Three Newspapers a Day

I sat there with some fear. It was my first college Political Science class at Stanford. Here I am, from little ole Shasta High in Redding (most of my peers had no idea where Redding was) being lecture to by a Pulitzer Award Winning Professor….I know that had to be important but had to ask my friend what the Pulitzer was.

He laughed.

So the first. thing the Professor said, to a hundred or so aspiring political scientists, was, “To succeed in this business you need to read three newspapers at least a day, from different viewpoints (what….I thought the Record Searchlight was the only newspaper in the world…I was from Redding of course), and one news magazine a week (what was a news magazine I whispered to the student in the desk next to mine….he laughed out loud this time)!

Chastened by Redding provincialism , I shut up.

Later in the Dorm I asked what a News Magazine was, Look or Life…and they told me Newsweek or Time….huh?

So, I read the Stanford Daily and the Chronicle (one short of three) and took out a Newsweek subscription (the first news magazine I would take in my life).

And I read it cover to cover…and I read at least two newspapers every day…and took on three in my Graduate years.

Today, a small minority of Americans. read just one newspaper. In fact, many newspapers are going under.

News digests on the internet are the mainstay, with lots of pretty videos…and very little analysis.

Right wing media rules most of the news points in our country today!

Money has bought control of what is basically a propaganda machine for fascism in the United States…

Some truth tellers. are left, the N.Y. Times and Washington Post, plus the Chicago Tribune (still conservative) but most are gone.

The Sacramento Union that used to drive me nuts when I was in graduate school went under a long time ago.

But I take Apple News, plus San Jose Mercury News, Sacramento Bee and Washington Post plus Time Magazine, Nation Magazine and of course Apple News Plus, that provides several magazines (Sports Illustrated etc) as well.

I read a lot…plus digital books on Amazon, Books on Tape (actually on internet to listen to) etc.

I read and i read and I read.

And most of my peers do not, and the younger they get, the less they read.

They “trust” the news web page they adhere to. …and then there is the Fox News tribe, who listen to and trust a media that is fascist to the core.

But again, as I condescendingly state, I have a MA in Government plus taught Civics and history for years, some on the college level (like right now).

But to my conservative friends this is “uppity” and as I was told. more than once, “I don’t care what facts you say, I have the right to believe what I want to believe’; ie, I can be stupid if I want to be…it’s my right.

I ask for sources and I get……Fox. I look in a fascist’s eyes and see…what we fought to kill 75 years ago!

And that is all I get….and that is what the Weimar Republic got from Hitler, one lie after another with lies trumping (play on words) truth every time.

It is easy to win over people by lying to keep them happy, more difficult when you tell them what they don’t want to hear.

With all that reading this is my summation of politics today:

Trump is a fascist and so is the Republican Party.

And racist to boot.

Oh boy, does that get a reaction…negative to say the least.

But that is after over 60 years of education, being in administration myself, having studied leadership for years…so what do I know….right? A bare high school education with Fox as a backup makes a person an expert?

It’s my right to be stooooopid!

I was told by Paul Hughes, my American Problems teacher in high school, that there was great danger in the world, and only education could keep it half way under control. Paul was a liberal educator, who told the truth.

He and Mr Grush, ( a tavern owner who taught on the side and very conservative) used to debate politics in front of our class, showing the clash of ideas and how democracy dealt with it.

I learned a lot from them…coupled with Stanford, coupled with an MA from CSU Sacramento, in the state’s capitol.

I learned that politics is a contact sport, and I learned just how fragile democracy is…with attacks on it all the time.

I also learned the dynamics of fascism.

And hence, I am sounding the alarm all the time, because that terrible disease is alive and well in our country…as of late, using the pandemic to kill its opponents and choke the life out of freedom and democracy.

And I am the nutty professor who is a snowflake.

That snowflake in 1945 blew up Germany and Japan to kill fascists.

Tragically that is the only way to stop them……