Some are born great. Some have greatness thrust upon them. Donald J. Trump is a dipshit.
Nonetheless, his dippiness (or shittiness, if you will) has exposed the lie at the core of our political and economic system-- and I would go so far as to say the hierarchical structure of our society. By ignoring Congressional subpoenas and lying to Congress, and continuing to violate the emoluments clause, among many other well documented and widely known repeated transgressions, the Trump administration behaves as we expect it would; namely in its own interest to the exclusion of any other constitutional responsibility*. The exposure comes in the response to Trump's dereliction by the legislative branch, and especially in the way most visible to the public, by the elite class of journalists, pundits, commentators and scholars in the journals, publications and broadcasts through which they speak to each other and permit us to overhear them on the topic of what to do about it. At this writing, Nancy Pelosi, in her typical courageous fashion, is opposed to handling Trump's contempt of Congress other than in the court of public opinion that will be next year's presidential election, in effect shunting the responsibility to the electorate.
On Fox, the trouble is of course reported to begin and end with the Democrats. Elsewhere on cable and network news shows, the uncooperativeness and insubordination of the Trump administration has thrown our punditry into a tizzy. Our most prominent, pre-eminent and serious journalistic organs of the elite class have long taken the position that the notion of consequences of any severity for the misdeeds of our CEOs and political leaders is far worse than any of their demonstrable crimes. The perpetrators of the crimes and misbehaviors that led to the global financial crisis of 2008 went largely rewarded for their transgressions by our establishment to the cheers and encouragement of our media and media-feeding think tanks. Those who lied and fudged and bullied our way into Vietnam and into the misbegotten misadventures of Iraq and Afghanistan that continue to this day (not to mention the many other various spots around the world into which we habitually intervene), now constitute the ranks of elder statesmen.
But Trump takes the concept of serious punditry to another level. The fact that there is disagreement about whether to impeach or not on the left of right-of-center is a symptom of the novelty of this chaos. If the president has committed crimes, obstructed justice, lied and been derelict in the execution of his office, then if we still have a democratic republic, he should be taken to task. But the very act of impeaching him threatens to expose the looseness with which our elite interpret the seriousness of their duties. When the executive plays along, it's easier for our elites to pretend for our benefit that the constitution that enchains us is the word of god for all of them as well-- a fundamental tenet of our American ethos. With Trump it's suddenly clear that when it comes to our ruling class, our laws and institutions are really nothing more than guideposts and suggestions. That's just setting a bad example for the rest of us. If the media hadn't been so effective in garnering our attention since the start of this circus in 2015-- enriching themselves in the process-- they would not be in this fix. Nancy Pelosi's strategy of biding time until 2020 would have been prudent and effective. It's not working this time and they know it and they don't know what to do about it.
The veil behind which the elite conduct their lives (and ours) has been fraying quite a bit this year. The way in which the media have responded to Trump's indifference to keeping up appearances of protocol and propriety is the same way that the college admissions scandal is a bit too obviously less about the misconduct of some naughty tv stars than about the corruption of a class that has the means to purchase the privilege and credentials of acceptance for their young above and beyond the advantages of their education and upbringing. Just as Trump's shoddy attention to maintaining a façade of pomp and circumstance threatens the maintenance of the illusion for whoever follows him in that office, so is the story of the fall of Elizabeth Holmes at Theranos less certainly about her own fraud than it is about the fraudulence of those who were eager to promote her as an exemplar of American entrepreneurship (Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger, George Schulz, Forbes Magazine and Harvard University among many others), heedless of -- come to think of it-- how perfectly exemplary her story actually is. As pitiful as the charade appeared, what choice did the media have other than to keep up the pretense that Elizabeth Holmes, the tv stars-- and the Trump administration-- were aberrations and not just sloppy paragons of their class?
This is as good a moment as any to discuss a new possibility for media: publicly funded journalism. Models of it are being experimented with for local news reporting, a casualty of the pressure undergone by local media outlets across the nation from competition for advertising dollars and eyeballs from online non-traditional media sources. Local reporting has suffered as advertising dollars and corporate support for beat journalism and field reporting has dried up. It's a situation government funding is particularly suited for as it will provide a much needed benefit to the community that capitalism has neglected to do-- a kinder way of saying failed at. But why stop there? Why not nationalize Fox, CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal-- for starters? Is freedom of the press merely the freedom of billionaire media moguls to profit from the purveyance of empty-caloried sensationalism and slanted information only of their liking? Or is it freedom of the citizenry to be informed by a vigilant press? Publicly funding journalism would not only eliminate the annoyance, expense and hassle of seeking information from any of those sites, it would remove conflicts of interest with the owners and advertisers only by whose grace their reporting is currently possible. Who knows, publicly funding our media instead of letting say Jeff Bezos foot the bill for it could possibly restore journalism to a position with respect to our power elite more comparable to watchdog than to lapdog.
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* Unless you consider the pursuit of your own happiness to be a constitutional responsibility. <smiley face>
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