The Boston Globe editorial board asked newspapers across the country to reject Donald Trump’s claims that “the press is the enemy of the people.” More than 100 newspapers have signed up to give opinions on August 16 of what is at stake other than libeling the President of the United States who zealously commits slander every day. Slander is when you say something false or malicious about someone that damages that person’s reputation. Libel is when you put it in print.
This exercise in solidarity got us thinking – there are at least two sides to every circle. For instance, why is the president free to tweet hateful and untrue statements about governments, businesses, quarterbacks, ex-lovers and cabinet members while insisting any news that doesn’t herald him as a stable genius is fake?
Those of us who keep a close and constant eye on this man’s antics are familiar with his billowy tales. We’re also so addicted to current events we qualify for professional treatment.
There are certain types of speech not protected by the First Amendment – obscenity, defamation, perjury, blackmail, incitement to lawlessness, treason. Yet this man, whether elected fair and square or not, has taken crazed vulgarity and designated spite to a level that would make Pol Pot or Idi Amin or Ivan the Terrible blush. This man is not just separating families, he’s separating a planet.
No big deal, right? The planet isn’t perfect and needs shaking up, so in a sense, Trump is a savior. He’s accelerating his own country’s deep cleaning. Trump lives in a country founded as an experiment in freedom by way of democracy, a country he wants to seduce without paying his annual dues.
Why are we shocked? This man is familiar with the darkest side of humanity, the side that prefers money and power to all other options. But we are shocked, even if we support him.
And we are in an important time in the life of our world, of humanity. Things are not right or normal anywhere. There’s mental discomfort all over the world. Thoughts are hard to hold, they’re disconnected and confused.
And we are in the eye of a man of storm, a man who would rather lecture us than listen to us. Yet we’re fascinated with him and all he does.
Is it a newspaper’s obligation to be unbiased? If Hillary or Bernie or Carly had been elected, would we be this disillusioned? Or would we plod along, business as usual, no matter how corrupt the true underbelly of world politics is, relieved to shake our heads in disbelief, perhaps, but not terror.
If Trump is free to diss our allies and exalt our enemies, then we sure enough have the same right, right? Someone on NPR actually had the moxie to say, “He works for us.” We’re not acting like it.
The United States has the freest press in the world. But to be a Top Dog nation, we must feel our worth and our strength, and recognize that knowledge is the real currency.
Is it libelous to write this? We are condemning someone we don’t know and hope to never meet, without using the objectionable words found on the Internet. Is that because we have a higher standard than the Internet or are we just fuddy duddies?
And what of those who support this man? Just because we don’t understand how in the world someone could have allegiance to a national fraud, we are unable to cut the cable to those who believe his lies and admire his hate. Because they live here, too.
What did those exalted forefathers really have in mind when they wrote the Bill of Rights? Were they protecting themselves and their lifestyles or were they thinking seven generations ahead? Well we can’t ask them. We only know that living in a small Arkansas town where people have enough to worry about without adding getting shot or going broke, a weekly newspaper staff has an obligation to explain what they understand. Donald Trump has accelerated change, and the national media is polarizing. We get that.
But wee local media can afford to turn away from the darkness that’s controlling our government. It must.
Mary Pat Boian