The 2020 Presidential Debate: We've Been Here Before

 Politics in 2020

Facts and Truth - the Vaccine for Our Nation

Yes, yes, despite all my efforts, this post is yet another one about the idiot living in the White House, and tangentially the idiots who think he is a genius. 

There's just this verifiable galaxy of chaos engulfing the country and, let's be plain - the chaos has cost lives. 

A particular detail about myself is I am one the elite cadre of Real Journalists - an alchemical creation made in my youth in the melting pot of newsprint and Murrow's television - made only with a relentless application of shoe leather and work and commitment to report two things: Facts and Truth. And by youth I mean, well, at the age of 11 I was the sole writer and publisher of a weekly 4 page news report on local and national issues which I printed 100 copies of and passed out for free to classmates and adults who needed it.

In other words, news and commentary is Foundational for me. And Journalism - news reporting and commentary - is Foundational to America.

Any good reporter can tell you, small petty men and women create little fiefdoms and large ones inside our daily politics and always have, whether on a local state or national level, we even have these fiefdoms pop up where we work, in the ways we interact socially. It's a behavior of the emotionally stunted. 

If Walter Cronkite were alive during this presidency, he would have already, personally, socked him in the nose.

The Press en masse is not the enemy of the people, Lies are the enemy. The news is not fake, its really that fucking bad. Bizarre rumors become National Policy. The one branch of our government, the presidency, has become a battering ram to the basic structure of government. What has been the most unnerving and disturbing aspect of this chaos is the boundless support the Republican Party provides for his lawlessness. 

Sigh.

Out of an enormous legacy of overall respect for whomever holds the office, the Press was reluctant early on, and even now, to call his statements what that are. False. Lies, Imaginary. I tip my hat to them for standing up more and more in the face of death threats and ridicule. I have one very big problem with cable news networks - far too much focus on panel shows of media consultants offering precious little in the way of Facts. Media has, especially with television and now the Internet, been a little too in love with itself.

America is not great right now.

(Though have we not learned very clearly how when things are hardest, the majority of us - we pull together to help each other?)

This president's failures are no hoax.

Accurate, factual, truthful documentation of this horrible era will be plentiful in future years - this post is now part of that record, another verification of our troubled times - As Merlin said in the movie Excalibur "It is the doom of men that they forget. They forget."