I am watching AMJoy right now and there is a segment on emerging fascism not just here but around the globe. The guests are outlining the clear pattern of the right wing movement in countries from Ukraine to Italy. Rula Jebreal is the foreign policy analyst sounding the alarm in the most strident terms I have heard and I totally agree with her assertions. I encourage you to read the history of Vichy France under the above pictured Marshall Petain. Here is a link to an incredible piece in the Guardian by Julia Pascal (with an unfortunate error in it admittedly) www.theguardian.com/…. In it she visits the town of Vichy and chronicles what life was and remains in the town. Reading about Vichy France you realize that a large swath of the population in France adopted a hatred of liberalism, immigrants, and even democracy. You will notice the complicity of the church. You will notice the voiced support of sexual purity while the leadership continued to engage in libertine sexual mores. What does this remind you of?
Check out this short article too about what happened to the French press after World War II: www.ndsu.edu/…. It amazes me today that the featured interview on ABC News is Steve Bannon. This man should have disappeared. Why do we have him getting a premier platform without equal representation of progressive figures? I know I come from a Democratic Party perspective on this. Certainly, I am a liberal in ideology. But, just a cursory examination of media shows that the liberal viewpoint lacks access to the everyday person. Bexar County Texas where I live is a majority Democratic county according to the last election. Only the north part of the county (wealthier, whiter) is Republican. But if you look at our newspaper today, the San Antonio Express-News, you will find on the front page the following stories: a feature on the Department of Public Safety cooperating with the Border Patrol to deport undocumented immigrants, a story on basketball star Kawhi Leonard wanting out of San Antonio, a story on the GOP state convention in San Antonio, and an article on the effects of the oil boom in a west Texas town 6 hours away by car. (Hey Balmorrhea is doing just fine with oil exploration.) There is not a story about the policy of separating children from their parents until page A10. It’s headline is: Trump Adopts Border Policy Previously Spurned as Inhumane. The main editorials are about the Mexican presidential election, the ethnic studies controversy (those pesky hyphens), the Korean summit, and the US relationship with Canada. I find nothing about local elections or the Russian collusion investigation despite Paul Manafort being put in jail Friday. Don’t get me wrong, our paper is not bad, but it avoids digging deep into what really is happening in the country. Layoffs and consolidations have made it primarily an outlet of the Houston Chronicle.
We have two televisions controlled by Sinclair. The others concentrate on local favorites like parents mad at their public schools, fires, burglaries, bar fights and shootings, weather, the Spurs, restaurant health department violations, and subtle advertisements for concerts, festivals, and sports events. You will get about three minutes of national news packaged from the national corporate networks. What amazes me is how rare coverage of state government is. State legislators never have microphones pushed in their face. There is no accountability. Remember we had the largest church massacre here months ago? No politician was criticized much less scrutinized.
MSNBC is considered the “liberal” network. This is laughable. Joe Scarborough is the featured morning host, former Rep… well, I won’t go down that path. The point is that a true liberal or progressive viewpoint is not made known in the corporate controlled press. The news is presented in a format where facts are now opinions — take climate change as the primary examples. And so the coworkers, friends and family I interact with are bombarded with social media propaganda and hold core beliefs that are frankly lies.
The New York Times has thoroughly disappointed me. The Washington Post not so much. But, our voice, the voice of the Democratic voter is not heard or represented at all in my opinion. We had an election pretty much stolen from us. We had a Supreme Court position stolen from us and yet these papers run features on our Republican neighbors because they are so misunderstood. They are not misunderstood they are manipulated. We are misunderstood. And don’t get me started on news talk radio. As that article on the French press chronicles, moneyed interests get control of the press and present news in a way that is biased and leads to fascism. And history is repeating. What are we going to do about it? What are we willing to do about it?
By the way, if you’re following the immigration story about setting up tent camps for children in Tornillo, let me describe that area for you. As you drive out to West Texas from San Antonio, the landscape becomes drier and drier. The mountain cedar (really small juniper trees) of the Texas hill country is replaced by acres of mesquite trees and mesas where more and more wind mills are being built (good!). After about six to seven hours there are some mountains you pass through, but these are not the stereotypical snow-capped peaks you see in pictures of Colorado or Utah. These are rocky outcrops with scraggly bushes and small trees that survive in arid conditions. Some in the middle of the range have some grass as there is more rain in that area. As you come out of those mountains, though you return to arid desert. You drive through small towns that are composed of small brown houses of plaster, truck stops, cheap hotels/motels, gas stations (many boarded up) and a rail line. You come to a town called Sierra Blanca (White Mountain). This town is about 100 miles east of El Paso. It is known for its border patrol station. (Willie Nelson got busted there a few years ago for possession.) It’s the checkpoint for cars and trucks that come from the border area around El Paso. The actual white mountain can look like a faded pink. It’s no more than a tall rocky hill devoid of any vegetation other than some scraggly brush. You curve to the south around some other similar hill/mountains of rock and descend into the Rio Grande valley. But this is not a lush valley you would find in the Appalachians or a movie about cattle drives in Montana. This is desert. And by the time the Rio Grande reaches this part of its journey from northern New Mexico to the Gulf of Mexico it is barely a trickle of water. It is a glorified creek really as its water is used to irrigate farmland. So as you travel the freeway west towards El Paso here, to the south you see the patches of farmland on both sides of the river and to the north you see nothing but dirt and rock simmering in the heat in the summer and the dry in the non-summer. There are no trees. There are no grasslands. There is rock, pebble and dirt. Tornillo is a small town that lies on this freeway between the border checkpoint of Sierra Blanca and El Paso. Ft. Hancock of Shawshank Redemption fame is here marked by a water tower that celebrates the state six-man football championship of a year in the previous century. Clint and Fabens are also in this parade of farming communities. Tornillo is of this group and where we will march the children of the poor and put them in tents — concentration camps, let’s be honest.
Will our #VichyPress rise up to the challenge of honesty?