Vermont Public Radio has turned away from its regular broadcast of the BBC World Service to cover instead President Carter's funeral, so here I am in a silent room watching the snow fall outside and trying to come up with words to describe the gulf between a news service that actually tells people things they need to know, and a propaganda outlet serving a disembodied Media Consensus Reality that chooses instead to focus on Departed Dear Leader. We live in sadly interesting times.
Today I started the day, as I do almost every day, by reading Heather Cox Richardson's blog, Letters From An American. She comments daily on current events, from the perspective of a historian specializing in nineteenth century America. I find her blog, together with the New York Review of Books, essential reading for understanding what is going on, unlike the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Guardian, National Public Radio, and other purveyors of the speculative prognostication, gossip, brain dead pseudo-expertise, political spin, history-and-context-blind distractions, horse race commentary, groupthink, and fixation on whatever is beside the point that characterize the aforementioned Media Consensus Reality.
Richardson writes clearly and vividly. The exerpt I'm about to share (in red) is not typical of her style, but it's important stuff. In today's post, she lists a number of things that so far seem to be passing under the media's radar:
MAGA representatives have been introducing a slew of measures to the new Congress, many of which incorporate the plans of Project 2025 into legislation. They call for turning over immigration to the states, privatizing veterans’ healthcare, and repealing the 1993 National Voting Rights Act, the 2010 Affordable Care Act, and the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.
Bills call for withdrawing the U.S. from the World Health Organization; increasing oil and gas production on federal lands; abolishing the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA); allowing states to spend federal education money on private school vouchers; and removing the protection of transgender rights from schools.Other measures would revoke security clearances for “certain former members of the intelligence community,” introduce a constitutional amendment to cap the Supreme Court at nine justices, and cut off federal funding to the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office (the office that successfully charged Trump with election interference) and the Fulton County (GA) District Attorney’s Office (the office that has charged Trump with criminal
conspiracy).
And MAGA Republicans have proposed a bill to impose a national abortion ban, along with a bill urging Congress to support a consortium of antiabortion doctors for women because, the bill says, “health care should emphasize the whole woman, including her physical, mental, and spiritual wellness,” and “health care for women should also address the needs of men, families, and communities.”
