Violent outbursts and angry shouting matches at Trump campaign stops are just one sign of how sharply divided Americans are today. And Trump’s success at exploiting America’s dire polarisation is eerily reminiscent of the radical right of the 1960s.
When he calls into question Obama’s US citizenship, calls Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders a communist, or questions the safety of vaccines, Trump sounds uncannily like a member of the John Birch Society, a still-extant conservative advocacy organisation that spent much of the 1960s looking for “reds” around every corner. Bob Dylan expertly trolled its members in his song Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues.
Birchers decried the supposed communist conspiracies of the Supreme Court and the fluoridation of water. The latter, they railed, was meant to control the minds of Americans, softening them up for a Red invasion. The society’s founder, Robert Welch, even condemned president Eisenhower for what he viewed as his communist sympathies.
The John Birch Society mirrored the growing cultural and political divides of its heyday in much the same way today’s Trumpeters do. In late March 2016, the Pew Research Center reported: “The 2016 presidential campaign has exposed deep disagreements between – and within – the two parties on a range of major policy issues.” Its pollsters found that these “divisions go well beyond the issues and extend to fundamentally different visions of the way that life in the United States has changed”.
It’s all a political and cultural flashback to the turbulent 1960s. Many raging Americans are looking to Trump to “Make America Great Again”, just as angry white “hard-hat conservatives” looked to Republican Richard Nixon to reestablish “law and order” and to take their country back from liberal politicians, minorities, and unwashed hippies.
The 2016 GOP frontrunner has been shamelessly borrowing from the Nixon playbook, using a Nixonian phrase to rally diehard, disenchanted conservatives: “It’s a term that I haven’t heard for years,” Trump intoned at a rally in Phoenix last summer. “But I really think it applies now more than maybe ever before, and that’s the term ‘the silent majority’… But the silent majority is back, and we’re going to take the country back.”
The crowd cheered boisterously. As Nixon used the phrase in 1968, so does Trump now in 2016. The silent majority was code for all those whites who were tired of civil rights protesters in the streets and anti-war agitators on college campuses. When Trump fumes about Mexican rapists or calls president Obama a “loser,” the so-called silent majority roars with approval.
At the same time, Trump’s know-nothing isolationism, his hard-right posturing on immigration, and his resort to violent rhetoric would be enough to make Nixon blush. The 37th president was too much of a politician to say whatever popped into his head at a rally or in an interview with reporters. He reserved most of his rants, raves, scheming, and profanity-laden sessions to the inner sanctum of the White House.
When Trump, by contrast, was asked on MSNBC who he was consulting on foreign policy, he confidently responded: “I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain and I’ve said a lot of things.” Nixon was too savvy, even in the heat of the culture war, to have lapsed into the rambling, narcissistic word salad that Trump has made his hallmark.
But there’s a more bilious 1960s parallel available too: the white supremacist Alabama governor and expert race-baiting populist George Wallace, Trump’s true 1960s antecedent.
Wallace ran as an independent in the critical election year of 1968. As a young man, the scrappy, hot-tempered Wallace won boxing’s Golden Gloves bantamweight division for Alabama. Were he alive today, he would appreciate Trump’s macho grandstanding. “I’d like to punch him in the face,” groused Trump of a protester at a Las Vegas rally in February.
At Wallace’s rallies, which featured blaring honky-tonk music and large, billowing confederate flags, there was a fare share of jaded anti-war and civil rights activists there in protest. Some dressed like Nazis and offered mock salutes to Herr Wallace. His white audiences got into yelling matches with hippies. Shouted down by protesters, the Alabaman would step away from the microphone and mutter profanities at his long-haired opponents.
After a protester laid down in front of president Johnson’s motorcade, Wallace offered his two cents. “I wanna tell you, if you elect me the president,” he famously thundered, when “some of them lie down in front of my automobile it’ll be the last one they ever wanna lie down in front of!”
We will disclose the hotels and the room numbers of those delegates who are directly involved in the steal. If you’re from Pennsylvania, we’ll tell you who the culprits are. We urge you to visit their hotel and find them.
And then there’s Trump’s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, who has really brought the know how of a 1960s-style political street fighter to the race. Lewandowski allegedly grabbed a female journalist at a rally in Florida and then lied about it. Trump mostly stood by him. Only now is a new operative displacing the hotheaded Lewandowski. Still, the whole thing would make Wallace proud.
There are differences. Wallace was a cornbread, neo-confederate white supremacist, whereas Trump is a crass, European-style ethno-nationalist. Wallace only garnered 13.5% of the popular vote in 1968 and really only did well in the Deep South; as of now, Trump is still the top Republican candidate. But for all of their differences, they share a preternatural ability to mobilise voters with hate, to stoke red-hot resentments, and to convince disenchanted white voters that their country has been taken away from them and they need to take it back – by whatever means necessary.
Randall Stephens, Reader in History and American Studies, Northumbria University, Newcastle
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
Trump has called to “open up” libel laws. He has mocked New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski’s disability. He has feuded with Fox News' Megyn Kelly over questions she asked of him during a Republican presidential debate. And then there are the accusations of violence against journalists at Trump rallies.
Trump so challenges the norms and conventions of politics, it has caused some to express anxiety about the “corrosion of democratic culture” as a result of the damage he leaves in his wake.
Journalists, as chroniclers of the political system, are confronted with a dilemma. How should journalists cover Trump’s candidacy? Can they – and should they – be objective?
Objectivity is a much misunderstood concept and is too often uncritically mythologized as central to American journalistic practice. What interests me is how the pressure to be objective – and therefore disengaged from the very real impact Trump is having on the democratic process – may impede journalists' crucial role as stewards of democracy.
In March, longtime NPR commentator Cokie Roberts received flak from journalists, including some of her NPR colleagues, for coauthoring a column that argued that Trump is
one of the least qualified candidates ever to make a serious run for the presidency. If he is nominated by a major party – let alone elected – the reputation of the United States would suffer a devastating blow around the world.
Roberts was roundly chastised by her colleagues and NPR executives for failing to adhere to the objectivity norm – this despite her status as a commentator.
Morning Edition host David Greene even expressed his disappointment with Roberts on the air, telling her that “objectivity is so fundamental to what we do” and asking, “can you blame people like me for being a little disappointed to hear you come out and take a personal position on something like this in a campaign?”
Roberts defended her column by describing herself as someone who is nonpartisan but “interested in government working.” Her argument was essentially an appeal to basic democratic values and the manner in which Trump is challenging them.
In contrast – and providing a masterful illustration of the tension between journalistic and business values – CBS head Leslie Moonves recently told an audience of investors that while Trump “may not be good for America” he is “damn good for CBS…The money’s rolling in.”
NPR’s dilemma speaks to broader shifts in the media ecosystem.
A study I coauthored with Elizabeth Blanks Hindman examined the responses of journalists to NPR’s decision to fire analyst Juan Williams for comments he made on Fox News in 2010 about feeling “nervous” about sharing a plane with Muslims.
The responses indicated much confusion about Williams’ role, with some pondering what exactly it means to be an “analyst” as versus, say, a “reporter” or a “commentator.” Others criticized Williams for not adhering to the objectivity norm.
We found similar findings in our study of journalistic responses to the retirement of veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas following controversial remarks she made that Israel should “get the hell out of Palestine.” The majority of responses we analyzed criticized Thomas for failing to be objective regarding the Israel-Palestine conflict, when in fact her role at the time was as an opinion columnist.
We see these findings as markers of broader uncertainties about 21st-century journalism. To question objectivity is to invite the larger question of what we expect of the 21st-century journalist. Is “objectivity,” at least as presently understood, fit for purpose?
The fact is that Cokie Roberts is not the only one to express her unease about Trump’s candidacy.
The Huffington Post has taken to appending an editor’s note to every article about Trump informing readers that he is “a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist, birther, and bully.”
The Boston Globe attracted attention for a cover that ran on the front of its Sunday edition’s Ideas section presented as an account of what life would look like under President Trump, with mass deportations and trade wars the new normal.
How, then, should journalists respond to an authoritarian candidate who incites violence, fuels racial tension and fractures the social fabric by indulging the worst excesses of American bigotry?
The first defense of Roberts column is to point out that it was an opinion column written by a commentator. Roberts was, in effect, doing what she is paid to do: opine. This makes the criticism of her column all the more bizarre.
However, the second and more fundamental defense is to consider at a deeper level how journalists in a liberal democracy respond to phenomena that challenge the very precepts of liberal democracy.
This is a much-needed conversation, and one that has long been stifled by a narrow conception of objectivity. Too often objectivity, as it is practiced, emphasizes neutrality and balance at all costs. This can be seen, for example, in coverage of the human impact on climate change as a question still being debated when an overwhelming majority of scientists believe there is unassailable evidence that it is a fact that needs to be dealt with.
This kind of objectivity positions the journalist as a “morally disengaged” communicator possessing, as the ethicist Ted Glasser argues,
neither the need nor the opportunity to develop a critical perspective from which to assess the events, the issues, and the personalities he or she is assigned to cover.
In “The Limits of Objective Reporting,” the philosopher Raphael Cohen-Almagor argues that
subjectivity is preferable to objectivity when the media cover illiberal and anti-democratic phenomena.
Cohen-Almagor argues – and I concur – that when confronted with issues that challenge the basic values of liberal democracy itself, journalists are called to set aside moral neutrality.
From this perspective, journalism ought to be nonpartisan in party terms but wholly on the side of democracy, good governance and the protection of people’s rights and civil liberties.
As Cohen-Almagor says, journalists
live within the democratic realm and owe democracy their allegiance. Free speech and free journalism exist because democracy makes them possible.
This is not so unusual an idea, and ought not be controversial. Indeed, we don’t need to go that far back into journalism history to find examples of it.
One of the reasons Edward R. Murrow is regarded as one of the finest American journalists is because of his opposition to the demagoguery of Joseph McCarthy, devoting an episode of “See It Now” to a methodical exposition of McCarthy’s smears and deceits.
Trump is testing the boundaries of the political system. His platform and proclamations, and the manner in which he articulates them, pose such a challenge to regular order that it becomes necessary to ask if the norms of political coverage ought to be rethought.
Perhaps a new journalistic vocabulary is necessary. Trump’s candidacy may provide just the occasion for such a rethink.
Ryan J. Thomas, Assistant Professor, Journalism Studies, University of Missouri-Columbia
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
The sources of the opioid epidemic are complex, but one powerful motivator has been the pursuit of profit. Purdue Pharma, which calls itself a “pioneer in developing medications for reducing pain, a principal cause of human suffering,” is the producer of OxyContin, a timed-release formulation of oxycodone, an opioid pain reliever.
OxyContin, like other prescription opioids such as hydrocodone, has become far more commonly prescribed over the past few decades. Today enough opioid prescriptions are written each year in the U.S. to give every adult American his or her own one-month supply.
Purdue Pharma was founded in the late 19th century in New York City, and the firm was purchased in the by the Sackler brothers, three physicians. Some years later, the firm began producing opioid pain relievers.
One of the Sackler brothers, Arthur, who died in 1987, had been inducted into the Medical Advertising Hall of Fame for his promotional work in helping Valium to become the first US$100 million drug.
In 1996 Purdue Pharma introduced a new drug – a time-released formulation of oxycodone, an opioid painkiller. OyxContin, as the drug was called, was touted as having a low risk of addiction.
Purdue backed OxyContin with an aggressive marketing campaign. Key components of this effort were pain-management and speaker-training conferences in sunshine states such as California and Florida, attended by more than 5,000 physicians, nurses and pharmacists, many of whom were recruited to serve on Purdue’s speakers' bureau.
The company also used a bonus system to incentivize its pharmaceutical representatives to increase OxyContin sales. The average bonus exceeded the representatives’ annual salaries.
Of course, Purdue was not alone in marketing its pain-relieving products in this way. The Oregon assistant attorney general, for example, described the practices of Insys Therapeutics in marketing its oral spray painkiller as “among the most unconscionable I’ve seen.”
These efforts succeeded spectacularly. According to a 2009 article in the American Journal of Public Health, OxyContin prescriptions for non-cancer-related pain went from about 670,000 in 1997 to about 6.2 million by 2002.
This is partly due to Purdue Pharma’s aggressive marketing of OxyContin. But pain treatment in the U.S. was also changing at this time.
Starting in the early and mid-1990s, a small group of physicians, some receiving funding from drug firms, began arguing that the medical profession had been systematically undertreating pain, motivated by erroneous concerns about addiction. They lobbied to have pain recognized as the “fifth vital sign,” and urged physicians to be more liberal in their prescribing of opioids. Some of these physicians were associated with professional associations focused on treating pain.
Undoubtedly, there were patients with undertreated pain who benefited from these campaigns.
In 2000 the Joint Commission, the organization that accredits hospitals, began requiring health care organizations to prove that they were assessing and treating pain. This led to a more liberal approach for prescribing painkillers like OxyContin, but other opioids were also involved.
In 2001, Purdue spent $200 million marketing Oxycontin, and by 2002 sales topped the $1.5 billion mark. In 2012 OxyContin represented about 30 percent of the overall painkiller market.
Between 1991 and 2013, the number of annual opioid prescriptions in the U.S. increased from 76 million to 207 million, with corresponding increases in the number of cases of addiction, overdose and death.
As the numbers of cases of addiction, overdose and death mounted, the Department of Justice took notice, and charged Purdue with misbranding the drug’s abuse potential. In 2007, Purdue pleaded guilty and paid over $600 million in fines. Three company executives also pleaded guilty to criminal charges of misbranding the drug’s risk of abuse and addiction.
In 2010 Purdue Pharma released a new formulation of OxyContin with an abuse-deterrent mechanism that is harder to crush or dissolve. The original formulation was withdrawn from sale, and in 2013, when OxyContin’s patent was set to expire, the FDA refused to approve generic versions of the original formulation.
Now STAT NEWS, a news website focused on health and medicine, is suing Purdue Pharma to unseal records about what its executives knew about the drug’s addiction potential and whether they intentionally downplayed it.
The introduction of one drug, OxyContin, helped to spark the epidemic, but solving it is going to be much more complicated.
It is estimated that nearly two million Americans are addicted to prescription pain relievers, and drug overdose has become the leading cause of accidental death in the U.S., exceeding motor vehicle accidents.
In the first decade of this century, the overdose death rate increased nearly four times, with admissions to addiction treatment programs up six times over the same time period. Prescription opioids now kill more Americans every year than illegal ones.
According to the American Society of Addiction Medicine, four in five new heroin users started out by misusing prescription painkillers, and 94 percent of opioid-addicted patients said that they switched to heroin because prescription opioids were more expensive and harder to obtain.
This secondary epidemic of illicit drug use is a new public health challenge that is hitting small towns and rural areas particularly hard.
President Obama’s efforts to combat opioid abuse are attracting broad, bipartisan support. Over 60 medical schools, including my own, have recently announced that they will include new federal prescribing guidelines in their curricula.
Leaders of all stripes are recognizing that to successfully prosecute the war on drugs, attention needs to shift stateside, to pharmaceutical companies, hospitals and physicians. Legal opioids prescribed by physicians have proved far more dangerous than the illicit ones.
By Richard Gunderman, Chancellor's Professor of Medicine, Liberal Arts, and Philanthropy, Indiana University
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
