forget.

Happily, the schism brought about by Luther didn’t produce total separation.  Where would the pro-life movement be without Catholics and evangelicals working together?  How much more intense would America’s sexual chaos be without Catholics and evangelicals opposing it?  If two houses agree on traditional values, they agree on what should be valued.  Luther would be pleased with that agreement.    

We all need to know how freedom was born and how tyranny is best fought.  Come October, even Pope Francis will be commemorating the German monk who took a stand and changed the world.  In so doing, the good pope will be advancing religious literacy and religious liberty as well.

Roger Hines

2/15/17

Death by Communication

                                          Death by Communication

                           Published in Marietta Daily Journal Feb. 12, 2017

            Anyone who decries money or says it is evil has never been without it.  The same is true of technology.  Even so, as the old saying goes, “there is such a thing as too much of a good thing.”  With technology, we are just about to reach that point.

            Don’t think you’re about to read a rant against technology and a cry for the good old days when times were bad.  Having grown up without running water, with a single fireplace being the only source of heat, and with a much loved radio being the only connection to the outside world, I consider technology a wondrous thing.

            However, for all its wonders and utility, pervasive technology is producing certain effects that need to be considered.

  Today technological devices are creating pseudo-communication, and pseudo-communication is killing genuine communication.  It’s also affecting families negatively and decreasing the concentration skills of children and teens alike.  Technology has absolutely seduced the field of education.  How many schools are using technology because their little charges are drawn to it, not because of its lasting educational effect?

            Genuine communication is not always verbal, but whatever form it takes, it does require attentiveness.  Attentiveness requires – whether we like it or not, and most of us don’t – some listening, consideration of others, and Heaven forbid, some pause.

            These three requirements are not exactly what technology fosters or inspires.  Instead, technology feeds our immature demand for immediacy.  We want it and we want it yesterday.

            Surely the most reliable and fruitful communication is eyeball to eyeball, but since we can’t always be present with the one with whom we’re communicating, we should be grateful for all the technological advances that at least allow second-hand communication.

            But oh, how we abuse it.  No, strike that.  Oh, how we abuse others (usually those we love most) by misusing our technological devices.

            How often in restaurants do we see Dad and kids frantically thumbing their smart phones, either to chat or play a game while Mom sits amongst them in a separate, lonely world?  And why is it that so often Mom is the odd one?  Moms have smart phones too.  They know about and embrace technology’s wonders.  It may be that Mom desires something else for her family during dinner besides all the “connecting.”

                        Believe it or not, there are signs that our love affair with technology is cooling.  Silicon Valley still has its grip on us, what with music from the cloud, keeping our Do-List on a battery-powered device, and reading online, but according to David Sax, author of “The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter,” humans are beginning to rage against the machine.

            Sax points to these developments: sales of paper notebooks and board games have grown for a decade; Amazon is now opening the very brick-and-mortar stores it set out to displace; nostalgia is setting in among baby boomers who are backing away from technology; and (sit down for this one) millennials are being drawn to the “raw utility” of pre-technology tools such as (don’t get up yet) the notebook.

            Sax’s explanation and conclusion is that while opting for less-modern technology is surprising and might not make sense, more people of all ages are seeing that ”humans aren’t machines but are complex creatures of emotion whose human experience is still a reliable platform from which to solve problems, no matter how many technological platforms we embrace.”

            In December of 2015 the Journal of the American Medical Association published a study showing that electronic toys and excessive screen time have become hindrances to children’s verbal development.  Here and there college professors are banning laptops in their classrooms.  “Students aren’t taking notes, they’re streaming hockey games,” says Stuart Green, professor at Rutgers Law School.

            But wouldn’t you know it!  If this slight retreat from technology produces withdrawal symptoms, just strap the Muse Headband on your head, let it measure your brain-wave activity, and it will provide you with the “calm state” you need.  Is it ocean roar you need?  Chirping birds?  Falling rain?  Then escape your technology by plugging in to “meditative technology.”  (Is this crazy? Is it meditation?)

            In spite of Sax’s findings, I’m afraid human presence, the mother’s milk of all human communication, is eroding.  We are turning from depth to lateral “connection,” from communion to pseudo-communication, from human touch to the tapping of keys.

            I for one want to yell, “Stop it! Talk to somebody!  Do not go gentle into the murkiness of pseudo-communication! Resist it!  Never let a screen or a headphone become your master!”

Roger Hines

2/8/17 

Beware the Talkers

                                                    Beware the Talkers

                    Published in Marietta Daily Journal Feb. 5, 2017

            Talkers are all around us; professional talkers, I mean. It’s wise to consider just how much influence and power they have. 

            Professional talkers have the power to woo and impress the uninformed and unthinking. Spiffy looking and seemingly educated, they can lead low information voters into whatever opinion or perspective they wish.

            And just who are they?  They are America’s television “news” media, the chattering class of “reporters” and commentators who are blending news and opinion so thoroughly that reliable, non-print news is almost non-existent.

For instance, can anyone who watches network or cable television news deny that the majority of the news anchors and commentators are all out to get President Trump’s head?  Were they equally engaged in having President Obama’s head?

            Chuck Todd of NBC, George Stephanopoulos of ABC (a former Bill Clinton operative), Chris Cuomo of CNN (son of former New York Democratic governor Mario Cuomo), and Chris Matthews of MSNBC (former staff member of Democratic Speaker Tip O’Neil) are but a scant few of the many whose bile is poured out daily on the person – not just the policies – of President Trump.

  Their loathing for the President is writ large on their faces.  They view him as an unsavory interloper who is threatening their kingdom and who needs to be told how to do his job.

            However, for the first time in my life we have a president who ain’t gonna take it.  Donald Trump got into the game of politics knowing from prior business experience that he had better beware of the talkers.  His tact (and his nature) has been to give as good as he gets.  Trump has “shuffled America’s ideological deck,” as the Wall Street Journal recently put it, thereby confusing the chattering class.  How do you figure out a guy whose vice-president is a traditional, ideological conservative and whose Secretary of State has shown he knows how to take advantage, legally, of big government for the good of his business?

            President Trump is jerking the media around and they hardly realize it.  They characterize him as moving from one crisis to another while he’s actually distracting them by moving from one action to another, actions which he promised during his race that he would take.  Claiming that Mr. Trump’s presidency is in chaos, it is they who are in chaos.

            The most ironic thing about the situation is that America’s left, for whom the media are heralds, helped create Donald Trump.  How could the left and their heralds not be aware of the populist movements around the world?  How could populism go mainstream without their seeing it?   How could the American media be so out of tune to Europe’s growing opposition to immigration and globalism?

            Populism’s motto is “a pox on both your houses,” and both houses (national parties) are fast catching on.  The media, however, is slow.  Fast talking, but slow to see and understand the rising tide of the working class so ignored by Hillary Clinton.    

The chattering class is still in shock.  They didn’t even know Joe Lunchbox was alive and kicking, much less voting.  It slipped them that “borders” and “America First” are not considered ugly words by the working class, that the upper Midwest was up for grabs, and that the West’s Judeo-Christian ethic is not a relic of the Dark Ages after all.

            Because of the chattering class’ anger, President Trump will have to be and will be on his toes.  He is the target of people who are losing their power.  They will resort to smear. They are being dominated at every turn, however, by a President who is always on offense.  The media has never before had to play defense.

            In a much neglected 1972 case (Branzburg vs. Hayes), the Supreme Court rejected the argument of special privilege for the media.  The brilliant Justice Byron White, writing for the majority, argued that newsmen do not have privileges that other citizens do not enjoy. Enter bloggers, independent (meaning unknown) news organizations, and of course tweeters of which the President is one.  Now we see why media elites are mad.  At press conferences, the President’s press secretary seats little guys and gals along with the mainstream big shots.

            The President is effectively driving a wedge between the talkers and their viewers. Portrayed as the bringer of darkness, he is actually shedding light on who and what the talkers really are: media stars bedazzled by their own self-importance.

Roger Hines

2/1/17