I Am An "Enemy Of The People", I Guess....

I didn’t get anywhere near as worked up as a lot of my media friends did over the weekend, when our new President called the media “the enemy of the people” Friday afternoon. If you scroll through the list of my 658 Facebook friends, probably half or more are members of the media. Another third are musicians, and the rest are just cool folks who are friends.

My social media feeds this weekend were filled with angry or disgusted posts from friends, about our fledgling President’s latest rant, which was clearly designed to serve up more red meat to his “base” of supporters. What bothered me far more over the weekend was President Trump’s reliance on Fox “News” for his information about terrorism in Sweden, rather than the world’s most sophisticated intelligence gathering apparatus, which is at his beck and call.

I don’t feel a need to push back against his silly statements and hateful Tweets about the horrible media. I understand that when people say they hate the media, or that the media lies, they’re not talking about the people like me, who give news on their local TV or radio station, or who play the music on their favorite radio station. Most people, I think, just don’t like the OPINIONS given by one side or the other in national media.

That’s another thing. Opinion. A lot of folks – way too many – can’t tell opinion from fact. And, with all the professional liars (on both sides) spinning every political story, the task has become more difficult. What annoys me to no end is the people who post absolute, unbelievable crap to their social media…stuff like “Obama Secretly Behind CIA Move To Impeach Trump” and then, when called on their BS, righteously reply “I’m entitled to my opinion!!!!!!!” 

Well, I suppose technically, you are. But this is kind of like the malaprop so often repeated everywhere that goes “the proof is in the pudding”, which makes absolutely no sense. The real quote is “the proof of the pudding is in the eating”, which makes perfect sense.  Like that old saw, there’s something missing from the “opinion” defense: you are entitled to your INFORMED opinion, not entitled to mindlessly regurgitate patent nonsense.

One more rant point from your humble enemy of the people: those who insist government should be run “like a business” or that “America is a Christian Nation”. Successfully governing and successfully running a business takes two very different skillsets. My plumber would not be a good heart surgeon just because he understands how plumbing works. Business and government have different goals, operate with different parameters, and answer to different constituencies.

And that “Christian nation” stuff? Our founding fathers - speaking of wall-builders -attempted to erect a huge, insurmountable wall between government and religion.

But that’s part of the foundation of our federated republic that a lot of “democracy” folks conveniently forget.