Colorado Public Radio: A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant's Son

Maeve Conran interviews me about A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant's Son on Colorado Public Radio's KGNU. I discuss how reading expands your empathy when you read stories outside your community. I also emphasize why this matters after so much anti-immigrant rhetoric is dividing our country and its many communities.

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/sergiotroncoso/episodes/2019-10-14T16_05_55-07_00

Anger Magnus

There is so much to comment on, and so little to comment on.  I thought about Obama’s ‘slow-burn’ of political advocacy, as one friend described his style.  I had just criticized our president for not defending, more aggressively, the kind of change many of us voted for last year.  Obama, lay it on the line, and punish those who don’t support you, from the left or the right.  Be practical, be bold, but please don’t be gone.

I thought about the Senate-election debacle in Massachusetts, and how ‘democracy’ is not the great ideal it’s held up to be.  Do right-leaning Democrats truly think going back to George W. Bush’s deregulated, ‘pirate economy,’ as the New York Times’ Gretchen Morgenson aptly described it in last Sunday’s business section, will help this country create jobs, protect consumers, lower the boom on banks, big pharma, or wasteful government?  I don’t like high deficits either; what was Bush’s record on deficits, anybody remember?

It’s incredible to me the myopia, the forgetfulness, the stupidity of much of the populace, as well as the ‘news’ that isn’t news anymore, but loud and ignorant opinions.  I mean, is anybody else with me on this one?  What happened to not being a Democrat or Republican first, to not thinking about just ‘winning,’ or ‘us’ versus ‘them’?  What happened to us?  We’re on this death cruise together, and China’s eating our lunch.  They’re not the only ones.  Anyone want to stand together and fight back?  I am patriotic, and I do love this country.  But our politics are dysfunctional, Congress is a joke, and how we talk to each, the vapid ‘news’ of cable, talk radio, and the like, simply foments the same idiotic behavior that got us into this mess.

That’s right, I’m pissed.  We need practical people.  We need to stop the moronic dog-chasing-its-tale on television and radio.  In fact, if it were up to me, as a dictator, I would destroy all the television sets and radios, and force people to read.  Even the New York Post is thoughtful compared to cable.

The problems with our culture go beyond the national politics and media.  I see what's wrong on the street every day, whether it’s El Paso, New York City, Kansas City or LA.  I am often the strictest parent in their schools, my kids don’t fail to remind me.  What do I do?  I make sure my kids do their homework, every night.  I am there to help them, if they need it, every night.  I encourage my kids to read books, every week.  Friends who are wild, disrespectful, they are not welcomed in my house.  Period.  These are the values of my father and mother, Mexican immigrants.  These values work.  My kids are excellent students.  They work hard and achieve the highest grades.  They are proud of themselves, not for false accomplishments, but for true ones.  Isn’t everybody like that?  What happened to us?  Jeez.

I am angry at the Supreme Court.  What the hell is wrong with them?  The majority just made the little guy feel even smaller than before.  What happened to ‘non-activist conservative judges’?  These hypocrites just overturned decades of precedent, in favor of mega-corporations with billions of dollars.  Wave the flag for ‘free speech.’  Lower the flag for more influence for lobbyists and for rampant political corruption.  The little guy doesn’t matter to these clueless Solomons.  Sotomayor, you matter.  We just need more of you.

Work hard.  Take care of your family.  Save money.  Pay your mortgage religiously.  Love the variety of people you see on the streets of Manhattan every day.  And get kicked in the ass.  What a week.

Why We Are Not A 'We'

Thomas L. Friedman of The New York Times is one of the most thoughtful newspaper columnists. Two days ago he wrote a piece about how the current political climate of the U.S. has taken a dangerous turn permanently delegitimizing the presidency and tacitly encouraging violence, particularly from the fringe far right: “Where Did ‘We’ Go?”

The Facebook poll asking respondents, “Should Obama be killed?” is the most recent example, but Friedman also mentions the crazy rhetoric of Lou Dobbs, whom I have repeatedly criticized on the pages of Chico Lingo, and too many other examples in the media, particularly in the blogosphere and cable news channels, which also hasten our downward spiral into a country no longer a community, but a country at war with itself.

But I believe Friedman does not go far enough in analyzing the ‘why,’ the reasons the United States seems more fractured than ever. Why do ‘we’ seem to be incapable of tackling problems affecting all of us without a descent into vitriol and even hatred of our opponents? What happened to compromise and practicality and giving each other the benefit of the doubt? Here are some interrelated whys:

1. We as a society do not have patience anymore. TV and visual images are in part to blame. Give your opinion in fifteen seconds, do it loudly, and that’s what we now call ‘debate.’ We have commercialized time on TV: that’s the reason for these ridiculous lightning-round debates that solve nothing, convince no one, and just end up reinforcing prejudices because that’s all the time you have on TV (the most pervasive, influential medium). Plato, eons ago, warned how the focus on images would degrade our ability to think and reason: The man or woman who focuses on images loses the highest form of the self, the thoughtful self.

2. We don’t read anymore. The market for serious books is dying. Just look at the publishing industry. In fact, what is published now is too often celebrity books, memoirs of scandal, books by pretty and famous people who have little to say beyond the adrenalin moment. Disposable literature. Our kids are not reading, but instead play video games. My kids are great readers, but it’s because I’ve kept them from turning on the TV whenever they feel like it; I’ve kept them from mainstream, materialistic American culture. “After you do your homework, watch TV for an hour, but that’s it.” I may be an anachronism, but my kids are excellent students and know who they are because of their own, real accomplishments.

3. We are a diverse culture, but now minorities possess growing power and responsibility and the traditional majority does not easily want to cede being ‘the standard,’ that is, being the face of America. Latinos, as we all know, have grown in number to become the largest minority, surpassing even African-Americans (who themselves are uncomfortable with perhaps not being the ‘official minority’ anymore). The Asian population has similarly increased. Soon, demographers predict that the traditional ‘white majority’ (comprised of families with English, Italian, Irish, German, and other European ancestry) will be the minority.

I can only imagine what these demographic trends have meant in, say, a small town in the Midwest or the South where new Latin American immigrants speak Spanish and bring strange customs to your town. The strength of New York City, where I now live, is that these cultural, religious, ethnic, racial interactions happen every day. You are not so easily susceptible to the TV or talk-radio smear that Latinos are this way, or Jews are that way, or Muslims are sinister, or strangers with accents are suspect, because you see these people every day. They may be your friends. Your kids go to school with their kids.

Prejudices based on abstractions, the raw meat of today’s dangerous political rhetoric, don’t easily take hold when you can see with your own eyes that excellent parents are in every culture, excellent friends may exist in every religion, brave characters with all sorts of funny accents ennoble you. But this is not a kumbaya moment. Irresponsible idiots also come in every shape, size, and color. But the point is that abstractions don’t work on you anymore when you actively seek out and live in diversity. You must judge the individual; you need to pay attention and listen; above all you need to have the patience to understand whoever might at first seem alien to you.

4. The United States is a mature economy, while other countries like China, Brazil, and India are gaining the kind of prosperity we took for granted. Fifty years ago, it must have been a heady time when we were unquestionably the most important economy in the world. But now that’s not true anymore. We are still the biggest, but many have caught up and surpassed our per-capita wealth. Others, the newcomers, have rapidly become significant sources of brain power, savings, and economic and military power. We can’t dictate terms anymore. Our companies have to fight it out to survive, and few have the unquestioned might of yesteryear’s behemoths. The world, most importantly, is moving away from an American-centered world economy, with negative implications for the dollar as a reserve currency.

We’ve also lost manufacturing jobs. The lowest skilled are the most vulnerable to this changing world. They are the most susceptible to zealots and slick-talking TV and radio gurus who appear to have all the answers. And many are listening, because over the years they have been trained to think ‘listening’ is just watching TV. It’s not. TV stupefies you. Period. Talk radio? Turn if off.

1, 2, 3 and 4 might lead you to think I’m pessimistic about the future of the United States. I’ll tell you how pessimistic I am. Last weekend, I went to Home Depot twice (about 30 miles total), because I had purchased the wrong-size American flag to hang next to our front door in Connecticut. Our three-year-old flag, which was faded and torn, I tucked away in my closet. I’m just gonna keep it. It fills me with pride to see our new flag fluttering amid the spectacular colors of autumn in the Litchfield Hills.

I am proud of my country. But let me give you some advice. Turn off the TV. Stop listening to Lou Dobbs, and see him for what he is: an idiot who wants to make money by making you watch him. Pick up a good book and read it carefully. Raise your children to be thinkers, to focus on their homework, to work hard. Make an effort, by picking up the phone or knocking on a door, to meet a neighbor vastly different from you, a Muslim, a Jew, a Mexicano who can barely speak English. Don’t just meet him once, but get to know the person, his kids. If his child befriends your child, and they marry (as Laura and I did nineteen years ago), work on understanding their family. Some things you will never understand. Other things you will uncannily see eye-to-eye. But no one will ever be able to tell you they don’t belong in your neighborhood.

TV Rants as News, and Undermining the National Dialogue

Cable news has devolved to the lowest common denominator for the sake of profit and niche ratings. Instead of reporting what happened, instead of carefully researched investigative journalism, we have on Fox News, CNN, and now CNBC loud rants from anchors spouting ridiculous positions, which attract much coveted attention and keep them in business. But what has happened, and what will happen, to the important debate about how to resolve our current economic crisis? Will policymakers have the guts to ignore these rants, which stir up the public for a few moments, and instead opt for difficult, long-term solutions? I think the more we listen to the so-called debates on TV, the more trouble we will be in.

For some channels, perhaps they were always in it to serve a small cable constituency, and get their coveted ratings to promote to advertisers. Their motto was, ‘Be Extreme, be loud, be outrageous, like Limbaugh, and get attention. Make money.’ They only used the cover of ‘news’ to attract that uncritical viewer who might have been channel-flipping.

For others, the change has been nothing short of remarkable. Lou Dobbs, in another lifetime, was a respected business journalist, before he decided to pull what I call a Bill O’ Reilly. Dobbs metamorphosed into a dictator on the TV screen, who only invited guests in order to talk over them, berate them, and pontificate on his own views, while his ‘guests’ were left stammering. For years, Dobbs has shouted at the camera, red-faced, to vilify illegal immigrants, to attack Bush, the government, CEOs, now Obama, and so on. You know the story.

And his ratings have skyrocketed. Mind you, he doesn’t have a majority of the cable news audience, just an important sliver of it, but that’s all you need to thrive in this media. Limbaugh has known that for years. Balkanization works for success on TV and radio; the middle ground is not only boring, but unprofitable. These loudmouths do not offer any practical, real-world solutions. They shout, and we tune in, amazed, disgusted, in stitches or in tears, but many of us look and listen. It’s entertaining, and we can gleefully feel good about ourselves while the talking heads put someone else down. It’s a weak and petty self that enjoys such entertainment, but well, that is who we often are.

The latest flip to the dark side of ridiculous media is CNBC. I watch CNBC often, and last week was a turning point. Rick Santelli, Larry Kudlow, and Jim Cramer unleashed a series of anti-Obama rants about the war against capitalism, subsidizing losers, and unprecedented wealth destruction. Did Obama get us into this mess? Where were these TV demagogues when Bush exploded the deficit, when the SEC fell asleep at the wheel, when CNBC promoted many of the CEOs who later bankrupted their companies and then came begging for government handouts? Is there any kind of mea culpa forthcoming from CNBC about its role in not being systematically critical of Wall Street investment banks, Countrywide Financial, AIG, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac when it mattered years ago? What happened to their skills as journalists in investigating these problems before they became the crisis du jour for talk television? David Faber is the only one who still sounds thoughtful on CNBC, and he must feel lonely there.

The problem of course is that this insidious trend to gather a small, but loyal group of eyeballs to make your channel profitable is being taken for serious national debate by those who are not the sharpest tools in the shed: our politicians. If our political leaders make important decisions based on these rants, then expect our country to suffer, expect it to be irrationally divided and bitter, expect careful thinking to go the way of analog TV, expect other countries not so hooked on the boob tube to surpass us quietly and methodically. Where is Gretchen Morgenson when you need her? Turn off the TV, and pick up a newspaper, magazine or book, and think outside the box.