Former Labor Secretary for Bill Clinton, Robert Reich has always been a fountain of wisdom and truth for me. Here are several excerpts of observations he has made that influences what I try to communicate.
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Readers of The American Prospect don't need to hear that Donald Rumsfeld has been an awful defense secretary, that our actions in Iraq are fueling global terrorism, that George W. Bush's tax breaks for the rich are widening the gap between the rich and everyone else, that our government is now run by corporate America and right-wing evangelicals, and that these clowns and scoundrels have already imperiled our nation and the world for generations to come. You know these things.
Unfortunately, comparatively few Americans read The American Prospect. But tens of millions of Americans listen to right-wing radio and watch right-wing television. And they are being fed a stream of lies that parrot the untruths and distortions emanating from the White House. The public square is dominated by radical Republicans.
Recently I accepted an invitation to be on Sean Hannity's radio show, which is carried by nearly 400 stations around the country. I'm promoting a new book, Reason: Why Liberals Will Win the Battle for America (Alfred A. Knopf). Hannity has been touring the country, broadcasting his right-wing screed in front of large crowds.
On this day, [2004] Hannity was broadcasting from Chicago. I phoned in at the appointed time. Hannity introduced me as a "liberal," and I heard the assembled crowd emit a loud boo. He then asked me if I thought Rumsfeld should resign. I said Rumsfeld should be fired. The crowd booed again. At this point Hannity played a tape, purporting to be the voice of John Kerry, who admitted to committing atrocities in Vietnam. Hannity then asked me how someone who had committed atrocities could call for Rumsfeld's resignation and run for president of the United States. The crowd cheered.
When I began to answer, Hannity cut me off. I tried to get a word in, but Hannity continued to rant about John Kerry and the liberals who want to destroy the country. I could hear the crowd roar its approval. I tried again to be heard, but Hannity talked over me. I decided to keep talking but my words seemed to make no difference. The crowd was cheering Hannity's diatribe. One listener e-mailed me later in the day to explain that Hannity's sound engineer had apparently turned down the volume on me, in order to ensure that Hannity's voice predominated.
All over talk radio and talk TV, liberal voices are being drowned out. Prior to 1987, when the Federal Communications Commission overturned the fairness doctrine, broadcasters had to air opposing views on controversial issues if they wanted to keep their licenses. Now, hosts of talk radio and talk television -- almost all of them right-wingers -- are interested in airing only one view: their own.
The problem runs deeper. Hannity is also the host of one of FOX News' most highly watched cable-television shows, and he and FOX promote each show on the other medium. Hannity also promotes his books on his radio and TV shows, which may help explain why his most recent screed, titled Deliver Us From Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism, was at the top of The New York Times best-seller list for several weeks in March and April. Hannity's Midwest broadcast tour -- revving up crowds of right-wing faithful against liberals, Democrats, and John Kerry in particular -- is a logical extension of the other media enterprises.
Make no mistake: The entire effort is designed to get George W. Bush re-elected and install a permanent right-wing Republican majority in America. Bill O'Reilly, another FOX News TV host, also has a radio show, which is carried nationally on more than 400 stations. Like Hannity, O'Reilly uses these mouthpieces to promote his books and goes on broadcast tours to summon Republican crowds and stoke the passions of the right. ...
The problem for liberals and Democrats is not just that we have nothing comparable to this widening empire of right-wing demagoguery (Air America Radio is trying, but it's in few markets so far). The real problem is that liberals refrain from demagoguery because we don't believe in it. Liberalism is the opposite of fanaticism. We cherish tolerance. We value deliberation. We respect rational argument. We oppose all forms of tyranny. We have faith -- and it is nothing but faith -- that, in the end, they won't be able to drown us out, because common sense and common decency are on our side. I hope we're right (Reicj 1-3)
Work cited:
Reich, Robert. “Drowned Out.” The American Prospect, May 12. 2004. Net. https://prospect.org/columns/drowned/
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In March 2013 Reich was interviewed by Michael Winship, senior writer of Moyers & Company, about changes he has noticed in our country since Watergate. Here are two excerpts that pertain to my subject matter.
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Many things changed simultaneously. For one thing, many of the technologies that had been developed in the second world war became commercially viable. Satellite communication technologies, cargo ships, container ships, all of that allowed the production process to be parceled out around the world to where everything could be done most cheaply. But, more to the point, we also had a political system that was less willing or able to respond to these changes, a political system that was willing to allow or encourage the demise of unions, that didn’t pay attention to the stagnation of the median wage, even as productivity continued to surge ahead, a political system that did not want to or wasn’t able to make the investments in education and research and development that needed to be made in order to allow the middle class to continue to prosper. And also, a political system that became obsessed with taxes and taxes on the rich, and thereby, because the rich began to have so much more influence in the political system, began to reduce marginal income taxes and make it impossible for the nation to continue the kind of investments we’d been making in the fifties and sixties, in everything from infrastructure all the way through higher education. So add all of these things up, and we saw a corrosion of our democratic political capacities to respond to structural changes in the economy starting in the late 1970s.
…
… I first came to Washington as an intern for Robert Kennedy in 1967. I was back in the 1970s, both in the Ford and in the Carter administration, and then I was again here in the Clinton administration, and I was an advisor in early stages of the Obama administration, and I’ve seen a remarkable steady decline in comity, in collaboration, in civility in this city. Partly, I think it’s because the Republican party has been taken over by a bunch of right wing fanatics. I don’t want to mince words here. I think that’s exactly what’s happened. I think the Democrats and Republicans have forgotten why they’re here and what the public wants them to do. Many Democrats also — I won’t say that they’ve been taken over by left wing fanatics. That’s not the case. But I think many politicians are most interested in their own chances of reelection rather than what is good for the country. And I know that even my students, my best students, who I would want and hope would go into politics, they are eager to go into public service, but they look at politics as essentially corrupt and dirty. Now, to me, that’s dangerous. If we don’t embrace and honor and get involved in politics, we cede democracy to those who are representing the worst or special interests, rather than the public interest.
…
… There’s still a lot of eager young journalists who would like to do investigative reporting, and who are willing to do it on a shoestring. My bigger concern is that we don’t have neutral arbiters any longer of news and information, such that the public will trust them. We have a very bifurcated system of information now. The right listens to Rush Limbaugh and Fox News. The left has their own tribunes. But people now can very easily tune in to the voices and the people they already agree with, who confirm their every suspicion and their values. So without the neutral arbiters, without the Walter Cronkites or the great newspapers that used to be basically trusted, without what we used to call the establishment “mainstream press,” we run the danger of not being able to get word out to Americans about what’s happening.
…
… There’s less analysis. There’s more partisan information, more selective partisan information. There’s less trust, in every institution in our society. Not only Congress and the president, but the media and the judiciary. And without that trust, the public, it seems to me, is put in a very precarious situation in terms of the whole system of governance. What are you left with? You’re left with big corporations and Wall Street and billionaires, and why should anybody trust that they are going to act in the public interest? And this all comes at a time when the challenges that we face, whether they be climate change or nuclear proliferation or poverty, both at home and abroad, or any number of things, the challenges are so large and getting larger that unless we have some set of structures that people believe in and trust to act for all of us — and we used to call that government — then we’re powerless, in a way that I think should disturb all of us (BillMoyers 1-4).
Work cited:
BillMoyers.com Staff. “Robert Reich on Lessons Learned from Watergate.” BillMoyers.com, March 15, 2013. Net. https://billmoyers.com/2013/03/15/robert-reich-on-the-lessons-learned-from-watergate/
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I wrote the following letter to particularize the economic plight of many Americans. The woman is a family relative.
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The mother moved to the Eugene area from California to separate herself and her two children from her irresponsible, belligerent husband.
Experienced in auto insurance sales, she was hired by AAA but assigned to work as a domestic travel agent for $9 an hour.
Three years later, having earned an undergraduate business degree, she tried selling individual health insurance policies first for one major corporation and then another, her income mostly a percentage of her sales. Told by her superiors that she would be given sales leads, she was forced instead to make “cold calls”; and she had to travel great distances to meet possible clients. She earned no more each month than what AAA had paid her.
She works now for a broker of a major auto/homeowners insurance corporation. She earns $12 an hour; but, the economy having worsened, her boss losing clients, starting this month, she will be working fewer hours. Her ex-husband, having income problems of his own, no longer pays his minimal child support. Right now she is trying to find a part time second job.
Her son continues to have difficulty in elementary school. He is bright, but he is forgetful and disorganized. She is not able to provide him the necessary daily supervision to correct this, having but three hours each school night to complete a host of tasks.
This economic system imposed on us by the current administration and corporate America enriches the very rich while the middle and under classes, thwarted by stagnant wages, denied career-worthy jobs, crushed by escalating living costs, plummet toward bankruptcy.
This mother’s true story is one of millions of cautionary narratives that reveal the husk of what this country has become. We Republicans, Democrats, Independents, and Greens must join forces to affect great change. Greed and concentration of power must be curtailed. Our Founding Fathers created our government to serve not the elite few, but all.
Printed January 2, 2008, in the Siuslaw News
February 12, 2008, in The World
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Faithful consumers of Ring-Wing radio, television, and internet messaging voice their triple-locked, unassailable opinions also on opinion pages of newspapers. Three letters in one issue of the Register-Guard was too much for me to ignore.
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January 10 was Far Right Republican Day for readers of the Guard’s Mailbag.
We had, first, Steve Hawke’s “four-legs-good, two-legs bad” bleat about capitalism and socialism. Then we had Jeff Crocker’s everyone-does-it defense of GOP election fixing. Afterward, we had Vikki Berg’s homosexuality-is-bad-because-God-forbids-it polemic.
Mr. Hawke, our country is at its best when it utilizes limited forms of both systems. A man deserves to reap the benefits of his ingenuity and hard labor, but he also needs protection. Unfettered capitalism has no conscience.
Mr. Crocker, the control of election results is a major characteristic of a fascist state. The purging of voter rolls, the “caging” of voters, the touch-screen voting machines, the “mysterious” switching of vote tallies, the disappearance of votes, voter intimidation, and now state photo-ID requirements that disenfranchise minorities, the poor, and the elderly: this massive dishonesty is tolerable because a few Democrats in the past may have cheated?
Mrs. Berg, you are equating assertion with fact. That the Constitution was written by men is fact. That “the Bible is the written voice of God” is assertion. Repeatedly, man, citing a Supreme Being, has legislated awful rules and committed awful acts. That is why our Constitution separates church and state. Nobody should be made to suffer based on assertion.
Printed January 18, 2008, in the Register-Guard
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My wife and I were in Eugene the morning that the above letter was printed. When we got back home, I had these three phone messages waiting.
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Mr. Titus, Harold Titus, my name is Lucius Ghent. I’ve just read your letter in the Register-Guard today. I think it’s a very, very good letter. I thank you very much for it and I hope that many others will read it and understand how this country of ours is supposed to go, how it’s supposed to be run instead of thinking that one must worship at the feet of the corporations. Once again thank you so much. I appreciate your letters very much. Bye, bye now.
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Mr. Titus, Jeff Crocker calling, and I wanted to get your address. I’d like to send you a copy of the thing I was replying to in the Register-Guard. A guy named Sammy Stanford called us “Neocon Fascist thugs” and all I did was reply saying you guys are a bunch of hypocrites and that’s all I meant by it. There’s no clean sheets in this wash, son. Talk to you later. Bye.
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Jeff Crocker again, Howard – Harold. I thought your name sounded familiar and I was putting this stuff in the file and I see we already had words. “We Are Now a Corporatocracy,” according to your file. Democrats are just as corrupt. They take political money. A week later was mine. And I think we can agree to disagree., but I tell you what. You guys are just as crooked as we are, and I think neither excuses the other. But I hate it when you guys act like we are a, like somebody says, “right-wing thugs, Nazis,” no better than you guys. Socialism is just as bad as Fascism. Bye.
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I received the following letter the next day in the mail.
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Thank you, Mr. Harold Titus.
Great letter in the Register Guard today! I’ve read many of your letters in the Snews too and always appreciate your point of view. You’re a terrific writer with many thought-provoking ideas. Please keep up with your progressive insights. One of these days maybe we can truly educate so many who don’t get it at all!
Grateful,
Jennifer French
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This letter appeared in the Register-Guard January 29
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This is to commend Harold Titus of Florence who wrote Jan. 18 in objection to the predominance of “Republican letters” in an earlier issue.
In reference to religious claims – as distinguished from fact – he tactfully calls them “assertions.” Readers – especially Republican readers – should be reminded that religion is subjective, meaning a matter of opinion based on faith; whereas science is objective, based on factually observation and testing.
They also should remember that faith, in its religious sense, is superstition, since both terms apply alike to the belief in imaginary beings, creatures and events. While such things might be true, the definition also applies to fairies.
Personally, I have always liked the idea of fairies.
Stuart C. Burdick, Coos Bay
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On January 30 I received from a Paul Silas of Eugene a three-page religious screed similar to anonymous messages I received twice in 2003. Below are the passages that Silas highlighted with a marker pen.
… Indeed the whole world was full of idols at that time; the pure worship of God existed nowhere; and in fact there were countless monstrous superstitions everywhere. But Satan had bewitched Athens more than other cities, so that the men were driven with greater madness to their impious and perverted rites. And this is an example that is worth noting, that the city, which was the abode and seat of wisdom, the fount of all the arts, the mother of humanity, surpassed all the others in blindness and madness.
… But the Holy Spirit, convicting the whole world of ignorance and stupidity, says that all the teachers of liberal science were spell-bound by an unusual madness; and from that we gather what use human shrewdness is in the things of God. And there is no doubt that God allowed the Athenians to fall into extreme folly, so that they might be a warning to all generations that all the acuteness of the human mind, aided by learning and teaching, is nothing but foolishness, when it comes to the Kingdom of God.
… “and all liars, shall have their part in the lake of fire which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death” (Revelation 21, 1-8)
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On February 6 I received a five-page religious tract from Augustine of Eugene. Below is the highlighted portion.
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“... thou hast known the sacred writings which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. Every scripture is inspired of God is also profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction which is in righteousness: that the man of God may be complete, furnished unto every good work.” (2 Timothy 3.12-17)
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