November 13TH, 1969. Des Moines, Iowa – industrial Midwest, former ground zero of isolationism and future rustbelt – historical antagonist to the eastern establishment of Rockefeller Republicanism, Langley, and Bush blue-bloods – Vice President Agnew delivered these remarks:
“Now every American has a right to disagree with the President of the United States and to express publicly that disagreement. But the President of the United States has a right to communicate directly with the people who elected him, and the — and the people of this country have the right to make up their own minds and form their own opinions about a Presidential address without having the President’s words and thoughts characterized through the prejudices of hostile critics before they can even be digested.
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Now what do Americans know of the men who wield this power? Of the men who produce and direct the network news, the nation knows practically nothing. Of the commentators, most Americans know little other than that they reflect an urbane and assured presence, seemingly well-informed on every important matter.
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We do know that to a man these commentators and producers live and work in the geographical and intellectual confines of Washington, D.C., or New York City, the latter of which James Reston terms “the most unrepresentative community in the entire United States.”
The American people would rightly not tolerate this concentration of power in Government. Is it not fair and relevant to question its concentration in the hands of a tiny, enclosed fraternity of privileged men elected by no one and enjoying a monopoly sanctioned and licensed by Government? The views of a — the majority of this fraternity do not — and I repeat, not — represent the views of America. And that is why such a great gulf existed between how the nation received the President’s address and how the networks reviewed it.
In the decades since this forgotten address and skirmish in the wars between Presidents and Press, the forgotten American has emancipated largely himself from the media supremacy of this narrow elite. Today, the media landscape is a vast sea of independent city-states, dukedoms and fiefs, some ridiculous, some laser precise, all growing in a viral swarm to overwhelm the old, Dinosaur media.
The era of cable news came and went since Nixon. Today we have a real diversity of news, views and opinion, and the reality of fake news – simply the gullibility of people to believe false, biased and sensational reports, and the power of media to tilt stories – is finally acknowledged by the mainstream media, as they fight a rearguard action against what they’ve been doing all along as a cliquish cartel ruled by a special, narrow class of privileged citizens.
Their strategy – calling opponents fake news – was in vain: the same forces that allow alternative media to flourish also allow alternative media to take the term fake news and pistol whip the legacy media it with it. Little more than a few weeks sufficed for alternative media to grab the clumsy term and turn it back on its primary purveyors: the major city papers, broadcast networks and cable news channels.
Gallup reports:
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Americans’ trust and confidence in the mass media “to report the news fully, accurately and fairly” has dropped to its lowest level in Gallup polling history, with 32% saying they have a great deal or fair amount of trust in the media. This is down eight percentage points from last year.
Not many people realize Nixon was not a half bad president. His image as a failed and disgraced president is ingrained, but mostly undeserved. By modern standards, he was an exemplar of moderation. Though a bulwark of Republican politics and a patriot all-through, he was able to work with Democrats and establishment Republicans.
In his book, Family of Secrets, real journalist Russ Baker lays out a plausible case that Nixon was not even aware of the Watergate break in, carried out by those whom he called the “Cubans,” the “Bay of Pigs gang,” Kennedy’s nemeses after the aborted Bay of Pigs invasion. Aligned with the CIA (and organized crime, incidentally), these CIA allies are implicated by Baker as the hatchers of the Watergate break-in. Trump needs to beware of any amateurish crimes carried out in his name, and put transparency over presidential privacy and paranoia.
That era of CIA dirty tricks, assassinations coups, covert wars, and torture was formally ended by Jimmy Carter, and the firing of thousands of CIA operatives, the release of the CIA’s “Family Jewels” documents under CIA director Bill Colby, laying out their illicit activities and funding sources outside the purview of Congress and the Executive.
Nixon was not beloved of the covert intelligence community, but it was the Press that brought him down. Why they had such a grudge against Nixon was intertwined with his aggressive past anti-communism, deeply suspect in that era of far left cultural ascendancy, and partly because the spirit of the times demanded a sacrifice. The counter-culture required its villain, and “Tricky Dick” worked well enough.
It was also personal. There is genuine fear in the halls of power of the risk posed by an able, independent, thin skinned, paranoid executive to all non-executive factions of the ruling aristos – intelligence agencies, beltway media, Senators, corporate bigwigs, bankers, and other lesser grandees.
A popular leader, usually drawn from their own ranks, is the one thing that can curtail their power when it reaches levels of excess that cause popular unrest. This is as true today as it was in the time of FDR, Caesar or Solon.
The term tyrant in the ancient world was not pejorative per se; a tyrant was a popular leader who rose to power to bring an end to social chaos brought on by oligarchic excesses. Typically following a famine, and the appropriation of the property of the many into too few hands, social crisis erupted, verging on civil war, and a statesman was needed to resolve it.
In the Near East, the ancient Jews contrived the Jubilee was as a means to deal systematically with this problem, through the cancellation of land debts every fifty years.
For long eras of western history, Brutus, the Roman nobleman who fancied himself descended from Rome’s founding fathers, who had themselves mythically thrown off their Kings to found a Republic, and who knifed the vain upstart Dictator Julius Caesar, was considered the villain.
As the worm turned and powerful land and later financial elites became the locus of power in the Western world, Caesar became the villain, and Brutus the hero. These things are a matter of perspective. Who’s doing, and who’s being done to.
America’s oligarchy sees in Trump shades of an ambitious tyrant, or a potential Putin, due partly to his persona, by which they feel themselves overshadowed, and due partly to their own guilty conscience over their dispossession of America’s middle class. Their resulting paranoia rivals Nixon’s.
This is deeply dis-equilibrating to a Republican form of government, balanced between a triad of mutually opposed branches, and is not justified. Trump is 70 years old. He is not a general, or veteran intelligence operative, like Putin, who readily commands the loyalty of the Deep State. He doesn’t have an independent power base in Washington; he depends on the deep state, which is alarmingly strong in America. The fear and loathing of Trump is vastly overdone and more a gratuitous indulgence of personal hatred and revenge than a justified fear.
But he does have the presidential bully pulpit and the loyalty of a large part of the public, and is a capable communicator.
Nixon was a popular figure; two landslide sweeps of 40+ states. Heir to the Goldwater revolution. His VP, Spiro T. Agnew, went at the press like a pitbull, much as Trump goes at the press today. It did not turn out well for the former. Trump has made overtures to cool it down, but it only escalates, to the point of pubic exhaustion.
Picking a war with the press may seem foolish, but there goes the saying, “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.” If you’re already getting bombed, you might as well fight back. And if you’re a rogue, presumed guilty of a crime you didn’t commit, you might as well go commit it if you get the chance.
Could Nixon have drawn back and completed his presidency without the disgrace of resignation and scandal? Perhaps. But perhaps he was just an irresistible morsel to his enemies, and the press jackals, scenting blood and puffed up by their own power, had to feed. Any show of weakness might have just invited more jaws.
Perhaps for Trump also, any show of weakness seals his fate. From the perspective of the media, any let up in hostility risks Trump rising to a popularity-threshold high enough to be dangerous.
For all the talk of dirt on Trump, if there was any, it would have spilled 17 months ago during the first paroxysms and freakouts of the press. Or, Trump would be a pliable, acceptable head of state, controlled by our Deep State, not by Vladimir Putin. The absence of the ability to control Trump is what makes him a danger to the American oligarchs, and a target.
Can Trump win his war with the press? Times have changed since Nixon and Agnew, and the hubris of the ruling class brings on their nemesis: populism and Trump. The media is splintered and no longer believed. Their agenda is broadly rejected. Only fear and loathing of Trump, and their own patronage and privilege, unite the oligarchs who oppose him.
The country is deeply divided. But the presidency, and this president especially, has a way of persuading people. Trump is two out of three vs the media.
Trump is not a backing-down sort. How far will they go in this game of chicken? How far will Trump go? How much profit and American prestige will we lose in the skirmish?
We may be about to witness the apotheosis of Americana Politica, 21st century: an uncertain game of chicken between highly specialized, rarified types, set to a backdrop of a general disinclination toward actual physical conflict and risk.
Well, strap in! Are you not entertained?