Timebuilder
Entrepreneur
- Joined
- Nov 25, 2001
- Posts
- 4,625
From the closed thread, where little was being advanced in the arena of ideas, I see that some of us have a little extra pep in our step this week, while others are feeling a little low. I feel your pain. I also found an answer for myself, and I think others are finding it, too.
May I have a minute of your time here?
When I was a liberal dem and a broadcaster/journalist, I really looked up to the top of the news pile; you know, the Peter Jennings, Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw bunch. These men were my "gods". They were all so clearly aligned with my party, and I felt very satisfied every time they spoke, letting myself believe that if I agreed with these well trained, successful professionals, I was somehow a better American. I was very clear on the subtextual message: that we libs (we thought of ourselves as centrists) are better and smarter than most other people are, and that our ideas are the only ideas with any merit. WE ALONE are the most compassionate, race and gender neutral, environmentally wise, and economically sensitive people in America. Therefore when our ideas are discussed by the media (including me) those ideas should be expressed in a way that indicates how superior and reasonable a group of people that we truly are.
It was a pretty comfortable, smarmy attitude. Like John Ratzenberger's "Cliffy" on Cheers, we were the know-it-alls. It took me over two decades of this to figure out how wrong I really was, and the true nature of what was going on, and who was responsible.
When I finally left broadcasting, I had a few years to take a more balanced look at these views. Were the ideas we cherished meritorious? No. Were they effective? No. Were our policies in the best interest of America? It did not appear to be so, based on the “results”. I began to think that I had been politically lazy, and had swallowed these lies hook, line, and sinker. Were poor Americans better off for my party’s policies? No. Welfare was out of control. The “War on Poverty” was a miserable failure. But we did push the civil rights act in the sixties, right? No, that was the Republicans who had done that. Democrats had opposed that legislation. But I could still look up to the Kennedy family, right? No, Joseph P, the family patriarch, had written the legislation to end insider trading only AFTER he had cheated thousands of investors himself by raising insider trading to a fine art. I began to see that his son, JFK, had been something of a conservative. But my party protected people with strong consumer product safety legislation, right? No, the only people who were always strengthened by this were my party’s huge contributors, the trial lawyers who posited the idea that we are all too dumb to protect ourselves, and need them to correct our wrongs by the tort process. I realized that YOU and I pay the bill for these proceedings every day, through higher prices for almost everything. Remember the time when there were no small planes being manufactured? I still have to wonder how “this beverage is HOT” made it onto a coffee cup. We led the fight to clean up the environment, right? Not quite. Most of the money earmarked for site cleanup had gone to legal expenses, (see above) and precious few sites had been cleaned up. Most of all, I was angry at what had become of the legacy of Dr. King in the hands of my party. He was not a public handout kind of guy, he was a hand up kind of guy. He was not in favor of racial quotas for employment, free abortions for poor women, or special treatment for college admissions. The father of the American civil rights movement had been a conservative! My party had completely turned aside from his leadership, and his “Dream” had become an American nightmare.
As I looked into these things further, I found that the media, MY media, had been the perpetrators of this hoax, and had become what another radio host now calls the “willing accomplices”.
It was only when I started thinking for myself in these matters of policy, and not just taking a cue from Brokaw, et al, that I began to look at what our founders and others had said: that we are a country of “rugged individuals” who worked together for the common good, that the status of being equal is obtained by what you DO after you have been “created equal”, and not what is granted to you by government, that the roles we have in our lives are not determined by legislation, but by the creator who forms us in the womb and who gives us certain unalienable rights, which when combined with our own drive to survive and thrive, results in the pursuit of happiness, framed in the belief that we are a moral people, yet with out a government-sponsored religion.
I was struck by the idea that when everyday people adhere to these ideas, they TAKE THE POWER from the so-called “leaders”, and live free. When you do this, the Tom Brokaws, Jesse Jacksons, Ted Kennedys, and Tom Daschles become marginalized and small.
Perhaps these election results are a reflection of the manner in which people obtain information, and from whom. In this internet age, more people are thinking for themselves, and not taking a cue from the media status quo.
As pilots, we know how dangerous it can be to put our trust in others, without checking for ourselves. We know how the best of intentions of “man” can lead to a total screw-up. We know how much a successful flight is the result of OUR actions, and not those of others, or any implemented regulation. The PIC authority is a direct reflection of the rugged individualist, who in the final analysis is the most powerful individual contributor to the outcome of the flight.
Perhaps this idea is finding its way back into the forefront of American politics and policy.
Nomex fire suit at the ready...
May I have a minute of your time here?
When I was a liberal dem and a broadcaster/journalist, I really looked up to the top of the news pile; you know, the Peter Jennings, Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw bunch. These men were my "gods". They were all so clearly aligned with my party, and I felt very satisfied every time they spoke, letting myself believe that if I agreed with these well trained, successful professionals, I was somehow a better American. I was very clear on the subtextual message: that we libs (we thought of ourselves as centrists) are better and smarter than most other people are, and that our ideas are the only ideas with any merit. WE ALONE are the most compassionate, race and gender neutral, environmentally wise, and economically sensitive people in America. Therefore when our ideas are discussed by the media (including me) those ideas should be expressed in a way that indicates how superior and reasonable a group of people that we truly are.
It was a pretty comfortable, smarmy attitude. Like John Ratzenberger's "Cliffy" on Cheers, we were the know-it-alls. It took me over two decades of this to figure out how wrong I really was, and the true nature of what was going on, and who was responsible.
When I finally left broadcasting, I had a few years to take a more balanced look at these views. Were the ideas we cherished meritorious? No. Were they effective? No. Were our policies in the best interest of America? It did not appear to be so, based on the “results”. I began to think that I had been politically lazy, and had swallowed these lies hook, line, and sinker. Were poor Americans better off for my party’s policies? No. Welfare was out of control. The “War on Poverty” was a miserable failure. But we did push the civil rights act in the sixties, right? No, that was the Republicans who had done that. Democrats had opposed that legislation. But I could still look up to the Kennedy family, right? No, Joseph P, the family patriarch, had written the legislation to end insider trading only AFTER he had cheated thousands of investors himself by raising insider trading to a fine art. I began to see that his son, JFK, had been something of a conservative. But my party protected people with strong consumer product safety legislation, right? No, the only people who were always strengthened by this were my party’s huge contributors, the trial lawyers who posited the idea that we are all too dumb to protect ourselves, and need them to correct our wrongs by the tort process. I realized that YOU and I pay the bill for these proceedings every day, through higher prices for almost everything. Remember the time when there were no small planes being manufactured? I still have to wonder how “this beverage is HOT” made it onto a coffee cup. We led the fight to clean up the environment, right? Not quite. Most of the money earmarked for site cleanup had gone to legal expenses, (see above) and precious few sites had been cleaned up. Most of all, I was angry at what had become of the legacy of Dr. King in the hands of my party. He was not a public handout kind of guy, he was a hand up kind of guy. He was not in favor of racial quotas for employment, free abortions for poor women, or special treatment for college admissions. The father of the American civil rights movement had been a conservative! My party had completely turned aside from his leadership, and his “Dream” had become an American nightmare.
As I looked into these things further, I found that the media, MY media, had been the perpetrators of this hoax, and had become what another radio host now calls the “willing accomplices”.
It was only when I started thinking for myself in these matters of policy, and not just taking a cue from Brokaw, et al, that I began to look at what our founders and others had said: that we are a country of “rugged individuals” who worked together for the common good, that the status of being equal is obtained by what you DO after you have been “created equal”, and not what is granted to you by government, that the roles we have in our lives are not determined by legislation, but by the creator who forms us in the womb and who gives us certain unalienable rights, which when combined with our own drive to survive and thrive, results in the pursuit of happiness, framed in the belief that we are a moral people, yet with out a government-sponsored religion.
I was struck by the idea that when everyday people adhere to these ideas, they TAKE THE POWER from the so-called “leaders”, and live free. When you do this, the Tom Brokaws, Jesse Jacksons, Ted Kennedys, and Tom Daschles become marginalized and small.
Perhaps these election results are a reflection of the manner in which people obtain information, and from whom. In this internet age, more people are thinking for themselves, and not taking a cue from the media status quo.
As pilots, we know how dangerous it can be to put our trust in others, without checking for ourselves. We know how the best of intentions of “man” can lead to a total screw-up. We know how much a successful flight is the result of OUR actions, and not those of others, or any implemented regulation. The PIC authority is a direct reflection of the rugged individualist, who in the final analysis is the most powerful individual contributor to the outcome of the flight.
Perhaps this idea is finding its way back into the forefront of American politics and policy.
Nomex fire suit at the ready...
. 
