A Good Person

I’ve never been a political animal, and never supported one party over another.  Two of my favorite modern Presidents are Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama.  While radically different in some ways, both Presidents were sincere patriots who offered what they felt the country needed at the time.  And big majorities of voters agreed.  Donald Trump is totally different, however, and presents a number of very serious threats to the US, its system of government, and our way of life.  This is one of many commentaries on him and the dire situation we find ourselves in under his administration.

This question has been rolling around inside my head for quite a while:

Who would be better to run the country - a very good person who hasn’t been up to the task so far, or a horrible person who seems to be getting good results?

I think of Jimmy Carter as an example of the first choice.  By all accounts, former President Carter is a very decent person – honest, intelligent, and caring.  But he was the wrong guy for the late-1970s, when the US was experiencing some big problems.  Ronald Reagan replaced Carter; he was the right guy for the times despite his flaws, and the US prospered greatly in a number of ways during his administration.

The obvious example of a horrible person running the country is Donald Trump.  But beware of the obvious!  Trump is a tremendous liar, a womanizer, bully, sorely uneducated, and extremely selfish.  But while he claims to have done great things for America, closer examination reveals huge problems with most of his accomplishments.  Just one example: He boasts of his big tax cuts for the middle-class.  Yet every non-partisan review shows that virtually all of the benefits went to the rich and to corporations, with no real benefit to the middle-class.  Meanwhile, our national debt has risen almost $2 trillion during his administration – so far. 

I’m not sure who would be a better example of the “horrible person doing a good job,” however, so let’s just use Trump there and pretend for now that his policies have been successful.  Before moving on, though, let’s look at what makes a “good person” and a “horrible person,” starting with the first one. 

For me at least, it largely goes back to what I learned in the Scouts.  Starting as a Cub Scout at the age of eight, and then as a Boy Scout from eleven to fourteen, I learned and strove to follow the Scout Law.  It defines a Scout as being:

·         Trustworthy

·         Loyal

·         Helpful

·         Friendly

·         Courteous

·         Kind

·         Obedient

·         Cheerful

·         Thrifty

·         Brave

·         Clean

·         Reverent

There are other characteristics of a good person in my mind, such as being Humble and Empathetic, and you may have your own preferred definition of what describes a good person.  But overall, I hope you agree that it’s hard to argue with the Scout Law.

Doesn’t it make sense, then, that a horrible person is someone who doesn’t display those kinds of behaviors?  So let’s take Donald Trump, and as fairly but realistically as possible see how he stacks up to the Scout Law.

Is Donald Trump Trustworthy?  With this one, there’s really no question, if we’re being honest about it.  Trump regularly spins the truth, ignores the truth, and on countless occasions tells blatant, outright lies far, far more often than any other politician in the nation's history.  From “I’ll release my tax returns if I run for President,” to “More people attended my inauguration that Obama’s,” to “I didn’t know anything about payments to Stormy Daniels,” and on and on.  We don’t have to look far to find rock-solid evidence that one cannot trust what Donald Trump says.

Is Trump Loyal?  Here it is less clear.  Trump repeatedly stresses the importance of people being loyal to him, and he tends to reward those who are.  Example: Senator Jeff Sessions was the first Senator to endorse Trump for president; he was rewarded with the prestigious job of Attorney General.  But Sessions also exemplifies the other side of loyalty in Trump’s world.  When Sessions recused himself from the Russia investigation, as he was legally required to do, Trump was livid; for months afterward, Trump attacked and insulted Sessions non-stop, even as Sessions did a superb job of advancing Trump’s other goals.  Trump’s loyalty has similarly melted away for others that he previously praised, simply for doing something that he didn’t like.  So Trump is loyal in his own way, but his loyalty to others is transitory and subject to 180 degree reversals.

What about Helpful?  In the context of how this is used in the Law, it refers to things like opening the door for someone, offering to carry a lady’s grocery bags, loaning a needy friend a few bucks – simple, thoughtful things like that.  Do we envision Donald Trump being that guy?  Probably not.  We’ve seen pictures of him holding an umbrella above himself while his wife is getting rained on, not opening a car door for her or letting her enter a building or car before he does.  Maybe those are rare exceptions, but his constant focus on his successes and his needs makes us think he doesn’t often go out of his way to help others.

Is the President a Friendly person?  We can’t know for sure what he’s like in private situations.  Our knowledge of him is mostly limited to photo ops, his frequent speeches in front of his political rally crowds, and other various situations.  His most common facial expression seems to be a scowl, expressing anger at one person or another.  We do see smiles, though many times they seem staged, not always genuine.  Does Donald Trump seem like the kind of guy who would come up to someone, put his arm around them, offer to buy them a beer and chat about sports, the weather, and their families?  I don’t think that’s a common experience for Trump, and I don’t think he’s a genuinely friendly person outside of his family members and very close friends.  Do you?

Is Courteous a word that comes to mind when you think of Trump?  I bet not.  He is known for being crass, impolite, and insulting, and seems to take pride in doing and saying any damn thing he wants, regardless of who it offends or hurts.  I don’t think courtesy is one of Donald “Grab ‘em by the pussy!” Trump’s strong suits.

Neither is being Kind.  Making fun of presidential candidates’ looks and other women’s looks, making fun of a disabled man’s inability to control his body movements, and of the intelligence of any politician, corporate leader, journalist or basically anyone who disagrees with him – who does that after they’re out of 7^th grade?  If you follow politics and other news, you know those things are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Trump’s willingness to be unkind to practically anyone.

How can we assess whether Donald Trump is Obedient – obedient to whom?  The Boy Scouts were thinking mostly in terms of parents, teachers, and other grownups.  In Trump’s case, we should probably consider his obedience to America’s citizens, especially those who voted for him, and to the Constitution and other laws, which he must enforce and obey as President of the US.  Regarding the voters, he gets a mixed grade.  He’s worked hard on deregulation, fighting illegal immigration, decreasing the size of the federal government, and beefing up the military.  But he promised a tremendous health care solution, lower taxes for the middle-class, and bringing back manufacturing jobs; those are examples of where he failed to follow through on his promises.

But it’s his attacks on the Constitution that are the real problem.  Whatever the results turn out to be from the Russia investigation, there are lots of verified instances where Trump has sought to illegally interfere with its progress.  One very recent example is naming Matt Whitaker as attorney general (in charge of the investigation); a man with virtually no qualifications for the job other than his public claims that the investigation is illegal and should be terminated!  Then there are the many emoluments clause problems, as Trump has repeatedly refused to distance himself from financially profiting from his role as President.  You may see things differently, but I give Donald Trump a “mostly not” in terms of being obedient as defined here.

Is the President a Cheerful fellow?  This is perhaps the least meaningful of the 12 Boy Scout Law components, and also pretty hard to rate.  It’s similar to Friendly, which we (or I, anyway) decided didn’t really define our President.  It is nice to have someone around whose cheerfulness boosts others.  But without much to go on one way or another, it’s probably true that Trump is not really that kind of person, not a cheerful guy.

Being Thrifty isn’t much of a consideration for a billionaire.  It seems like he’s the exact opposite of that in his personal life, with real gold faucets and lavishly appointed, expensive homes.  But that doesn’t tell us much about him as a good person.  How about in his spending as our President?  Well, there is the huge rise in our national debt, which happened instead of the end to deficit spending that Trump promised, largely due to his tax-cuts for the wealthy.  There are also the many visits to his own golf properties, despite Trump’s claims he’d be too busy to golf as much as Obama did, visits where US taxpayers pick up the tab for many millions of dollars in transportation, lodging, and meal costs for Trump and his whole entourage.  (Note: A recent News & Guts story cites $77 million in taxpayer costs for his golfing so far.)  I’m not sure how big of a deal this all adds up to, but it does seem that thrifty isn’t a word people would use to describe our President.

President Trump is Brave in the ways that he puts it all on the line to challenge the establishment, to speak his mind to anyone, no matter how powerful they are.   It can also be seen as bravery to meet with the leader of N. Korea with no specifics worked out in advance and to break with our historic allies when he deems it necessary.  On the other hand, Trump got out of having to serve in Vietnam – five times - because of questionable health problems.  And I don’t think many people take his claims that he would have charged, unarmed, at an armed school shooter as anything more than another of his hyperbolic boasts.  Overall, it’s probably fair to say that Trump is brave in some ways, but not in others.

What does it mean that a person is Clean?  Probably something different for a grownup than for a young boy.  For someone like Donald Trump, we might take this to mean that he doesn’t use an excessive amount of filthy language or participate in unseemly activities.  It might also refer to following the laws, especially regarding his business practices, and paying his taxes.  There are multiple, credible reports of Trump using filthy language (Grab ‘em by the pussy!), of consorting with porn stars (Stormy Daniels), and he has been accused of sexually assaulting at least 22 women.  Court records also show that he failed to pay contractors who did millions of dollars of work for him, along with testimony from his accountant that this was Trump’s standard method of operating.  Finally, Trump has boasted of paying no federal taxes for 10 years, and extremely credible recent evidence shows that he committed fraud in grossly under-valuing $100s of millions worth of his father’s properties for tax purposes.  As the word “clean” would apply to a fully-grown man, it shouldn’t be used to describe Donald Trump.

What are Trump’s true religious beliefs?  In what ways is he Reverent?  Does he go to church or temple regularly, or at least study the Bible, the Koran, the Torah, or whatever and try to follow the teachings of an organized religion?  If so, we have no knowledge of that.  But there are other ways to be reverent.  Many people have their own spiritual beliefs, feeling that there is some kind of higher power in the Universe; they try to live in ways that respect their belief that there is something greater out there than themselves.  Donald Trump does not seem to be that kind of person; he consistently talks and acts in ways that show that he thinks he is the greatest person, greatest power, in the world, and that money is the most important thing in his life.  The way that he rates in the other 11 of the Laws above helps us understand that Trump expects and fears no greater power of any sort – it’s all about money.  And I just don’t think that revering money qualifies one as being reverent. 

So there it is.  You may disagree with some of the judgments I’ve made here.  But I don’t imagine many people would say that Donald Trump is a “good person.”  In fact, it is common for people to say things like “Yeah, Trump is a real jerk, a horrible person, but at least he gets things done that matter to me.”  And that brings us back to our basic question: Is it OK to go with a horrible person that gets results, rather than a good person who hasn’t had much success?  

There may be no “right” answer, but personally I’d go with the good person.  I believe that in the long-run, things will turn around for the good person, while things will eventually catch up with the bad person.  That’s basically saying that I believe in karma.  Someone like Donald Trump, who really is a horrible person, is eventually going to get his.  And the good guy, who keeps plugging along, doing what is right, well – it’s been said that the meek shall inherit the Earth.  Whether that last part is true or not, it will be a great day for the country and the world as a whole when Donald Trump is removed from the scene.

Mainstream Media

I’ve never been a political animal, and never supported one party over another.  Two of my favorite modern Presidents are Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama.  While radically different in some ways, both Presidents were sincere patriots who offered what they felt the country needed at the time.  And big majorities of voters agreed.  Donald Trump is totally different, however, and presents a number of very serious threats to the US, its system of government, and our way of life.  This is one of many commentaries on him and the dire situation we find ourselves in under his administration.

According to the Knight Commission on Trust, Media, and Democracy “Eighty-four percent of Americans believe the news media have a critical or very important role to play in democracy, particularly in terms of informing the public…”  I mean, how else are we to know what’s going on in the world, and what our leaders and potential leaders believe, say, and do?  Our form of government counts on people being informed, since the people elect our government leaders and vote on ballot measures.  It only makes sense that uninformed voters can’t do a good job of that, being ignorant of the facts and the candidates. 

The sad part is that “less than half (44 percent) can name an objective news source.”  Worse yet, The Hill.com reports that “seventy-two percent of Americans believe traditional major news sources report news they know to be fake, false, or purposely misleading.”  This lack of trust in what has come to be called Main Stream Media, or MSM, is due to perceived bias (mostly liberal) on the part of the press, reports “based on opinions or emotions,” sensationalism in the news, not to mention the recently common claims of “fake news” and “alternative facts.”  This is a disaster for the nation, which less and less knows what are legitimate reports and facts, vs. opinions and blatantly false reports.  And it goes a long way toward explaining the election of Donald Trump, his continuing popularity with his base, and the Republican party’s unwillingness to stand up to him.

There is some merit to claims that sources like NBC, NPR, CNN, and the “failing” NY Times are biased against conservatives.  I remember telling my high school students years ago about how those sources have a clear liberal bias.  One girl in particular politely argued with me about that throughout the school year.  Then, at the end of the year, she gave me a present – a book titled Bias, written by former CBS employee Bernard Goldburg.  It presented a lot of evidence to support that network’s, and most media’s, liberal bias - probably her way of saying I might be right after all.

So I understand.  But the important thing is that having a liberal bias is not the same thing as deliberately offering fake, false, or misleading information.  The sources listed above are all rated as having a left-center bias by MediaBias/FactCheck.com, which itself is considered a neutral judge of such issues.  Left-center bias means that the source “utilizes loaded words (wording that attempts to influence an audience by using appeal to emotion or stereotypes) to favor liberal causes; they also may cherry-pick which stories to present, and which evidence they feature in their stories.  Yet importantly, the website rates their level of factual reporting as High, and adds that “These sources are generally trustworthy for information.” 

That’s a key distinction, and something that most people claiming “enemy of the people!” apparently don’t consider.  So NBC doesn’t like Trump and is going to favor stories that justify their stand, presented in ways that sometimes seem biased against him.  But they don’t make stuff up.  Or at least, there are precious few examples when they reported something about Trump or the right or Republicans that turns out to be incorrect.  And when they’re wrong about something, it likely is unintentional, and they inevitably offer a correction and an apology.  I am unaware of any story that NBC or any of those other top-tier MSM sources have reported that was blatantly, intentionally, false, and invite you to share evidence to the contrary.

On the other hand, the “alternative facts,” as broadcast by the right’s most-followed sources like Fox News, Breitbart News, Infowars, and folks like Rush Limbaugh, are rated as having a right bias (not even right-center), or worse yet – being “questionable sources.”  Media Bias/FactCheck characterizes them as using “strong loaded words, publish misleading reports and omit reporting of information that may damage conservative causes. Some sources in this category may be untrustworthy.”  In the case of the “questionable sources,” like Breitbart and Infowars, they exhibit “one or more of the following: extreme bias, overt propaganda, poor or no sourcing to credible information and/or is fake news. Fake News is the deliberate attempt to publish hoaxes and/or disinformation for the purpose of profit or influence.” 

It makes more sense how these news sources (MSM vs. Fox et al) differ when we consider who their faces are.  President Trump’s favorite, and Fox News’s biggest star, is Sean Hannity, a college drop-out whose entire career has been as a conservative radio and TV personality.  Rush Limbaugh is also a college-dropout, but whose career has not all been as a conservative radio and TV host – he had a short run selling tickets for baseball’s KC Royals as well!  Alex Jones of Inforwars?  Community college dropout, whose total career has been as a far-right radio personality.  To be fair, some of Fox News’s other hosts include Laura Ingraham with a doctorate in law and lots of legal experience (along with a Nazi-sympathizing father, according to her brother), and Jeanine Pirro, also with a doctorate in law and a former judge with strongly conservative views and who is a “fiery defender" of President Trump.

The exception at Fox is Shep Smith, managing editor of their news department who presents an actual newscast, Shepard Smith Reporting.  He regularly debunks the false and misleading claims coming out of the other Fox programs, calling them “opinion programming (that) is there strictly to be entertaining,” and NOT factual news.

What all of these folks, Smith excepted, have in common is little or no actual journalistic and political training/education, while on the MSM side, things are quite different.  CNN’s Anderson Cooper, for example, is a Yale graduate who has worked as a journalist since 1995.  He has won numerous awards as a TV journalist, including 8 Emmy Awards, Peabody and National Headliner Awards, and a GLAAD Media Award.  NBC’s Lester Holt didn’t finish at UC Sacramento, where he studied government, but he spent 19 years as an investigative reporter, anchor, and international correspondent for CBS, before moving to NBC.  Holt, a registered Republican, also hosted one of the 2016 Presidential debates, after which Trump said he “did a good job.”  At MSNBC, rated like CNN as “left”, Rachel Maddow graduated from Stanford with a degree in public policy, before getting a doctorate in political science as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford.  These people are pros; they know what they’re doing; they’re not just political talking heads.

At the “failing” NY Times and the “radical leftist” Washington Post, most of the top reporters have college degrees in journalism or a related field.  Many are recognized for their excellence in reporting by winning Pulitzer Prizes in Journalism, including the Times’ Michael J. Schmidt who won for his reporting on the Trump campaign’s collusion with Russia in 2016, and the entire staff of the Post for their investigatory reporting on the Russia probe and Roy Moore’s senate campaign. 

This matters, because these reporters from the MSM actually engage in serious investigative research before reporting out their stories.  They verify sources, usually something along the lines of “according to four different sources closely associated with the White House,” before running a story.  On the other hand, Fox News and those other folks seemingly take any sensational, anti-left story and spread it with little or no background checking.  The result is that those quasi-news sources continuously broadcast ridiculous stories such as “Pizzagate” and the “3 million fake voters” that are soon easily disproved.  One may not like the “loaded words” or “cherry-picked stories” that the MSM use, but we can probably count on one hand their stories that have significant errors, vs. the countless number of bogus stories from the other side. 

But finally, the far-right (which sadly includes most Republicans these days) will claim that all those MSM types are in cahoots together.  They’re all – CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC, MSNBC, TIME Magazine, USA Today, NY Times, Washington Post, BBC, NPR, The Economist, your local newspaper – ALL of them and many more conspiring together to hide the truth and spread liberal lies.  Thus, Trump’s claim that only he knows the real truth, and that he’s “doing the country a great service by telling us what to believe.”  Can you believe the hutzpah of this man and his posse?

Well, there are a couple of problems with that extreme conspiracy claim.  First, we have neutral sources like the Christian Science Monitor and card-carrying conservative sources like the Wall Street Journal regularly reporting things that discredit Trump and the conspiracy crowd.   Those on the far-right will find some reason to trash those sources anyway, but at least for those with an open mind and rational thinking processes, the “fake liberal news” line doesn’t make as much sense given that fact.

An even bigger safeguard against the MSM spreading “fake news” is the reality of intense professional competition in the media.  It’s easy to show that the guys and gals at ABC are always trying to get a jump on their peers at NBC and CBS and every other TV network.  They’re also competing against the news pros at the NY Times, the London Times, the Washington Post, Boston Globe, Al-Jazeera, Politico.com, the Wall Street Journal and many more.  ALL of them are slugging it out to get the biggest stories, and to get them first.  Getting a big “scoop” is a matter of great pride for the journalists involved, not to mention a way to advance their careers.  For the network or newspaper or magazine or website, it’s also a matter of pride, but also more ad revenues, big bonuses, etc. 

And if there’s anything that tops a big story skyrocketing their careers, such as when Bernstein and Woodward blew the top off the Watergate story in 1972, it is finding mistakes in the work of others.  So thinking that EVERY legitimate media source is going to lie about what’s happening, conspiring to hide the truth, and NO reporter is going to make his career by spilling the beans about that happening – well, that strains credulity.  It defies the competitive system in the US and in the media business, and it defies human nature's desire to excel and get ahead.

Finally, there is the fact that each of us can confirm for ourselves most of what the MSM reports, regarding Trump or anything else, just by doing a little digging.  In Trump's case, for example, we can find actual video or tweets of him saying one thing one time, and something totally different a year or a month or a day earlier.  MSM didn't make that up!  Similarly, evidence to confirm other claims on other topics is relatively easy to verify by checking sources, evaluating contrary claims - the kind of thing we all learned in college and even in high school.  It's just that most people don't put in the effort; they choose to believe whatever is convenient for them to believe, rather than taking a few minutes to find out who's really lying and who's truthing.

It’s sad but important to realize that none of the above comments are likely to change the opinions of those firmly on the right, or the far left for that matter.  But for the target readers, those who would consider reasoned discussion of a different point of view, it should be clear that the “Mainstream Media” is actually very reliable, and very unlikely to present outright lies and misleading information.  Tweaked a bit to their bias?  Sure, and we need to keep that in mind as we consider what they report.  But all in all, it’s a shame that the large majority of Americans consider our major news sources to be “false, fake, or purposely misleading,” since the alternatives are mostly ghastly and truly misleading. 

What do you think about the MSM and my observations?  Click on "Comment" below and let's hear from you. 

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