Back to Reality
Reality has a way of sneaking past the holiday bulwarks
(No. 63, an ±05 minute read)
I’m back to the world from the diversion and solace that music is. And there is a lot going on. I’ll touch on some of it here, at least those bits that are especially concerning to me, but this is also the acknowledgment of a holiday slow-down that will last into 2025. We all need a break from responsibility….
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First the settlement of a suit accusing ABC of libel by Trump. A chilling precedent was realized here and it is an argument against media consolidation if ever there were one — I’d not known (or had forgotten) that Disney owns ABC — it seems a not insubstantial part of the decision to settle was to protect the Disney brand. A quote from Brooks Barnes’ story in the New York Times:
“At a minimum, the $205 billion company would be litigating against a vindictive sitting president and risking harm to its brand. Disney wants its family-friendly movies, television shows and theme park rides to appeal to people of all political persuasions. The company recently endured a brutal legal fight with Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida that made it a target of criticism — and boycotts — among Trump supporters and right-wing pundits.”
Barnes’s story is worth a read even as it is demoralizing. Yes, George Stephanopoulos ‘effed up by not saying on air something akin to Trump “was found liable for sexual assault which the judge in his written opinion indicated might be akin to rape outside the context of New York’s narrow definition of ‘rape’ as requiring penile rather than digital penetration.” Nonetheless, finding malice is a high bar in a libel suit against a journalist, even a sloppy journalist. That’s the point of Times v. Sullivan.
In his 2017 pamphlet-length book, On Tyranny, historian Timothy Synder shares twenty lessons 20th century history offers us in facing tyranny. His first is not to obey in advance. Disney is obeying in advance in the face of a case that legal scholars believe to be difficult for the plaintiff to prove. Disney’s interests are not the interests of a Fourth Estate speaking truth to power, their interests are those of share-holder capitalists looking to maximize profit.
I think that all of us might find this sobering, certainly journalists do — who among us has made no errors reporting? For those of us working political, environmental, or business beats — especially as freelancers — the question at hand is whether or not an outlet running our work will go to bat should we err, and have our back in a climate of aggressive libel suits against reporters/outlets? I’m digging into an investigative piece that has possibility of being widely unpopular among those with the economic and political power I’m looking at. I’d be lying if I said I was feeling cavalier about it in this moment.
Trump and those associated with him have made journalism itself into an enemy, the hallmark of a tyrannist. (Along with casting education and educators as enemies — check!) His recent suit against J. Ann Selzer, a retired Iowa pollster who got it very wrong in the last presidential election poll of her career, and the Des Moines Register for publishing the results of her poll is further evidence of where the future lies in the next administration. Patel, Vance, Musk, and others in Trump’s retinue have made it plain their intent to pursue the media. This is a first step towards autocracy, exercised expertly by Viktor Orbán in Hungary, a hero to the Trumpist right. We all should be chilled by these libel suits.
Other things worth a look as the year comes to a close most certainly include Jill Lepore’s incredible essay “The Artificial State.” I think that this is a defining assessment of our times, picking up exactly where my fave, Guy Debord, left off in his book, The Society of the Spectacle, which regular readers will be tired of me flogging.
The Guardian has an incredible exposé of the cynicism of major Trump donors Liz and Dick Uihlein, owners of Uline. Its headline sums it up well: “Major Trump donors who complained of immigrant ‘invasion’ used Mexican workers illegally, sources allege.” There is strong evidence that the Uihleins are flouting work visa requirements by obligating workers in their Mexican facilities to work in the U.S. while traveling here to do so on their own tourist visas — and busing them to their warehouses to do so.
And as the U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm describes the pace of liquid natural gas exports in an Energy Department analysis as “neither sustainable or advisable” with consequences ranging from driving up gas and electricity costs for Americans to increasing the pace of global warming, The Guardian (again) is reporting that oil and gas firms in Colorado are regularly falsifying legally required environmental impact reports assessing their drilling and pumping sites. The consequences for the environment and public safety are serious. This is an industry performing its own regulatory compliance, something that industry, generally, wants to see more of. I’ve said it before, I’ll likely have to say it again, “What could go wrong?” (And, of course, Chevron is among the well owners.)
I’m wrestling with a real art-school project, a look at the American West and “the west” in the context of today’s environmental, social, and political affairs. It’s 56 pictures, each with an explanatory caption that belies what might be merely an interesting photograph of a relatively commonplace subject. Pictures are selected and sequenced, I’m in the grips of research and caption-writing. Here’s a (dis)taste:
1950s Suburban Homes, Torrance, California
Torrance, California is a coastal town in the South Bay of Los Angeles County. Known for its having been developed as a mixed-use industrial and residential community planned by Frederick Law Olmstead, Jr., its recent racist police scandals, strong defense industry ties, proximity to the little-known Los Angeles Air Force base, and as part of Los Angeles’ southward post-World War I suburban expansion. An incident in the 1930s saw a mob drive the very few Black members of Torrance out of town, burning their homes. The city of Torrance took over the properties and created a park, known as “Nigger Park” until the 1950s. Racial covenants ruled white Torrance until 1963 when sustained, large protests against racial discrimination in Torrance were met by American Nazi Party members and residents shouting racial epithets, even as the protests ultimately helped destroy the covenant system.
Today the wider South Bay area is home to a tech revolution antagonistic to Silicon Valley’s libertarian, liberal, and business-directed culture. Proudly Christian, male-chauvinistic, and gung-ho, South Bay tech defense firms mix job-site Bible study with hands-on design and production of next generation military hardware including armed drones, new missile technology, A.I. applied to military goals of autonomous war-fighting and battlefield data processing, satellite warfare and surveillance tech. Companies such as Anduril, Castelion, Epirus, Picogrid, Pacific Defense, Perceptronics, Neros, and SpaceX have joined such area stalwarts as Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Teledyne, BAE Systems, and Boeing in the South Bay arms-making firmament. Today Los Angeles Air Force Base is home to the United Space Force’s Space Systems Command headquarters.
I know that’s not a great way to end it but this is where we are these days wrestling with an American legacy of racism, militarism, and colonial expansion (Hey, maybe this time next year we will own Greenland and the Panama Canal!) as Trump comes to power. Read Lepore’s essay, and kick against the pricks.
Have a great Christmas and Hannukah!