A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

Photo Illustration: Pixabay Hi, there, Constant Reader. Well, it's Saturday, May 2, and it's late morning here in my corner of Florida. The current temperature is 71℉ (22℃) under mostly sunny skies. Looking at the forecast, it looks like it's going to be a warm, sunny day, with temperatures expected to reach a high of 84℉ (29℃), dropping at night to a low of 63℉ (17℃). No rain is expected to fall in our area today. Well, here we are in the fifth month of 2020, and we Floridians are still hunkering down in our homes due to the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Sadly, the Sunshine State is governed (for lack of a better word) by the Republican Party, and our governor, Ron DeSantis is a Donald Trump loyalist who is rarin' to reopen the state for business ASAP. This is not an attitude unique to our state; other Southern (and Republican-dominated) states like Tennessee and Georgia are reopening some businesses, although this is pretty much asking for trouble, as ...

So now we've come to this. As President Donald Trump questions the wisdom of putting into place medically-necessary measures to protect Americans from the world-wide coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic because they're "doing more harm than good" to the economy, his Republican acolytes are clamoring for an end to quarantines, closures of businesses, and a return to normal activities. It's no secret that the GOP has long had a reputation for being the party of Big Business. The alliance between the Republican Party and what we now call the "One Percenters" began sometime after Reconstruction and was solidified by the time of the 1912 Presidential election, the race that split the party's pro-business wing (led by incumbent William Howard Taft) and its more progressive one (led by ex-President Theodore Roosevelt). In that intramural battle royale, TR and his adherents ended up forming a third party (the Bull Moose Party); as a result, a weakened Taft...

On Quora, member Lynn Boca asks: Why does the US government feel video games are to blame for the rash of mass shootings when other countries without the shootings also have video games? My reply First of all, it’s not the entire United States government that is making the false connection between video games and mass shootings. It’s just one of the two major political parties that govern the country - and it’s the one which is closely allied with the National Rifle Association and gun manufacturers. Second, I doubt that any of the Republican Party politicians who blame video game use for the shootings in El Paso and Dayton truly believe this false narrative. The pols and spokespersons who say “Video games are to blame for mass shootings” are directing their comments at their base, not at more worldly individuals who know that Japan and other countries (such as the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Germany) where video games are not only widely played but  created and publis...

Do any liberals see ways to work with Trump to make improvements for us all, or are they only about getting him out of office? Short version: No. Detailed version: In all honesty, this question is based on a flawed premise, which seems to be this: Donald Trump is working hard to make things better for all Americans, so why don’t the Democrats in Congress and the voting public work with him instead of trying to kick him out of the White House? This is the narrative that Trump supporters, even ones who claim to be middle-of-the-road voters who are “socially liberal but fiscally conservative,” try to push, especially on social media. The Devil, as they say, is in the details. And the details show, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that this narrative simply is not true. Or, as George and Ira Gershwin so wittily put it in a song from  Porgy and Bess: It ain’t necessarily so. First, it is my firm belief, based on careful observation of Trump’s actions and utterances sin...

Fox News seems not to dissect and interpret current developments in the Russia Probe like other channels do. Why? Are they intentionally limiting the information that their viewers receive? As I’ve said in my previous answers to questions about Fox “News” Channel, the reason for this is simple: Fox News Channel is  not  a dedicated newsgathering organization. It might have a news division with real journalists for “breaking news” or their off-peak hour news programming, but in reality, Fox News is a propaganda outlet for the post-Reagan Republican Party. For this reason, thoughtful, dispassionate, and honest dissection of such news stories as the Trump Organization’s connections to Russia and the conspiracy to basically use the Internet as a Psychological Operations (PsyOps) weapon to give Donald Trump an edge during the Presidential election in 2016 goes against Fox News Channel’s ethos. I mean, think about it. Fox News is a  propaganda  machine that would...