Pundits have frequently claimed or alluded that Trump can be persuaded. That in his meeting with the press, there appears to be signs of respect. Trump is a bull in a china shop, and they are the porcelain. The election was the wrecking ball, crashing through their carefully worded columns. Their words failed and now they still believe they have the power. Their words cannot chain him any more than they did in the campaign. The press found a pedestal in the Pentagon Papers and Watergate. Tune in to them to keep the politicians straight. Sure they agreed not to show FDR getting out of a car or in his wheelchair. In some ways they are correct. The freedom of the press is an important right listed with religion coming in at number one on the bill of rights, but like all freedoms they are a matter of debate. If gun control and the increasingly more common gun ban discussed also attack the bill of rights. The need to mention religion exemption to allow ordinary citizens to live their life as they chose. For the press both liberal and conservative, some freedoms are more constitutional than others. This Orwellian drive both increasing and increased by polarization. The need to fill up the 24 hour news cycle opened the doors for more content and in depth detailed investigated journalism takes time and money that doesn’t match the now stretched budget. Opinions are cheap and punditry rose to fill the gaps.
While I am convinced the major media outlets do their homework, an opinion based on fact is still an opinion. Look at the current liberal cry that the blue states are overtaxed. It is indeed true that Wyoming citizens get more per tax dollar in benefits than a citizen of Jersey. The government does far more than tax benefits and overall the Federal government globalization policies benefited the urban areas far more than the rural. Not to mention the rural poor need that support to survive. The party of caring is not quite as open as they claim to be. The popular vote overriding the electoral college will not solve inequality anymore than eight years of Obama did. The problem isn’t a system that is designed to stop a despot but that a faction wants to eliminate the voice of a bulk of states. California and New York would decide most elections. Maybe some campaigning in Chicago. Outside of the state by state primaries, most regions of the country where people could live but chose not to would not exist. Even if you lived in New York and California outside of five maybe six cities, your vote would be useless. Another fact is that a popular vote lead of 2.5 million votes is not a great percent out of the pool of citizens eligible to voting that is about 231 million or about 1%. We are a much larger and franchised nation since the constitution was written. An election lost is not the framework. The blue firewall of the union workers fell because jobs were leaving and nothing was coming to replace them. The Democrats and Clinton herself did not do what they did in upstate New York in 2000, which was going to the people. Trump held rallies everywhere. He at least pretended to that he wasn’t pretending in his outreach and promises. Giving up whether through secession or altering our governing document won’t make the rural folk disappear. The news and the outlets that provide it were historically the only window into the world for most people. The internet has permanently taken that mantle and the news attempting to win the race it invented as spiraled. Truth in the major outlets is at a low. Minimalism is in perhaps, less would be more but less should be longer. I do not suggest censorship but rather would your thoughts be aided by more time and resources longer and nuanced as it is.
-E.C. Fiori
The Radical Centrists 