Chatty Retirees

Tom Brokaw Discusses Politics and Society at Hamilton covers a recent speech he gave at Hamilton College. One of the many topics he covered was the divisiveness of national politics in America:

“The ethos of national politics today is one of division between red and blue states in which the national parties seek to divide and conquer the nation by turning people’s views against each other. There is little tolerance for intermediate or unorthodox views, Brokaw said, citing examples of orthodoxy within the parties on issues of abortion, taxation and gun control. The parties and their hired operatives function by creating fears and then exploiting them, he said.”

That’s a great point and it’s nice to see someone of Brokaw’s eminence making it. What’s not so nice is he makes the point after he’s safely retired and has profited from this type of news for an extremely successful 40–year career. He’s only willing to speak his mind, as it were, after his career can no longer be endangered by it. What a brave man. This is similar to the many generals that are coming out against Donald Rumsfeld—all after they have already retired and risk essentially nothing. At that point, they have also lost most of their power to effect change. It’s not that they should be punished for their opinions; it’s that the fear of punishment leads them to compromise principles they only espouse when their efficacy is considerably lessened.

Brokaw went on to describe the political landscape as “…the two parties have moved to the extremes of the political spectrum, while the people of America remain in the bipartisan center on the grassroots level.” The second half of the sentence is absolutely correct, but he leaves the listener to believe that the Republicans have moved far to the right (correct) and the Democrats have moved far to the left (wrong. They have also moved far to the right). He, as many others his age, has a secret love for Ronald Reagan, and spent some time hagiologizing his career as “govern[ing] as a pragmatist”, in constrast with Bush the second. He failed to note that Reagan ballooned both the debt and the deficit, grew the military to extraordinary size and also managed to invade a few countries (Panama, Haiti, Grenada, Nicaragua among them). The difference between the two presidents lies in the degree, not the direction.

As for terrorism, he seemed to have been spot-on there as well, saying that “[s]olving the problem of terrorism will require fresh thinking and an infusion of people who are willing to tackle the problems and serve their countries.” However, this makes it sound like it’s people in other countries who are succumbing to “ancient sectarian rivalries and religious fundamentalism…as an alternative to modernity”. That may be so, but that also aptly describes the anti-science, pro-God, anti-intellectual attitude that has grown in power in the USA in the last decade. As elsewhere, he skirts around the issue, leaving his supposed insurrection open to a tame interpretation. A true critique would have been leveled directly at the country making the most waves—his own.

He closed with his favorite topic, “the Greatest Generation”[1], and spoke again of all they’ve given us. While it is possible to see only the good these men have done over the last 50 years, honesty forces us to acknowledge what a large part Bob Dole, for example, played in building the military-industrial hegemony that is America today (and whose philosophy is causing many of the problems Brokaw touched on elsewhere in his speech).

During the question and answer session, he answered that blogs are a “new media” that still has to prove that it “has something to say with integrity, meaning and merit”. That would be a nice change from most traditional forms of media, including the evening news he called home for so many decades. A question about corporate control of media—it seems a college student was reading “Manufacturing Consent” by Chomsky—was whisked aside with the pat answer: “ownership of NBC by GE, for example, has taught each side how to do their work better”. *Yawn*. He went on to say that today’s situation is still better than the “old days”, when the news was delievered only through “a prism of middle-aged white men”. Exactly what has changed? Simply because the words chosen by a middle-aged white man dribble out of a bleached-blonde head atop cleavage changes nothing about the message. The message has not changed—it has arguably gotten worse as more and more control is exerted.