An essay from England about corporate media that speaks exactly to the issue of corporate media in the U.S.

This article from the London Review of Books, is an interesting read, and may include some rough waters as the author, Tom Crews, delves deep into the 1830s and Dickens' Pickwick Papers and then forward into the rest of the 19th Century to find how corporate media developed.

But we get nuggets like this:

If the relationship (between politicians and media) is no longer quite so gentlemanly – it has become unhealthier over time, as each side has attempted to control, exploit and bully the other – it remains fundamental, and incurs the same risks that have been there from the start: that close access inhibits perspective, thus affecting sense of proportion on both sides, making political journalism overwhelmingly Westminster-centric and vitiating its evidence base. Whatever the government of the day, the connection is too cosy to allow for radical critique. (Robbie Gibb, who recently quit his job as editor of the BBC’s Daily Politics and Sunday Politics to become Theresa May’s director of communications, is only the latest figure to pass through the revolving door between the media and Downing Street.)

We have the same antecedents here, and ours go back to the 1790s with the Aurora and Gazette, as dueling Jeffersonian and Hamiltonian newspapers, with each man not-so-secretly funding the editors/publishers who printed the most vile and scurrilous "information" about the other. Gordon Wood's "Empire of Liberty" (from 2009, and the title is, of course, from Jefferson's phrase) does a solid job of showing how the 1790s were a decade in which this nation was perilously close to a Civil War--yes, that should shock many of us, but it is true--and Claude G. Bowers' "Jefferson & Hamilton: The Struggle for Democracy in America" (1925), which I've lately been re-reading, has several chapters about what he calls, somewhat innocently, "The Terror" and the manner in which the two main competing newspapers and their editors fanned hysteria and were engulfed in the hysteria they created (Bowers' hostility to Adams, Hamilton and Federalists is something one must get past, but it is still riveting and informative reading).

But this issue of how "access" to the deepest bowels of power tends to skew perspective and cause otherwise bright and earnest reporters, editors and publishers to lose sight of reality is a real issue and has been for many years. I.F. Stone often talked about seeing things clearly because he did not go to the cocktail parties or mingle with the politicians.* And here is a portion of Stone's autobiography he wrote in 1963:

The fault I find with most American newspapers is not the absence of dissent. It is the absence of news. With a dozen or so honorable exceptions, most American newspapers carry very little news.Their main concern is advertising. The main interest of our society is merchandising. All the so-called communications industries are primarily concerned not with communications, but with selling. This is obvious on television and radio but it is only a little less obvious in the newspapers. Most owners of newspapers are businessmen, not newspapermen. The news is something which fills the spaces left over by the advertisers. The average publisher is not only hostile to dissenting opinion, he is suspicious of any opinion likely to antagonize any reader or consumer. The late Colonel McCormick, in his Chicago Tribune, ran a paper about as different as possible from mine in outlook. But I admired him. He stood for something, he was a newspaperman, he gave the Tribune personality and character. Most U.S. papers stand for nothing. They carry prefabricated news, prefabricated opinion, and prefabricated cartoons. There are only a handful of American papers worth reading —The New York Times, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The Washington Post, The Washington Star, The Baltimore Sun, The Christian Science Monitor—these are news papers in the real sense of the term. But even here opinion is often timid; the cold war and the arms race are little questioned though these papers do speak up from time to time on civil liberty. There are only a few maverick daily papers left like the York (Pennsylvania) Gazette and Daily and the Madison (Wisconsin) Capital Times. All this makes it easy for a one-man four-page Washington paper to find news the others ignore, and of course opinion they would rarely express.

(And if you have the time, check out this wonderful film by Jerry Bruck about Stone, named after Stone's legendary, "I.F. Stone's Weekly" (1973).)

Upton Sinclair's "The Brass Check" remains one of the great historical records of the rise of corporate media and how it works to propagandize the working class into voting against its own interests, which is what Walter Lippmann, a couple of years after "The Brass Check" appeared, called "manufacturing consent." George Seldes, who personified "the intrepid reporter," now called an "investigative" reporter, went from a person who thought Upton Sinclair was a bit of a showman and too conspiratorial to became an even more arch-watchdog over corporate media (then called the "capitalist press"), to the point where "mainstream" journalists thought Seldes a "crank." However, Seldes wrote some of the most foundational press criticism that still sizzles today, and his books "Freedom of the Press" (1935) and "Lords of the Press" (1938) should be required reading in high schools across the nation. YouTube also now has the excellent documentary on George Seldes, from Seldes' first memoir, "Tell the Truth and Run."

That some think Stone and Seldes were "Reds" is pathetically and ridiculously sad, but that sort of attack dates back to the systems and institutions that were set up in the aftermath of the Espionage Act of 1917 and the post-WWI and then post-WWII worlds where corporate media, acting as a handmaiden to American political and business leaders, perfected Red-baiting. That it has reached a point where Eisenhower, were he to return today and hold the same political views, would be to the left of most American politicians, and would be positively toxic in the corporate media echo chamber, is precisely what ails us in improving our discourse and search for appropriate public policy making. And just so people know, Seldes was one of the only American journalists to have been hounded out of both Soviet Russia and Mussolini's Italy for...telling the truth and then having to run. At most, both Seldes and Stone were Popular Fronters, who were wary of Communists in the U.S., but saw them as practical allies for rallying activists to fight for New Deal policies.**

I apologize for the American history diversion, but it goes to the heart of why Crews' essay is so enlightening for us as Americans. Crews' essay begins with something very powerful, which is how the corporate media including The Guardian, the supposedly left-wing newspaper, failed to understand what was happening in the election of 2017 in the U.K.

There is a journalistic, snarkily fun but deeply researched book set for release in the U.S. later this fall--it is already released in the U.K. and my cousin sent me a copy a month ago--that documents the rise of Corbyn before this year's election, and just how lacking in judgment and perspective the corporate media in the United Kingdom really are (It is called "The Candidate: Jeremy Corbyn's Improbable Path to Power" by Alex Nunns). The book speaks directly to our news media here and to the vacuousness of the pundits, editors and publishers in our nation. It is not that the best, such as the NY Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Time, Newsweek, etc. do not report factual information. They mostly do, but the slant is ever present, starting with the word "moderate." There is also the fascination with rich business executives as if they know statecraft--which led so many to say about Trump, "But he is a rich businessman!" as if that meant he could govern. And worst are the usual bromides about private enterprise being superior to government, that tax cuts in rain or shine make sense, that those who press for war are more "serious" and that those opposing war are suspect and always have a shifting goalpost burden of proof, and how there must be two sides to the climate change debate as if this was only a political, not scientific issue we are discussing.

So yeah, I went on a bit here. But those who have woken up to the biases of corporate media in our time should know that the world did not begin to change in this regard when those persons woke up. And a deeper reading of the past will immensely enlighten those persons so that they do not reject everything in mainstream corporate media, but instead learn to discern and think critically, and with a far longer perspective--and to recognize too how capitalism is itself an ideology and a source for bias. Or maybe leave it to Upton Sinclair, who famously said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” And just over 100 years ago, it was said of the British newspaperman that he did not need to be bribed, because he already understood the needs of the Empire. It is how he kept his job.

Footnotes:

*Stone did have lunch, in the immediate post-WWII world, with Assistant Treasury Secretary, Harry Dexter White, where White would talk about expanding what later became somewhat sardonically known as Pax American, and Stone would shake his head and argue with him why that is not a good thing. Stone was incredulous that anyone would consider White a pro-Soviet spy as White was so clearly wanting to lead an International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank with pro-Western and especially pro-U.S. leadership.

**Some years ago, I had to save the Wiki entry on I.F. Stone from being too credulous about Stone's supposed pro-Stalin and pro-Soviet Union views back in the 1930s by pointing out what we learned in the Robert Cottrell biography of Stone, which is that Stone was fairly anti-Stalinist in his earliest editorials he wrote for the Philadelphia Inquirer as the purges began, calling Stalin a "thug"  and other epithets.  I have had a disagreement with Myra McPherson about this, I admit, as she believes publisher David Stern's daughter that Stern wrote several of those editorials denouncing Stalin's tactics and actions. I don't buy that for a moment as the editorials are in Stone's deep historically minded and then invective style, especially the op-ed about the military being purged by Stalin, which op-ed includes a reference to the French Revolution's Thermidor period. Sorry, but David Stern, a newspaper publisher businessman, was not about to reference the French Revolution in that way, unlike Stone, for whom the French Revolution remained a guiding avatar and reference point throughout his life.

A lesson in corporate media bias

Yesterday's LA Times had this front page story about Senator Warren's excellent third quarter fundraising haul.  The article managed to downgrade and avoid saying Warren's haul was second to Sanders. The headline should have read, "Sen. Warren's excellent fundraising haul still second to Sen. Sanders."  A sub-header could have read, in a moral universe, "Despite corporate media hailing Warren and criticizing Sanders throughout the quarter."  However, corporate media executives do not believe in a moral universe, and neither should we when reading their employees' (reporters') work.

I believe this is an excellent news article to dissect how corporate media bias operates.  In this article, the second place fundraiser, Warren, is listed first in the headline and again in the article's first paragraph. Warren is also the candidate highlighted in the first paragraphs of the article, complete with her campaign manager's effusive quote for his candidate.  This is all placed in at the beginning because people rarely read past the beginning of such articles, as people rarely go to the continued page inside the front page section of a newspaper.  The article reads as if it is completely fact based when the placement and phrasing are clearly persuasive writing designed to influence thinking beyond the article itself.

Deeper into the article, an opinion is offered through general, unsourced cherry picking of alleged polling data designed to favor Warren, again the second place fundraiser, plus one sentence about how it is good for voters to switch from Sanders to Warren because, after all, they are the same. The reporter or editor are saying, You can trust us.  We know what we're talking about.  Warren is better than Sanders.  Vote for her if you want a progressive.  

The greatest phrasing slant is how the article has to finally mention Bernie was the top fundraiser in the quarter. The third paragraph in the article states: "The (Warren's) amount is close to the haul by her Senate colleague and fellow progressive Sanders, of Vermont, who earlier in the week reported raising $25.3 million." This is very awkward phrasing, designed to avoid saying, straight up, Bernie hauled in the most money--and again, notwithstanding all those doom and gloom stories about his campaign failing that appeared nearly every day in the quarter in most leading newspapers, especially the Washington Post.

This is how the corporate media generally operates (one finds exceptions, of course, but we are talking about the overall narrative one sees with op-eds and broadcast cable news). It is standard procedure for at least 120 years. See as examples: Upton Sinclair's "The Brass Check," George Seldes' "Freedom of the Press," Chomsky/Herman's "Manufacturing Consent," Mark Hertsgaard's "On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency," and Robert Parry's "Fooling America."

It is not a situation where the article contains false or "fake" news in any sense Trumpists mostly mean when they use that "fake news" mantra. Instead, what we see, as critical readers of this particular Los Angeles Times article, is a slanted headline and slanted phrasing in the article, cherry picking of information, and highlighting who corporate media has been shown to wish to promote in the past several months, Warren, and who corporate media wishes to not promote, which has fairly consistently been Sanders. See here for a Sanders' campaign compilation of only the tip of the iceberg of bias corporate media has shown. And let us note how information is simply not provided. Example: If Warren had more donors overall than Sanders, that would be mentioned and perhaps highlighted. Since that is not true, it is ignored.  And let's get specific here:  Bernie had 1.4 million donors giving an average of $18, and largely from working class people.  Warren had less than half, just over 500,000 donors, donating an average of $26, with far more in the professional classes than working classes as donors.

I remember my Dad telling me how, when he stationed in Texas and Oklahoma in 1956 during the Eisenhower-Stevenson election campaign, several newspapers would never refer to Stevenson by name. Stevenson would merely be referred to as "the President's opponent." Back then, one referred to the "capitalist press" as opposed to "corporate media." As I say, one has to translate corporate/capitalist speak in newspaper or media reporting. It is not necessarily the reporter's fault, either.  Editors often determine headlines and order of paragraphs, and edit sentences.

With this Los Angeles Times article, I expect there was probably a lot of editing work.

Cenk gets angry, correctly so, at Joy Reid, a leading voice at MSNBC

This post is not for Republicans. This is for those who are Democratic Party members or on the left side of the usual political equation. 

I don't think I've seen Cenk so angry in awhile, and rightfully so.  Joy Reid is definitely an embarrassment. It is such a shame she is so prominent on MSNBC. I guess it is why I am glad I no longer have cable and do not have to watch stupidness. I just get the snippets, and that is more than enough.  Just watch.  Cenk makes a great point that those, like Reid, who worried about a divisive primary in 2016 are aching for one in 2020 because they fear Bernie may run, and win.

Cenk focuses on the portion of Reid's tweet about body language, and again rightfully so.  But some should comment on Reid's reference to Bernie's "early writings" as being disingenuous too. Reid lied first off about "early writings."  There is one, and only one, article Bernie wrote for an "underground" early 1970s mag where he cited porn mags and then asked why it is that more people, especially women, were not standing up against sexual stereotypes that demean women. The fact that the citations in his article did not carry quotation marks, and were paraphrases and summaries, threw off Chuck Todd at the time, and now Joy Reid, and others in the media, who thought Bernie was endorsing what was said in the paraphrases and summaries. That is why they said the article was incoherent at best because of where he immediately went next in the article, which was to be supportive of women's rights and dignity as human beings. He then ended with a fictional dialogue that occurred in a lot of people's households in the late 1960s and early 1970s and was also a bow to Mark Twain's essays on men and women in "Letters from Earth" and "Diary of Adam" and "Diary of Eve." Bernie's article, however, is not a long article. One can now find it on the Internet, though I cited it above from a longer article in Mother Jones at the time it became a short lived issue. 

I read the article when the issue first arose, and was amazed at how twisted the interpretation was, and how ignorant people in the media are now of what passed for creative writing in early 1970s radical journals, and the way in which people wrote in those journals. But I was not surprised because these media elite people, when not lying cynics, are really, really dumb, and would fail Comprehension 101. They are also the type of folks who think Johnny Mercer's song, "Baby, It's Cold Outside" is about sexual assault. They fail to understand cultural history and what the woman's side of the conversation in that song had to be about as part of courting in the 1940s.* And news flash to Joy Reid: Bernie's stance from the time he was mayor of Burlington through the present has been and continues to be one of consistent endorsement of women's rights across the board, from reproductive rights to rights in the workplace and dignity as human beings. Consistent. And Bernie opposed the anti-gay marriage act of 1996 that Bill Clinton signed and Hillary Clinton clung to until 2013. 

As I say, Joy Reid is an embarrassment. But I have also said that about Chuck Todd, Don Lemon, Anderson Cooper and the like. FoxNews? It is not even worthy of mention. The anger one has against the WaPo, NYT, MSNBC is they should know better--and their limitations speak precisely to the Empire and to international corporate capitalism, from whom these people receive their paychecks. They know which marks they are supposed to stand on when they speak. They know what is said, and not said, in polite, elite circles. They are the proverbial person who Upton Sinclair referred to when he said a century ago, and I paraphrase, "It is difficult to change a man's mind when his job depends upon his not changing his mind." 

An even older saying from about 110 years ago was that it was not necessary for the British elite to bribe the then-mainstream capitalist owned newspaper men of the time. For they already stood for the Empire. That is how they got their jobs. That is how they held their jobs. 

I did not say it before as I think it is too early. As I watch Bernie go around the middle west and speak out against the tax bill, and promote a consistent agenda for people, I think he has to be considered a front runner for 2020. Damn it whether he is 78 in 2020. Just have him pick Nina Turner, Rose DeMoro or Nick Hannauer as VP. That will scare the elite shitless, and Sanders and Turner, DeMoro or Hannauer will barnstorm the nation.

* Margaret Whiting, who sang the song with Johnny Mercer, was the daughter of Richard Whiting, a famous songwriter in the first three decades of the 20th Century.  She was a very forward woman for the time, and was fearless.  

Richard Hofstadter tried to explain it to us. Did we listen? Nope.

The late, great historian out of Columbia University, Richard Hofstadter (1916-1971), in 1964, in his now must-read again book, "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life," tried to warn us. Here is Hofstadter, at pages 133-134 of his book I am recently re-reading:

"There seems to be such a thing as the generically prejudiced mind. Studies of political intolerance and ethnic prejudice have shown that zealous church-going and rigid religious faith are among the important correlates of political and ethnic animosity (footnote omitted). It is the existence of this type of mind that sets the stage for the emergence of the one-hundred percenter and determines the similarity of style beween the modern right wing and the fundamentalists. In fact, the conditions of the cold war and the militant spirit bred by the constant struggle against world Communism have given the fundamentalist mind a new lease on life. Like almost everything else in our world, fundamentalism itself has been considerably secularized, and this process of secularization has yielded a type of pseudo-political mentality whose way of thought is best understood against the historical background of the revivalist preacher and the camp meeting. The fundamentalist mind has had the bitter experience of being routed in the field of morals and censorship, on evolution and Prohibition, and it finds itself increasingly submerged in a world in which the great and respectable media of mass communication violate its sensibilities and otherwise ignore it. In a modern, experimental, and 'sophisticated' society, it has been elbowed aside and made a figure of fun...(I)n politics, the secularized fundamentalism of our time has found a new kind of force and a new punitive capacity. The political climate of the post(WWII) era has given the fundamentalist type powerful new allies among the other one-hundred percenters: rich men, some of them still militant against the social reforms of the New Deal; isolationist groups and militant nationalists; Catholic fundamentalists, ready for the first time to unite with their former persecutors on the issue of "Godless Communism"; and Southern reactionaries newly animated by the fight over desegregation."

Wow.  Fifty-three years ago.

Yes, aging white Baby Boomers, let's look into our societal mirrors. When I read this book in college, I thought we would never succumb to the type of "get off my lawn" racism and xenophobia our parents and grandparents' generations were susceptible to in their politics and zealous religiosity. I laughed at Archie Bunker, and now, I realize a majority of my fellow male and female Baby Boomers were seeing Archie as someone they aspired to become.  In 2016, I started re-reading Hofstadter more for commemoration of the centennial of Hofstadter's birth, beginning with "The American Political Tradition," "The Age of Reform: From Bryan to F.D.R.," "The Progressive Historians: Turner, Beard, and Parrington," and "The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays."  When Trump announced in 2015, I had said on FB what concerned me was how Trump was "calling up the demons" long asleep or at least staying on the sidelines in American politics.  The Never-Trumpers, you know, the ones on MSDNC/MSNBC (you know these horrible Never Trumpers: Nicole Wallace, Steve Schmidt, Rick Wilson, David Frum, among others) all practiced a dog-whistle politics that played around with racism and xenophobia, allowed urban centers to rot for forty years (Nixon's benign neglect policy, which the original Neo-liberal, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, another jerk of a human being, pushed for Nixon), and pursued a foreign policy and trade policies that made desperate peasants go "El Norte" and decimated industrial communities throughout the center regions of our nation.  And the only place allowed in the discourse to their "left" were the corporate Democrats and Clintonites, the ones who played into those same dog whistles and told us there was no choice to march further to the right, to the anti-intellectual fundamentalism, etc.  I thought, though, as I read the essays in the "paranoid" politics book, maybe Hofstadter was too credulous at the way in which that paranoid, anti-intellectual politics could re-envelop a majority of citizens in our nation (or at least enough to elect a Senate majority and president).  As I started reading Hofstadter's essays and books again, however, I realized I did not have "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life," and ordered the paperback, after two failed times to get the hardback (both were mildewed and had to be returned; a metaphor there, maybe?). 

Anyway, I finally came back to this particular Hofstadter book in the last week, noting again one modern irony Hofstadter could have never predicted, which is the way American right wingers have accepted their Dear Leader Trump's cozy relationship with Russians without any shame for the way in which right wingers conducted themselves during the Red Scare throughout the Cold War.  However, Hofstadter's insights quoted above so apply to our present when I speak with, read FB posts of, or meet those people, mostly Baby Boomers, who still support Trump--especially as I begin to hear or read how they now think Trump has "kept his promises."  If any of them think that, please recognize the only "promises" Trump has "kept" are his promises which promote racism and xenophobia. Hoftstadter makes the point how evangelical white working class people, holding their guns and screaming their love of "God" or "Jesus," are in a coalition with rich people in our nation, allowing rich people to control the economy and our lives.  This continues to be one big con job on the working class. Yet, here we are at a point where Trump installs swamp monsters who hate the working class into Cabinet positions, continues to destroy any sense of government as a means to help people in any communal way, and triples-down on racist and xenophobic rhetoric.  And yet, a majority of white Baby Boomers continue to lap it up, slovenly, willingly, and with hatred and ignorance to guide them--attacking anything published in the NY Times or mainstream corporate media as completely "fake" and never discerning the distinctions  of 100 years of journalistic self-criticism, centered on exposing the "capitalist press" or "corporate owned media," which Will Irwin, Upton Sinclair, George Seldes, I.F. Stone, Ben Bagdikian, Chomsky, among others, tried to teach us.  I was privileged to be friendly with the founding dean of the UC Berkley School of Journalism, Edwin "Ed" Bayley, and his brilliant wife, Monica, during most of their retirement years in Carmel, CA. Bayley wrote "Joe McCarthy and the Press," based upon his experiences as a former news reporter who covered Republican US Senator from Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy, for the Milwaukee (Wisconsin) Journal. Besides providing a blow by blow description of the rise and fall of Joseph McCarthy in the context of news reporting, Bayley posited the best way for a society to stop a demagogue is for the media to print the truth about what the demagogue says, compare what is said with that truth, and do so forcefully and consistently.  What Bayley could not foresee is the way in which cognitive dissonance works to filter out the truth and outright avoid the truth, just calling the newspapers liars without, again, any discernment from the type of self-criticism from journalists about how corporate media actually operates.

Not once do a majority of we aging white Baby Boomers look into that societal mirror to see how much our religious fundamentalists here, in hating the modern world, hating intellectuals, especially those in the modern monasteries we call college campuses, resemble the religious fundamentalists our Establishment's foreign policy promoted in the Middle East throughout and after the Cold War, killing off Pan-Arabists, secularists, and the like, and leaving, in the rubble and luxury skyscapers of the Middle East only the religious zealotry.  When right wingers tell me, I, as a naive "libtard," do not understand the Arab Muslim fundamentalists, I respond, Yes, I do. I am looking at you and the way you think, too. And to American Zionist Jews of even the liberal stripe--including those relative few who actually read the non-insightful historian, the late Bernard Lewis, or worse, listen to the likes of a Dennis Prager--who tell me, "You don't understand the Arab mind," I answer, "Yes, I do. I understand you. You, with your good versus evil. You, with your kill or be killed mentality when it comes to Arabs and Jews. You, with your cynical and blithe rejection of Jewish rabbinic philosophy's post-A.D. 70 universalism and reversion to Jewish tribalism. Yes, I understand all that, and, therefore understand, but do not agree with, any more than I agree with you, the tribalism expressed by too many Palestinians and Arabs who want their land back."

On a personal note, as I see how much people never click on links, believe click bait headlines, and ask for support for positions I previously and already provided over and over, showing they never got past a one line Twitter style reading of anything, I have wanted to just completely drop out. I have tired of uninformed opinions throughout the Internet, even including so-called journals and newspapers, and uninformed opinions stated with such confident vehemence.  This is particularly true regarding the topic of immigration, continues with the actual legal history of the 2nd Amendment, and the continued inability to see how much we, as a people, depend upon government to be a vehicle to help each other (I mean, just look at the smaller rural communities where the biggest employers often are, not Wal-Mart, but the school district or the prison, or state-wide, how often hospitals and universities are the states' largest employers, and not merely Wal-Mart).  I realize hardly anyone will read this long post. However, I write for posterity, the modern version of Victor Serge's famous lament that he wrote for his drawer.  I figure The Daughter will be my curator at some point in her life....:)

In that sort of frustration, maybe depression over nearly the last year, I finally decided three weeks ago to leave my daytime law job after a many years-long build up of my anger at the litigation system had reached a point where I could not even go into the office anymore. So much greed permeating both sides. So much rancor over the spoils of that greed. The entire tort system in our nation is a sick consequence of our society's inability to care for each other and represents a dog-eat-dog (sorry, dogs!) worldview where we try to bankrupt people and businesses for vengeance, which we mistakenly call "justice." So much creation of after-the-fact blame, finding ways to trap "deep pockets." All instead of simply and directly promoting public policies through our elected governments, policies which promote and help people regardless of whether any individual "deserves" something or not.  I often note to people in the litigation world how, in more socialist oriented nations, the tort system is almost irrelevant, as people know, if they are in an accident, they are taken care of no differently than anyone else.  Thus, there is less need to sue a doctor for a single mistake, where the cost of care and trial verdict will bankrupt and ruin the entire life of the doctor or maybe the hospital, even above insurance (not that I did that much medical malpractice defense, but I have seen and done some medical malpractice defense and some plaintiff side over the years).  There is rarely ever forgiveness in the tort system, often only blame and vengeance.

As I hit the age of 62 at the beginning of this month, and, as The Daughter, next month, begins her final year of college, I finally decided, for my own self-health for once, to make a move to get poorer, with The Wife's and The Children's (and Parents') support, particularly to start myself on a road to become a teacher--though an interesting opportunity for entertainment contracts law is suddenly beckoning, which was, ironically, my first goal as I completed law school so many decades ago.  Anyway, at this point, the current plan, as I dry out from 30 odd years of litigation, is for me is to teach High School History, though I admit I had, when arriving in New Mexico, wanted to pursue a PhD in American History and become a History professor--I had some great thesis papers I had wanted to write, too...Anyway, by the time I put The Wife and Family through four years of a thesis paper, I thought, who the hell would hire a white guy in his mid-60s for full professor track in this age of independent contractor-$2,500 a course adjuncts?  I don't want to leave this Land of Enchantment. At least, as a History High School teacher, I make a middle "middle class" wage, get health benefits and, for the first time in my life, a promise of a pension. Plus, I adore the high school students as they are beginning to form their own views of the world, are starting to think about what it means to be an adult, and are often looking for encouragement and support in that endeavor.  My goal as a teacher is to help the liberal or conservative among them see the contradictions and exceptions to their opinions--we are all wrong at one level or more--and recognize the continuing debate that is "History."  I did very well as a Mock Trial teacher-coach in high school back in our days living in Orange County, CA, and have always had a respect and an affinity for youthful thinking and their lack of patience with us Oldsters.  I have always lived with the much less known caveat to the 1960s student movement phrase "Never Trust Anyone Over 30, which was "Never Trust Anyone Over 30, Except I.F. Stone." Youth of today are not worried about age as much as Baby Boomers continue to be, though I think youth of today have more reason to hate their elders than our generation ever had, as it is not just about racism and xenophobia this time, it is about survival of civilization and survival of the planet, which transcends skin color and such.  When we see young white men killing people, I realize they are a frankly mentally challenged minority among the young and am thankful for that.  

But, back to the post.  

It is important to repeat the point here:  I never thought a majority of our generation of white Boomers would succumb to this current level of ignorance and hatred, and be so willing to destroy the legacies bequeathed from our great-grandparents (the ones who sent the ridiculously named Greatest Generation to war against Fascism after our great-grandparents pulled our nation out of the Great Depression) as my generation and parents' generation curdle up with their guns and hope to kill browner and other darker skin people--and white liberals. But, here we are. 

To the Kids of America, my message to you remains this: When we Oldsters rip you for speaking like lazy Socialists, do not lose faith in yourself. You don't really have to know Richard Hofstadter. Neither do your oldster parents and addled grandparents. You just have to know the philosophical world view of your parents is fundamentally flawed and this economic system is rigged against you (I mean, really, what does Trump care about the fact three people own more wealth than half the U.S. population?).  The Kids understand economic royalty--not desperate immigrants--are destroying the planet, slaughtering billions of animals in the process, and undermining any sense of community other than one that resembles the town in "Who Shot Liberty Valance?" before Jimmy Stewart's character arrives (Yes, I note the act of violence from the other gunslinger, John Wayne's character, saves the day for Stewart's character to survive and thrive...As I like to say, we are all wrong at one level or another...but isn't John Wayne then an antifa? Hmmm.....).  That film may be the film to watch after "The Mortal Storm," which was released just before the U.S. entered World War II, and dramatized how people fall into supporting dictatorships, always thinking the other guy will get his or hers, not realizing how often the people who support the dictators end up suffering, too.  You know, sorta like Trump supporters hurt by Trump policies but still support Trump as long as others who are not white "get theirs."  Kids, the key is to forget about most of us white Baby Boomers and come out and vote--vote past us. And please ignore every minority Baby Boomer who goes along with the white Baby Boomers who revere Trump. Yes, that has been a surprise to see among the Hispanic/Latino population here in New Mexico. I knew such confused, benighted people from an oppressed minority group existed in CA and also here. But seeing up close and personal Trumpist "minorities" has still been jolting and frustrating.  Hofstadter speaks of this phenomenon elsewhere in his book, too, writing how Irish Catholics, long despised and scapegoated among the Protestant class in 19th Century America, began to speak their language of the Know-Nothingness and other reactionary movements against continued immigration. Sound familiar, Sean Hannity? Sound familiar, Pat Buchanan? Sound familiar, Bill O'Reilly? Oh, there we are again. 

Even in my despair at the poorly informed, yet highly educated professionals I meet over the years, the poorly informed, less educated and white Baby Boomers glued to corporate cable television news, etc. I realize such people wonder why I continue to cling to the presidential candidacy of Bernie Sanders.  I do so because Sanders uses a form of rhetoric and policy analysis which would bring most Americans together, with a focus on public policy making, and directing our anger toward our better selves and better values, hopes, and a re-establishment of a communal sensibility.  Where I had disagreed with Hofstadter, and some other historians, is their elitist dismissal of the populist movements as too often animated by reaction and racism.  It is important not to throw out the hopefulness that was also an element within those movements.  Still, it is hard to discern the wheat from the chaff.  I therefore think back to Michael Harrington's last book, "Socialism: Past and Future," from thirty years ago, where he posited socialism will only come when it becomes obvious to a majority of people that we have to pursue kindness and forgiveness with each other, and use our elected government to help us, regardless of circumstances.  If our climate change throes do not lead to a ruining of civilization, and destruction of intelligence within society, our children and grandchildren may overcome our generation's and parents' generations' stupidness.  In the meantime, knowing I don't count, I retreat at the end of each weary work day into Hofstadter and reflect.  I retreat, just before bedtime, into Louis Auchincloss and Van Wyck Brooks, and reflect.  I have also gained the courage to retreat into becoming poorer and cutting our expenses--though The Wife said, "Hey, why don't you do a GoFundMe page to see if anyone will pay to read what you write for once?"  We laughed at that one!  Anyway, the monthly Internet bill is expensive, but it allows me the opportunity to at least communicate with others who have intellectual capabilities and understandings, something cheaper than a therapist.  

We will see what 2020 brings across our land.  The question is whether the Kids can overtake us aging Baby Boomers and our addled parents at the ballot box.  Come on, Kids. Save the planet and yourselves.  Save us from ourselves. I would hate to have to see you have to kill us in twenty or less years, for then I know we will have only taught you our own hate and ignorance. 

I provide a song for this post...Black Bonzo's "Sound of the Apocalypse"....The use of the song in this post has all the irony of Hofstadter's insight, which is to say apocalyptic thinking is ultimately irrational in most times. Hofstadter implored us to stay with reason, stay with governmental public policy making where we experiment with where particular lines are drawn, not worrying about "isms" whether capitalism, socialism, or the like.  Europe fought two horrific wars over "isms" on their own soil, which wars stretched to various places around the world. After their lands and people were ruined, they finally realized the argument over "isms" is terribly wrong. But, with the global economy, we are now in what I may call the Great Reaction against the changes wrought with globalization, and, worse still, more and more of Europe is beginning to succumb to the early to mid 20th Century ways of fascism.  It is a shame to admit otherwise enlightened rich people will embrace fascism rather than accept even a bit of socialism for regular people. Trump is part of the Great Reaction, which is an international fascistic movement. Thanks, Baby Boomers throughout the planet, too.  Ugh.  Oh well.  Sing it and play it, Black Bonzo.  Sing into the apocalyptic moment. 

The Time I Opened Up Personally on Facebook as We Were Leaving California for New Mexico

The great investigative journalist, Dan Moldea, had loved this FB post so much he said he thought it should be published in some magazine or journal.  I am humbled by that, but I didn't feel comfortable having too widely read at the moment, and even now.  But I am ready to let it be published and protected I guess here at Blogger, and more particularly the MFBTS.  It sorta fills in some background of the very first post this morning in the Inaugural Day of MFBTS....:) This post was written around June 25.  We left town several days later as we stayed in California till the end of the month.

I don't like to talk about my personal life on FB but thought it time to open up at this moment of a very eventful year in my life. It is not a farewell but it is a milestone in a personal way and so if people want to read about what's happened to us and is happening, here it is:

Tomorrow the movers arrive at our home in Poway, San Diego County, California. The family home was sold in April and we have been renting back through this month to allow Jackie and the Daughter, whose name is Shayna by the way, to finish their respective school years. This Wednesday, Jackie and I, and the family dog Zoey, begin our trek to Albuquerque, New Mexico to begin another phase in our lives. We have a heavy regret in leaving what I call the Greatest State in the Union, but we are excited about moving to the Land of Enchantment, which is New Mexico.

Almost three years ago, it hit me that our family's continuing yearly medical out of pocket costs, averaging at that point over $20,000 a year, and owing mostly to my continuing and increasingly losing battle with atrial fibrillation and tachycardia, were draining us of the ability to pay down a high priced California land/home mortgage. I knew by 2014 that by the year 2017, when I hopefully reached age 60, we would have to leave San Diego County and likely California (unless we wanted to live in Fresno or Stockton or some rural area) but at the same time try to find gainful employment as a lawyer. There was also the factor of what Jackie has often called a toxic environment of the job I was in, and a continuing frustration I have had in not being able to have the economic flexibility to pursue mediation as a career or an academic career (by going back to get a graduate degree in History or Literature).

So the research and planning began. We initially thought the answer for us was Portland, OR or somewhere in Washington State. We even took a trip there last year and, while deeply impressed, we found the home prices in Portland were only half of California's and would still require us to have relatively high paying jobs to hold a home mortgage, again owing to the fact we were not very far in paying down our CA mortgage due to medical expenses and our decision to pay for our children's higher education. We also found the traffic going into Portland from various directions to be surprisingly Los Angeles-like due to a refusal on the part of the electorate there to improve its access roads. Washington State outside of Seattle stuck Jackie as too provincial and Seattle itself home-price prohibitive for us.

Then, late last year, Albuquerque, NM came into view and multiple trips later in the early part of this year, we knew we found the right recipe for residency: Great climate, inexpensive home prices, a wonderful university nearby and a place culturally and politically resembling what I again call the Greatest State in the Union. We were also and continue to be awestruck by the friendliness of the various people we have met in Albuquerque and Rio Rancho, the latter town our actual destination--and this has made it very special and wonderful for us, even as we have no family ties there.

The Son and Daughter have each decided to stay in what I have long told them is Vacationland, i.e. San Diego, as the Daughter is continuing her college career while the Son is teaching at a truly elite SAT prep organization (he is I think the only non-PhD or Master Degree teacher there) and applying for graduate school in the Fall.

2017 has been a bittersweet year in many ways in our immediate family, but medically, it has been a miraculous one for me. After years of not being able to undergo a heart ablation procedure due to my internally strange anatomy and what was previously viewed as a "mess" inside me, owing to a DVT blood clot I suffered in the late 1980s, my Los Angeles based cardiologist sent me to the Cleveland Clinic owing to his friendship with the lead electrophysical cardiologist there. I went to Cleveland Clinic for testing in January and with new technologies, they were able to propose a mapping process to ablate the tachycardia and atrial fibrillation that were growing worse and worse, particularly since September 2016 when my Los Angeles doctor began to worry about my increased issues with those two electrical conditions. The scary part was the alternative that would have made me a candidate for a pacemaker that only those with very shortened lives receive, which involves removal of aortic valves.

In April, I returned to Cleveland and underwent the procedure, which has so far been a miraculous success. For the first time since the dawn of my 20s, I am in regular sinus rhythm and my skin tone as bright as a twenty something too (I am still on the multiple daily medications but the plan is to be off them all by the end of next month). It has been a wonderful experience to breathe normally and I did not realize how bad off physically, relatively speaking, I was--and frankly, most people including Jackie did not notice either as I guess I hid it well. After the ablation, I began jumping around to the point where Jackie was beginning to worry I was getting too young for her! But then, I got hit with gallstones at the start of May and had to have my gallbladder removed later that month. That threw me for a loop and has ironically led me to avoid my favorite foods of pizza and ice cream (electrical heart problems aside, I continue to be told by doctors that my physical heart and arteries are ridiculously strong and had no dietary restrictions till the gallstones finally hit) and the little paunch that was finally starting to show has gone away to a point where I am probably weight wise as thin as my mid 30s. The ice cream and pizza eating are supposed to return by the end of next month for me but I find I am doing fairly well with the limiting diet. So overall, my health is as strong as it was in my 20s and I am ready medically more than ever for this new chapter in our lives.

Jackie and I have each found employment in Albuquerque/Rio Rancho and again we are feeling blessed at being able to have the choice to move to a lovely place, climate- and people-wise. I still feel some rage at our nation's medical system that drained us of our savings but feel blessed and amazed at how the doctors and staff at Cleveland Clinic, a place which operates on principles of the British National Health Service (non-profit where everyone, including doctors are on salary and where doctors not hedge fund types make the economic decisions), saved my life. I could and should also rage at a system that led me to front the Son's higher education costs to keep him out of debt, but I do not regret that more discretionary decision in the least and we have part of our savings informally set aside to protect our daughter in this regard as well.

As we have gone through the tougher patches (physical, emotional and economic) of preparing our home for moving, and gone through the grief of leaving our families, Jackie and I have each said we are glad we are able to continue on our life journey together. We both find solace in the fact that we are married 30 years next month and still find each other our best friend and only lover. We admittedly look forward to being empty nesters in Albuquerque, with the family dog Zoey well in her Winter Years but still the loving, kind creature we rescued nearly twelve years ago.

Jackie and the children have also decided that I need to calm down my FB posts for, as the Daughter says, "Dad, you've said pretty much where you stand on politics, superhero films and music, haven't you?" Yes, that is probably true, I reply. And the Son and the Wife strongly nod in agreement with the Daughter's statement. I have said that as we now begin the last steps in our move, I will see if it is possible to curtail my FB activity. I crack up at those who say, "I'm leaving FB and I won't ever comment on anything again!" and of course within two weeks, little has changed. I have, however, made a promise and I will make the effort to not check the feed in the first place.

I was hoping there was going to be another change in our lives when a major film entity at the start of this month contacted my novel's hardcover publisher to see who owned the film/miniseries rights--and learned I do, with my second publisher of the paperback/Kindle version. They said they were going to contact us by this past Friday with a go or pass decision, but have not contacted us as of yet. Who knows how the wheels of film and miniseries work even in this new age of Amazon, Netflix, Hulu and the like? It is an honor to have heard the person from the entity say how much particular people there love my novel and that those persons have actually read the book all the way through (that seems to be a rarity in the so-called Hollywood circles from what I have read over the years). But still, I consider this development not much different than a lottery ticket. As they say, "Don't quit your day job..." Well, not for that reason, anyway...unless one is young, has no family responsibilities or the like, I suppose.

Overall, Jackie and I have realized we are living in the Nicholas Cage-Tea Leoni film, "The Family Man" or else "It's a Wonderful Life" and we move forward with a touch of wariness, some familial sadness, a declining rage at leaving the Greatest State in the Union, and a burning rage at our nation's economic and justice system--but with confidence and joy in our hearts. And for me, I mean "hearts" both physically and emotionally.

And then, about ten days or so later, as we were unpacking in New Mexico, I wrote this on FB:

Still unpacking books. But it is extraordinary to look at the wisdom and insight on the shelves of the new home in New Mexico. I was all set late last year to get rid of most of the books, either through selling or giving to libraries. The Wife, sensibly, said it was better to sell them or give them away than haul them across a couple of States and have to find room in a smaller home--and pay for poundage with the movers. I had learned from booksellers, and one collector in particular, that while the books were an unusual collection, and there were first editions and signed editions, it was not worth any more than a buck a book overall, so about $1,500. That is what convinced me to decide to lose the books for the move.

Then, something happened. Each of The Children came separately to The Wife and me and said, "Dad, please don't get rid of your books." As one of them said, "Dad, you are part of your books. When you die, it is part of what we will remember of you." The Wife and I looked at each other and smiled, and she said, "Okay, I guess we keep the books."

Still, as we unpack throughout the house, The Wife is beginning to wonder again, "Can't you prune more?" Before the move, I pruned about 300 of the books. And as we unpacked, I realized I could prune more and have thus far pruned about 30 more, not much, but a start.

And yet, as I sit typing on a computer here in the room we have designated as The Office Room, and scanning the books on the six bookshelves around the room, I am reminded of why I have held onto the books. The Vidal historical novels and essays, the Chomsky works, I.F. Stone and George Seldes books (all of them!), Upton Sinclair galore, every Michael Harrington, the Victor Serge works, writers from Kingsolver to Walter Mosley to William Kotzwinkle to Indianans Vonnegut and Tarkington, and of course dear Sinclair Lewis (all of the works of Lewis), Stephen Jay Gould and Feynman, most of the works of Hofstadter, some Commager, two of the three David Brion Davis works on slavery and Western culture, and Van Woodward, more Foners (plural), all the David Potters, EP Thompson works, more recent historians (including FB pal Ben Alpers), sociologists Jencks, Riesman, William Julius Williams, environmentalist works from Bernard DeVoto to Robert Marshall and Aldo Leopold, Native American works, African-American history (which surprised one of the two African-American mover guys as I marked subjects of book boxes), women's histories and separately several books of one of my favorite historians without pedigree, Catherine Drinker Bowen, legal histories and bios including a book from 100 years ago about Lincoln as a lawyer that remains vibrant and brilliant, sports histories and bios, and on and on. And in another room, much more fiction from the classics of Dickens, Trollope, and of course Hardy, to Maugham, Greene, Ignazio Silone and up through Isabel Allende, Vikram Seth and Michael Connelly. And back to The Office Room, more eclectic historians and writers than one may usually imagine and other FB friends including Dan Moldea and Myra MacPherson.

And yet, still left packed are all the Doonesbury books, the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, Bloom County, books on China, Vietnam, Russia, more journalist books, and further Judaica, though there is already a row for Jewish authors writing fiction on the subjects Jewish, Israeli, Zionist and the like, and the magisterial bio of FDR by the now felon financier and business maven, Conrad Black, and more world and American history, though lots already are on the shelves. The Son has "stolen" the Calvin & Hobbes and Far Sides, though, and they remain in the Greatest State in the Union (I should add there is an entire row for books on the Greatest State in the Union, including nearly all of the late Kevin Starr's works).

Some find it an insult to ask, Did you read all of the books on your shelves? I am fine with the question, perhaps because I've read about 75% or so of the books on the shelves. I hope that does not sound arrogant. It is simply a fact. Maybe it is why I so admire the handyman who came by yesterday as he knows how to do stuff that I cannot and as I told him, I barely know the difference between a wrench and screwdriver (not really true, I added, but it may as well be true). He was astounded by all the books in the house but I said we all learn in different ways. And many of us gain insight as we go along, some more than others of course.

These were my thoughts as I was getting ready to attend the Sinclair Lewis Conference in Sauk Centre, Minnesota, something I've long wanted to do, so I took some moments to write about the books on the shelves.

POSTSCRIPT:  All books unpacked by the end of July.  Hooray!

Bartels' latest public opinion analysis and the limits of public opinion analysis as practiced

I have respected Larry Bartels' analyses over the past twenty years more than most of his perch in political science land. In 2008, Bartels saw how democratic or republican (ideas, not political parties) values were eroding, as the non-coastal parts of the US had been hollowed out by trade deals and automation (although I wonder how he feels about his critique of Thomas Frank these days, especially as one begins to study the Knight Foundation as to who are the primary non-voters). Bartels' latest study (hat tip to a friend who is a retired Political Science professor from the University of California) is about how there is a growing lack of confidence in our public commitment to open government--but how the Republicans who have lost that confidence are more dangerous because theirs is rooted in ethnic and racial prejudices, and apocalyptic civil-war rhetoric. If I read Bartels' analysis correctly, he finds 20-30% of partisans in each political party who openly express a belief that violence is justified, and strongmen/women are required for leadership. He even found anti-democratic values more openly stated as an idea among Democratic Party partisans at least in regards to one question Bartels' study had asked.

Where Bartels does not go, and this is not a criticism of Bartels, is to find out, for example, which group of Dems want to have the president from their party shut down the other parties' controlled Congress. I think Bartels, if cornered, would assume it is more likely the AOC-Berniecrat activist. I would demur to that assumption or hypothesis. My gut is it is more the MSNBC truster who would want Biden to dissolve the entire Congress if the Congress goes fully Republican in 2022 (and it likely will if Biden governs as Biden intends). As an economically left New Dealer, I didn't trust Obama and I don't trust Biden. If they did declare martial law, they would do so to enforce a neo-liberal or corporate economics in a dictatorship, not complete the New Deal. After all, the corporate wing of the Democratic Party has little to no problem with the way in which Google, Disney, McDonalds, Coca-Cola, and other corporations bow to Chinese government censorship, and have no substantive problem with Chinese labor policies that replicate capitalist accumulation period-England, but under a Maoist-Communist banner.  It is why corporate Dems refuse to work to enact card check or other labor reforms, or seek to give more power to the International Labor Organization, unlike their trade tribunals in the various trade agreement regimes created over the past nearly thirty years. The corporate Democrats are the ones who sided with corporate Republicans in establishing the global corporate order through international trade agreements they called "free trade," but which highly regulated intellectual property and agriculture favoring American agribusiness, and pushed manufacturing to lower wage/more exploitable work force nations.

I make this point because, unlike the much more complicated Democratic Party partisan divides, the Republicans who wanted Trump to shut down the Congress are pretty easy to find. And the sources those folks rely on for their world views are talk radio, FoxNews, and increasingly QAnon, NewsMax, and OANN--where there is a grooming for civil war to lead to a white nationalist/Fascist dictatorship to "save" America. Hence, Bartels' concern. It is in these media sources one finds the screaming white cultural grievances, and grooming for Fascism. When the economic populist component is mentioned, it is more where it is couched in language of government assistance for "in-crowd" people, but with harsh criminal laws that tend to more keep down those who are not in the racial or ethnic "in-crowd." 

I remain convinced, not dissimilar to Thomas Frank and Christopher Lasch formulations, an economic populism of a Bernie type can most effectively recreate class solidarity across racial and ethnic lines, and stabilize belief in open government values--IF one is interested in protecting the stability of a society instead of taking care of your own short-term economic needs. The Republican Party's approach is clearly trending toward authoritarian Fascistic class divisions along cultural lines, and ethnic/racial lines. The corporate Democratic Party line believes more in meritocracy and political pluralism, where diversity reigns in superficialities of skin color and gender, but where the elite interests are most protected and promoted--even to the detriment of the many who are increasingly left behind in global-oriented markets. It remains my contention the corporate wing of the Democratic Party has a symbiotic relationship with the Republican fascists, where one side breeds more of the other side.  The fact that many working class people who voted for Trump can conflate Democratic Party politicians with rich people should be enough to ask how and most importantly why that is.

The fact that questioning has been so long ignored (and, worse, denied, as in Bartels' critique of Thomas Frank's major book on American politics) is the purpose of this post. My prime criticism of public opinion political scientist researchers is they so rarely question whether people are able to correctly self-identify "what" they are--meaning left, liberal, moderate, conservative, right. I say this despite the fact political scientists and pollsters have long recognized and documented how the majority of Americans, when asked about specific policy issues, are "liberal"-"left", not "center" or "moderate," at least as how those political philosophy conclusions are defined in corporate media. The disconnect, where people self-identify as "moderate" or "conservative" compared to "liberal," while somehow wanting steep wealth and progressive income and capital gains taxes, higher minimum wages, single payer health care, cancelled student debt, and free college tuition, to take a few examples, has to do more with propaganda techniques which deeply embedded themselves in our corporate-sponsored media-directed discourse that makes opinion surveys akin to asking fish about whether they notice the water.  This blind spot also applies to "journalists," pundits, and political scientists themselves, who, when pushed on structural bias, are wont to yell, "Bias? You must be a conspiracy theorist!"

I have long said a proper public opinion survey (and this goes for overrated hacks such as Jonathan Haidt, a psychologist who studies people's political views and values) should and must apply Daniel Bell's formulation that uses the modifiers "economic," "political," and "cultural" to qualify the spectrum words "left," "liberal," "moderate," "conservative," and "right." Bell called this his "three realms" methodology in his brilliant book, The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (1976). Applying this methodology to himself, Bell would say to interviewers, "I am an economic radical, a political liberal, and a cultural conservative. So what am I? Liberal or Conservative?"  And he would almost always smile with the recognition of confusing the interviewer.

Too often, most Americans, not able to articulate the structure of their own beliefs, begin, without consciousness, with "cultural" issues to determine if someone is a "liberal" or "conservative," or "far left" or "far right"--without recognizing they are doing so. They rarely cite economical and political theories and policies to define someone as "liberal" or "conservative," nor ask how their own economic or political philosophies or policy views interact with how they evaluate the overall world views. This is most frustrating because, in Daniel Bell's other works, Bell taught us how global corporate capitalism, emboldened with trade treaties, was making economics primary for understanding the world.  He did not, of course, mean we should be listening to economists over sociologists, political scientists, and historians--as he recognized how corporate power capture of college or university economics departments had long occurred. 

This leads to the second problem I have with political scientists' public opinion surveys and analyses: Too often, political scientists refuse to engage with the structural biases in modern official/corporate media. They think, if they do so, they are making value judgments about the media people consume, and worse, becoming "political"--and therefore biased. I agree this is a very real problem in conducting experimental and empirical analyses, and that attempting to quantify the degree to which media sources influence the way voters evaluate their own world views is probably impossible--at least without putting yourself directly into the analysis. However, if a political scientist's public opinion analysis ignores the way in which corporate-owned media outlets, upon which the majority of Americans rely, frame what is or is not discussed, and how various topics are discussed or not discussed, then the political scientist's analyses tend to be self-fulfilling prophecies at best, or, worse, reenforce, under the guise of scholarship, the very propaganda they have ignored. 

Yes, it is harder to do a "press" or "media" criticism within a public opinion survey analysis, but if one begins with the questions using the Bell Three Realms Methodology, one can begin to help improve the way in which readers of political science analyses, and citizens answering the political scientists' surveys, can more effectively and accurately self-identify. This means political scientists should learn how to more effectively recognize how language is used in corporate media presentations, how questions are asked in different ways of different political actors, and where assumptions of legitimacy are made that fall more in line with corporate hierarchies of the media companies themselves--and corporations in general. 

If I was to have an opportunity to speak to a group of political scientists, I would say they should take history of journalism courses that critically review and analyze the works of Will Irwin, Upton Sinclair (The Brass Check), George Seldes (Freedom of the Press), Ben Bagdakian (The Media Monopoly), and Robert Parry (Fooling America), as well as the examples provided in Noam Chomsky/Ed Herman's Manufacturing Consent.  It would greatly help political scientists better formulate how to construct questions in surveys that better control for survey responders' own misunderstanding of the structures of their own world views, and to begin to understand how people are as manipulated in politically-oriented conclusions or opinions they express as they are to prefer Coke or Pepsi. Political scientists may also learn more about how large institutions control for dissent in interview and intern processes, where one has gone to college, etc.  Chuck Todd and Tucker Carlson did not materialize out of nowhere, ya know?

In short, to err on the side of letting people self-identify creates garbage-in/garbage-out analyses that reenforce the very trends that cause even learned people to be surprised at how we got to where we are in American politics. And, too often, political scientists fall prey to recapitulating, under public opinion surveys that ask who is "liberal" or "conservative," the very corporate biases that continue to bedevil and confuse us as a society.