RIP Bill Moyers

 

Bill Moyers died on Thursday, June 26 at the age of 91.  He began his second (or third) and lasting career as a television journalist and documentarian in 1971.  Though he effectively retired in 2015 at age 80, he participated in making one last documentary last year, which he also narrated.  On the day of his death, it won for Outstanding Social Issues Documentary at the Emmys. 

 Two American Families 1991-2024 previously won the International Documentary Association's 2024 prize as Best TV Feature Documentary.  It was originally shown on the PBS series Frontline. This Emmys ceremony (for news and documentary awards only) also featured a tribute to Moyers, who had been inducted in the Television Hall of Fame in 1995.

Bill Moyers was the single most outstanding broadcast journalist of his time.  Among his many contributions over the years was an insistent analysis of the news media itself, so incisive that it became prophetic.  "We have an ideological press that's interested in the election of Republicans, and a mainstream press that's interested in the bottom line. Therefore, we don't have a vigilant, independent press whose interest is the American people."  He said this nearly 20 years ago.  Similarly, his warnings about the imminent dangers to American democracy made a decade ago are now coming true in the headlines every day.

His first, brief career was in government, and his accomplishments are astonishing: he helped create the Peace Corps and was instrumental in administering its first years; he helped shape, write and get passed such items on the LBJ Great Society agenda as Civil Rights and Voting Rights, and anti-poverty programs.  He even had a guiding hand in the creation of PBS itself, which later became his principal TV home.

Late in his life Moyers described his career as a "teacher at-large."  He hoped that it would be said of him that "he was a darned good listener."

The old cliche of "we will never see his like again" is this time unfortunately true. The breadth and depth of his television work remains unique. Fortunately, much of his work is still accessible, on You Tube, and the Bill Moyers website., and elsewhere on the Internet as well as in his books.

All I can add is how Bill Moyers shaped my life, only through his TV work and his books.  It's my tribute, and one example out of many of how he influenced individuals as well as our entire culture: everything from highlighting the defining roles of money in politics and the growing chasm between the very wealthy and everyone else, to independent news media and diversity in reporting, the interplay of mind and body in health and the care of the dying; the "world of ideas" existing outside media exposure, and the vital roles of spirit and poetry in many aspects of American life. 

I first wrote about this two years ago in the middle of my last long post of my "TV and Me" series.  What follows is that long section, with a few edits and changes.

 Simply in terms of broadcast journalism, there was no more important figure in the twentieth century  after Edward R. Murrow--and so far in the 21st after no one-- than Bill Moyers.  But with his many programs (often produced by his wife, Judith Davidson Moyers) he went far beyond the usual concerns of journalism. 

Born in rural Oklahoma, christened Billy Don Moyers, and raised in Marshall, Texas, he became a teenage reporter for the local newspaper before studying journalism at North Texas State College.  A summer internship in the offices of Senator Lyndon Johnson led to a long association that ended in the White House.

 After earning a journalism B.A. at the University of Texas, Moyers entered divinity school, and was ordained a Baptist minister and for awhile was a pastor for a Texas church.  In 1960 he rejoined LBJ, now Democratic candidate for Vice President, and went to Washington to work in the Kennedy-Johnson administration, where he was instrumental in establishing the Peace Corps and getting it running. According to the excellent Washington Post obituary, these Peace Corps years were, he said, "the happiest three years of my life."

 Later in the Johnson White House he was instrumental in shaping and lobbying for Great Society social legislation, like Civil Rights, Voting Rights and anti-poverty programs, as well as the early forms of Medicare and Medicaid and environmental laws.

Then his tenure as LBJ's press secretary became compromised over the Vietnam War, and he quit. Moyers returned to journalism to set a stubborn standard for probity and ethics. This kept him changing jobs, which included stints as a newspaper publisher and a commentator on CBS and NBC evening news broadcasts. 

 But it was on PBS, which he helped create in the Johnson White House in 1967, that Moyers operated most often and most fully.  An early (and recurrent) title in his many news-oriented program of reportage, interview and commentary was Bill Moyers Journal, which is the first I recall watching in the early 70s, and even ordered transcripts of some impressive episodes. I also remember A Walk Through the 20^th Century. 

Over the years he cut through official excuses and political obfuscation to provide relevant information and succinct critiques of activities and trends that alarmed and depressed me in the 1980s and afterwards. I especially remember his powerful two hour environmental documentary Earth on Edge in 2001, and his early 2000s weekly program, Now. One episode won the Edward R. Murrow award.

 Moyers also focused on journalism and its responsibilities in relation to political life.  I remember his short series, The Public Mind in 1989 as particularly powerful.

   These programs deepened my understanding, and as upsetting as many were, they rescued me from despair because there was someone else who saw what I saw, but in more context and detail, eloquently expressed. I recall Earth on Edge, on interlocking ecological crises, as a model documentary that ought to be taught.  It was so much better than anything else produced at PBS or elsewhere. 

But much as he once dumped journalism for divinity school, Moyers kept turning to deeper and vastly different subjects-- areas of human life and thought that underlie political realms.  These were the programs that made the most difference to me. There were so many I can only mention the ones that were the most personally important.

 Probably Moyers’ most extensive series was A World of Ideas, begun in 1988: some 70 hour-long interviews, subtitled “conversations with thoughtful men and women about American life today and the ideas shaping our future.” 

 Moyers was responding in part to the impoverished national dialogue, the lack of ideas in the political discourse in that election year, but his interviewees were not in politics: they were scholars and thinkers in anthropology and sociology, linguistics and management, ethics and medicine, religion and history, education, physics and environmental sciences.  They were filmmakers, writers, novelists, poet and playwright. He described his “self-appointed” mission:  “ I was attempting to bring to television the lively minds of our time.” 

They were also—Moyers as well as his guest—excellent company.  There were some misses—I thought Moyers wasted an hour discussing Canada as a funny foreign country with (Canadian) Northrop Frye, one of the greatest minds applied to literature in the 20^th century.  But mostly they were enlightening and inspiring conversations.  I valued equally the interviews of people I knew of and wanted to know more (like August Wilson, Maxine Hong Kingston, Peter Sellars, Richard Rodriguez, Issac Asimov and Toni Morrison), and with those introduced into my world for the first time (like philosopher Jacob Needleman, anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson, classicist Martha Nussbaum, educator Vartan Gregorian and historian of religion Elaine Pagels.)  

The timing of these interviews was significant in introducing me to three Native American figures when I was beginning an exploration of American Indian literature and culture that would grow over the next decade of my life: Onondaga chief and national leader Oren Lyons (with whom Moyers also did a separate program), and contemporary American Indian novelists Louise Erdrich and Michael Dorris (pictured.)  Like everything else Moyers did for PBS, these interviews were rerun several times (especially during pledge drives), and I managed to tape quite a few of them for later study.    

 In 1989 Moyers visited a biannual poetry festival to record the readings and interview the poets in the series The Power of the Word.  It would be the first of several such series (for instance The Language of Life in 1995, The Sounds of Poetry and Fooling with Words in 1999, and interviews with individual poets on his revived Bill Moyers Journal) featuring a broad range of poets. 

poets Sharon Olds and Galway Kinnell

The first episode of The Power of the Word with William Stafford, Lucille Clifton Octavio Paz, Robert Bly, Sharon Olds, and Galway Kinnell, shows interactions between poets and students (many in high school) who attended the conference. The atmosphere is warm, and it definitely heats up at the end with Olds and Kinnell trading love poems.

 

poet Li-Young Lee

  The second explores poetry in prisons with James Autry and Quincy Troupe; the third, “Ancestral Voices” highlights the through-line of tradition in contemporary life with Joy Harjo, Barett Kauro Hongo and Mary Tall Mountain.  Then poets Li-Young Lee and Gerald Stern explore the poetry of memory. 

Lucille Clifton

A full hour is devoted to Stanley Kunitz, then one of the most respected American poets at age 84 (he lived to be 101.)  The final program is  “Where the Soul Lives,” featuring W.S. Merwin, Lucille Clifton and Robert Bly.  Bly ends the series on stage with the Paul Winter Consort reciting a short poem by Rumi, the concluding lines I have since often quoted: “Let the beauty we love be what we do./There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the earth.”  

Again, I taped some of these programs and over the years they continued to nourish and center me.

 Robert Bly was prominent in this episode, and he was a focus of the 1990 production of A Gathering of Men. The so-called men’s movement, and Bly’s part in it, were distorted, trivialized and lied about for years.  They were ridiculed, and the men who participated were cruelly shamed.  Moyers showed that this one event was serious, sincere, not political or a hostile escape from women but an exploration of feelings and their denial, particularly about a man’s relationship to his father.  Though others including psychologists James Hillman and Michael Meade not shown in this program were also leaders of these workshops, they all—like Bly-- employed poetry, myth and fairy tales to explore this and related issues. 

 I’ve never attended a men’s group, and I did not always agree completely with Bly at the pitch of his enthusiasms. But whatever other such gatherings were like, the ones these men led were serious attempts that met a need.  This program on its own is a tentative exploration that remains a useful introduction.  When I first saw it, these questions were new to me, but they immediately resonated.  This arrived at about the same time as related discussions about children of alcoholics and forms of abuse felt by children were being explored for a general public, or at least that’s when they were reaching me. 

Martin Amis, Margaret Atwood

These programs foregrounding poetry are among those that were centered on a particular conference or festival, where the Moyers team filmed the public events and some audience response or interaction, and Moyers interviewed principal participants.  Others include the Spirit and Nature program in 1991, which featured an interview with the Dalai Lama, and the Faith and Reason series in 2006, which provided a rare interview with the revered Buddhist monk Pema Chodron, as well as lively and absorbing conversations with Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood and Martin Amis.  Apart from providing a permanent digest of these proceedings for the many who were not there, the words preserved in these programs continue to stimulate thought and suggest new perspectives. 

Other programs were pieced together from research and interviews in various places, as the five-part 1993 series Healing and the Mind.  Modern western medicine had long discounted any connection between mind (including emotions) with physical processes and health: it was all about mechanics, all about the plumbing.  Anything else was considered superstition.  When reports circulated of some Buddhist monks being able to control blood pressure during meditations, it was considered at best an unverified mystery, or more typically as occult nonsense.

 This was only beginning to change in the early 1990s, and this series of programs was groundbreaking in revealing how much practical work and theory was ongoing, even in hospitals and clinics, exploring the relationship of brain, mind and body.  Experts and practitioners discussed relations of the brain and emotions with the immune system, the effects of environment and community on healing, and generally a new, broader attitude to treat patients holistically, as well as ways for individuals to provide for their own health.

 Today most of the practices discussed, from mindfulness and acupuncture to support groups and mothers holding their newborns immediately after birth, are mainstream.  Most therapies are such normal elements of treatment that insurance often covers them.  Similarly, the hospice care I first glimpsed in On Our Own Terms: Moyers on Dying (2000) was a rare approach then, but very much accepted now. 

The segment of Healing and the Mind that most stayed with me was Moyers exploring the work of Jon Kabatt-Zinn at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center’s Stress Reduction clinic, where he was employing the radical idea of addressing intractable back pain with the practice of meditation.  Kabatt-Zinn’s variation on single-point or mindfulness meditation was still relatively new to America, especially outside Buddhist monasteries and related places like the Zen Center in San Francisco.  His techniques were demonstrated, and he talked persuasively about them.

 The program referred to Kabatt-Zinn’s book, Full Catastrophe Living, which included instructions on meditation and the “body scan” he employs, as well as a couple of yoga regimes.  I got that book and the associated tapes in which Kabatt-Zinn speaks you through the process.  When it comes to physical movements I am a slow learner, and group instruction just befuddles me.  So I used the tapes in conjunction with diagrams in the book to learn one of the yoga regimes, and I did it regularly for years.  Though I still use aspects of it, maybe it’s time to return to it in a more formal way. 

 The experience Bill Moyers had was similar to mine, and many others: the body scan was a revelation, while meditation was hard and confusing and a bit irritating.  But it opened the door to learning the practice of meditation in various ways, including a deeper understanding of Zen practice.  This has been a major theme in my learning for the past 30 years, and it effectively began with this segment.  And I still use several of Kabatt-Zinn’s guided meditations, and profit from a couple of his subsequent books on the subject.

 Again, I acquired many of the companion books to these Moyers programs (several published by Doubleday thanks to senior editor Jacqueline Kennedy.)  They remain active resources.  Many of the programs themselves are accessible via YouTube, PBS and the Bill Moyers.com website. 

I have saved the most popular—and for me the most influential—of these many Moyers programs for last. In 1988, Moyers interviewed Joseph Campbell, previously unknown to the general public, with associated images from his work on world mythologies over six one-hour episodes.  The Power of Myth became one of the most popular TV series in PBS history. 

 I saw it when it first aired (and turned up repeatedly for awhile on PBS fund drives), but a recent re-viewing reminded me of an aspect I hadn’t thought much about: that these interviews took place during the last two summers of Campbell’s life.  This series made him famous, but posthumously. By the time it first aired, this Joseph Campbell-- so alive in personality, knowledge and understanding, who we were meeting for the first time-- was already gone.  He had been dealing with cancer those last years, so mortality was not an academic subject. As I watched it this time I was acutely aware of the additional power in his words on death and its meaning. 

 Campbell's many books, such as The Hero With A Thousand Faces, were influential with scholars and artists.  But it was the six-part The Power of Myth series that made him an icon, as he eloquently explained the patterns of mythology and the meanings he derived from them.

  Though the series included visual illustrations of some myths, the programs were basically little more than Campbell talking, with conversational prompts from a completely engaged Bill Moyers.  Yet the series was enormously popular.  It’s likely that many viewers got their first inklings of Buddhist and Hindu thought as well as traditional stories from Native American and other Indigenous peoples, from these programs. 

 But this wasn’t a mythological travelogue; Campbell distilled his own conclusions and related these stories to questions of the eternal within time, to the importance of the present moment, and the central functions of compassion and the individual experience.  He’d taught college students for many years, and spoke directly to their needs and yearnings. His most famous and therefore most misunderstood statement of “follow your bliss” was a profoundly religious message, shorn of any sense of sectarianism, let alone hedonism.   

Seeing the series again left me with two major impressions.  First, that so much of what has absorbed me in these recent decades in some sense began with this program. I even had forgotten that certain ideas and beliefs that I think of as essential to my life had their origin or at least articulation in these programs. (For example, that religion may have begun when humans dealt with the paradox of killing the animals they revered.)

 This series first aired when I was beginning to explore, in sometimes unrelated ways, Native American cultures and beliefs, the psychology of James Hillman and eventually his source, Carl Jung, and ecology in a deeper way.  This series touched on all of them and more.  Now my bookshelves contain dozens of books on these and related subjects, as well as several of Campbell’s books.

 The second impression is that having explored these topics and these thinkers and writers for the past quarter century and more, I found much more to learn and ponder in re-watching The Power of Myth than I could understand or accommodate back then.   That applies in different ways to other programs that Bill Moyers made.  They continue to nourish, as they once opened up new worlds, rescuing me from becoming mired in the goading limitations of the unembraceable world I was supposed to negotiate. 

These programs represent a small sample of the programs Bill Moyers created, every one of them thought-provoking and informative, and many of them revelatory.  Over the years, Moyers and his collaborators have created more worthy programs than any other individual or group, and perhaps more than some entire networks.

 Bill Moyers demonstrated the power of television to expand and deepen our experience.  There should be a thousand Moyers.  But there was only one. 

Three Treasures

67

 Everybody says my way is great 

but improbable.

 All greatness

 is improbable.

 What's probable

 is tedious and petty.

 I have three treasures.

 I keep and treasure them.

 The first, mercy, 

the second, moderation,

 the third, modesty.

 If you're merciful you can be brave,

 if you're moderate you can be generous,

 and if you don't presume to lead

 you can lead the high and mighty.

 But to be brave without compassion, 

or generous without self-restraint, 

or to take the lead,

 is fatal. 

 Compassion wins the battle

 and holds the fort;

 it is the bulwark set

 around those heaven helps.

 --Tao Te Ching, translation by Ursula LeGuin 

The Days After: Joyful Defiance

1. Joyful Defiance

Asheville, North Carolina: Getty photo

I haven't seen a reliable overview of Sunday newspaper coverage of the Saturday June 14 protests, but I'd have to believe a lot of local papers had photo spreads.  More photos were on the Internet (Talking Points Memo for one collected many from readers) and presumably on social media.

By Monday the media consensus had formed, that the protests overshadowed and shamed the Boss Chaos birthday tank parade.  Some of the organizing groups said that more than 5 million Americans participated in more than 2100 communities, and news media mostly went with those numbers.  A crowd-sourcing effort, not yet complete, suggests a range of 4 to 6 million.  The Crowdsourcing Consortium had estimated the 2017 Women's March at between 3.3 and 5.6 million, so it's likely that Saturday was the largest in history--certainly in the number of communities participating.  (This consortium also estimates that there have been over 15,000 other resistance protests since January.)

Austin, Texas

Some additional numbers got into the mix.  Organizers in Philadelphia, St. Paul and San Diego claimed there were over or near 100,000. Boston media claimed one million there. As an example of breadth, there were 50 protesting communities in Wisconsin alone. 

Boston,MA  

I continue to be amazed at the wit, the buoyancy and relentlessness of these protests. And the courage, given the lawlessness of the Chaos and Chaos-inspired people. Maybe it was Rachel who characterized the day's mood as "joyful defiance." The diversity of participants is implied by the kinds of places where the protests occurred.   The photos show a lot of white people, who look a lot like the stereotypical Chaos voter.  They may be having a good time, but they aren't out there to party.  And they know why they are there.

There are many differences but some similarities to the 1960s protests of my experience.  The mood of the March on Washington was solemn and even reverent.  Anti-war protests ran the gamut from grimly defiant to very angry, but we had fun, too. But we always felt apart from the mainstream.  I don't think these protestors do.  And poll numbers suggest they are right. 

Chattanooga, Tennessee

What might be the same is the disbelief that the media didn't immediately give them their true significance, often with insultingly low estimates of the numbers participating.  And the high that participating brings, and the letdown afterwards when nothing has changed.

But networking with people you met and maintaining some sort of cohesion should be easier with faster and easier communication media.  The question of what comes next is a real one. 

Oakland, CA

On Monday there was a police report of a gun death at a protest in Utah, in which someone used a handgun to shoot at someone pointing a rifle at marchers.  He hit the gunman but killed someone else--a marcher or a bystander.  On Tuesday it was also revealed that one person was killed as a result of the Washington military parade, run down by a truck carrying a tank. 

There were a couple of known attempts of drivers trying to mow down marchers, and another TPM article reports increased agitation for violence against protesters, especially official violence in Red states and communities, where such acts are no longer severely penalized.

On Thursday, a man who was arrested for carrying a handgun without license at a June 14 protest in West Chester, PA, who also had an AR-14 style rifle in his car, was arrested again when police searched his home and found 13 improvised explosives, grenades and other gear.  He was charged with multiple crimes including possession of weapons of mass destruction. 

But also, by Wednesday, letters to the editor by June 14 participants were starting to appear, as here in the Washington Post, further sharing an experience of a lifetime.  

 2.  The Military Parade

It turned out to be Army vs. Boss Chaos, and Army won.  

The US Army and its career professional leadership has made some significant missteps since January.  Censoring the West Point Library, cooperating with the Chaos political show at Fort Bragg are prominent among them.  But they've also proven adroit at seemingly cooperating with Chaos in Chief while subtly undermining him.  They did as ordered and restored the old names to some bases previously named after Confederate generals.  But they officially named the bases after US Army officers and enlisted heroes who just happen to have the same last names as the generals the US Army fought against in the Civil War. 

 

Forth Worth, TX

And they followed orders and organized a parade in Washington, which Chaos publicly denied was in honor of his birthday and his presidency, but was honoring the 250th anniversary of the Army.  Then the Army did something vitally subversive: they took him at his lying public word.

So the parade really was an historical pageant and a celebration, with soldiers decked out in period uniforms rented from Hollywood.  The hardware was at a minimum.  Chaos insisted on tanks, and there were tanks of several eras--which is fitting, since tanks are largely obsolete these days, except to scare citizens opposing their dear leader.  Instead the soldiers manning the tanks smiled at the crowd and made hearts with their hands, while their compatriot foot soldiers strolled rather than marched by in lockstep, waving.  According to biographer Michael Wolff, Trump was furious that the parade wasn't more menacing, and blamed his Secretary of Defense. 

There was of course still no excuse for the $25 million to $45 million spent on it.  But Chaos owns that.

Paris, France

Meanwhile by Monday the news media consensus was that attendance at the parade was "sparse" and entirely overshadowed by the national--really international-- protests.  Even though there was to be no "official" No Kings protest in Washington itself, there were several anti-Chaos marches and demonstrations earlier in the day with significant attendance.

But Boss Chaos always wants control, insisting on being the center of attention.  This time his diversion of choice may be to involve the country in yet another war in the Middle East.  He didn't get his jollies with a menacing parade. He may opt for the push-button power of immense military violence.  His policies are already killing hundreds of thousands of children from starvation and disease that USAID would have otherwise prevented.  Soon he may feed his need with more graphic death and destruction, with high danger of protracted consequences.  

The Day

Chicago on Saturday: NY Times photo

It was a day unique in American history.  In over 2000 communities, millions of Americans marched and rallied their resistance and opposition to the Chaos dictatorship.  Crowds ranged from the hundreds of thousands in big cities like New York, Philadelphia and Chicago, to thousands in almost every sizeable city in the fifty states, and hundreds in smaller communities--like Pentwater, Michigan (pop.800) where 400 participated.

 

Boise, Idaho: Capital Sun photo

   One New York Times reporter stood on a Portland, Oregon street corner and watched the crowd pass for more than an hour.  "The mood is definitely serious, but also laced with a kind of buoyant joy."  Another reporter observed that in Los Angeles "the scale of the protest in downtown is remarkable...People of all ages have spread across blocks all over downtown."  In Dallas, a Times reporter said the crowd "stretches from curb to curb for at least five blocks, as far as I can see."

Portland, Oregon: Capital Chronicle photo

The San Francisco Chronicle headlined that the demonstration there could be one of the largest in the city's history.  In Chicago, the large crowd shut down the Loop.  

New York City crowd estimated over 200,000

There were instances of police applying forces to divert marchers, but no real violence except perpetrated against the protests, including several cases of cars hitting and attempting to hit marchers.  The worst violence of course was earlier in Minnesota with the assassination of a rising star in state government and the serious gunshot injuries of another official and spouse.  The gunman was reportedly masquerading as police.  Because he was still at large and No Kings flyers were found in his vehicle, the Minnesota protests were officially cancelled.  But the big St. Paul protest went on anyway. 

Des Moines, Iowa: Des Moines Register photo

The millions of Americans committing themselves to active protest underscores the latest polls which show opposition to Chaos in every policy, action or topic; and specifically by a large margin disapproving military intervention in Los Angeles, and some 60% consider the Chaos created military parade a waste of taxpayer money. 

Atlanta, Georgia: Guardian photo

Hartford, Conn.  Courant photo

In Washington the multi-million dollar vanity military parade was met with relative indifference, less than large and more than lethargic crowds, many who left early.  The Times reporter called it desultory and "underwhelming."  Daily Beast observed that Melania and the faux Sec. of Defense appeared bored, and even Chaos looked sour and disconcerted. Politico observed the obvious: that the protests outdid the parade in scale. Many many times over. 

Topeka, Kansas

San Francisco: KQED photo

San Diego, CA

Predictably Faux News giddily covered the parade and the protests not at all.  Other cable networks showed some parade, with more on Minnesota and the Middle East, and showed protests mostly when police were shooting tear gas and their "non-lethal" stuff, as in LA.  But the secret weapon of these protests is they were local, and probably hundreds of city and local television stations and newspapers covered them extensively--they were the biggest news in their locality. And of course, millions of people means millions of social media posts and looks.

Philadelphia, PA : NY Times photo

Louisville, Kentucky

Once again, protestors managed to be more creative and succinct that politicians. In Springfield, Mass. a young woman held up this sign: "Eggs are expensive because all the chickens are in Congress."

Milwaukee, Wisconsin: Journal Sentinel photo

Cincinnati, Ohio

Mt. Kisko, New York: lohud photo

Pittsburgh, PA: Post Gazette photo

I'm not sure where this sign was held but it kind of sums it up: "We fought a king in 1775.  We fought a dictator in 1945.  We will fight whatever the hell this is in 2025."  

Los Angeles: NBC photo

Los Angeles: Guardian photo

The Day Before

 
Suddenly everybody's talking about kings.  Governor Newsom of California, House Democratic Leader Jeffries, the manhandled Senator Padilla of California, and most telling, Judge Breyer in his court decision that ended with a restraining order turning control of the California National Guard back to the Governor.  The federalizing of the Guard based on a statute was not justified on the basis of a rebellion, because conditions for rebellion weren't met, he said.  It was not an armed and organized group proclaiming their intent to overthrow the government.  That the Executive doesn't get to unilaterally decide what is rebellion and when to use force is precisely why the US Constitution was written and the US government formed.  That kind of Executive existed: King George.  And the American Revolution was fought to separate from that arbitrary power.

Judge Breyer's decision was "stayed" (the stay of a stay) with questionable legality by a 3 judge panel of the Court of Appeals, until they hear the federals appeal, which is in itself of questionable legality.  But Breyer made the case as clearly as anyone could.  Making it within 48 hours of the No Kings demonstration day was fitting but accidental.

Not so (probably) the vocabulary used by these Democratic officials, who stopped short of urging people to attend the No Kings demonstrations, though mentioning the principle of No Kings was very likely not coincidental. That's an interesting difference from the last two big demo days, in April and May.

Also on Thursday, US Senator representing California Senator Alex Padilla (member of the Judiciary Committee) was wrestled to the ground and handcuffed for attempting to ask Homeland Security boss Kristi Noem a question at her press conference in an LA federal building.  He said he was moved to do so by something she was saying.  It was this:

"We're not going away.  We are staying here to liberate this city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and this mayor have placed on this country..."

In other words, the intent of the federalized National Guard and ICE was to overthrow the elected officials of California by force, which does meet the definition of rebellion, or insurrection. Or simply, a coup by the current federal executive.  So that makes it tyranny, the tyranny of dictators, the tyranny of kings. Recall that when Boss Chaos was asked what crime Governor Newsom had committed that warranted arrest, he said in effect the crime of being elected.  (Heather Cox Richardson makes this point.)

Now it's the day before No Kings day, the military parade in Washington.  Now there's sudden warfare in the Middle East which seems to be only beginning.  So yet another fear realized: the bumblers of Chaos faced with a real life international crisis.  So who knows what Friday will bring, and what Saturday (with ominous not entirely metaphorical thunderstorms forecast for DC)  will look like.   

Meeting This Moment

 

This moment is fluid and fast-moving, but its immediate dimensions are consequential enough to be seriously alarming.  

This moment can be seen as beginning with some aggressive raids and indiscriminate roundups of working people by purported ICE agents in Los Angeles on Friday June 6 and coming to some definition on or immediately after Saturday June 14, when a burlesque Hitler/Mussolini/Stalin-style military parade demanded by Boss Chaos is scheduled in Washington while mass protests are scheduled just about everywhere else in the United States.  

What makes it a moment--a crucial and defining moment-- is Chaos seizing control of the California National Guard and deploying several thousands in the LA area, both to police protest areas and to accompany ICE raids with shows of massive and armed force, as well as attempting to involve active military in domestic affairs with a detachment of US Marines.  This began effectively on June 9 and 10.  

This is the aspect of the Hitler playbook that is most feared.  And it literally was part of Hitler's playbook for seizing dictatorial powers, as described in an Atlantic article behind their paywall: manufacture a crisis and respond to it with military force.  

Such an attempt by Boss Chaos was implicit from the beginning, though there were questions about whether and how he could achieve it.  First, could he find within the various federal agencies with police and military capabilities a reliable Secret Police, loyal only to him?  After insulating himself with extreme and clueless loyalists in all the key positions (Defense, Homeland Security, etc.), getting better control of all means of communication and information, and neutralizing if not destroying any watchdog or justice agencies (especially with equally corrupt lapdogs atop Department of Justice), he found or forged just such a Secret Police in ICE and the Homeland Security Investigative service.  

When it came time to involve the military (beginning with the quasi-military National Guard, but quickly moving to the regular forces) could he control them, even when what he demanded that they do is clearly against the Constitution, other laws, ethical practices and the military's own codes?  So far the answer seems to be yes, with a few reports of dissent.  (But he fired most of the potential dissenters first.)  

So far, the National Guard is aiding the immigration roundups without a peep, Chaos turned an address to the military at Fort Bragg into a political rally and there was no dissension from top brass about this obvious violation of their code.  Though at this moment the Marines in LA have no orders, so far there's no pushback there.  There's been some embarrassment expressed about the military parade, but so far nothing else.

So all this makes for a very dangerous situation, mostly because it is likely just the beginning.

Apart from local opposition, largely spontaneous with some organized by labor unions, the national day of opposition was being organized by so far little known figures in very new organizations, who nevertheless carried off at least two previous days of demonstrations across the country.  Joined by other organizations--100 or more--they promised the largest single day of protest in probably thousands of locations on June 14, while the Chaos parade was wasting some $50 million in tearing up the streets of Washington.  

As for leadership in opposition, so far the most public and inspiring voices were Rachel Maddow, Bruce Springsteen and Steven Colbert.  But in one long interview on MSNBC on Monday, California Governor Gavin Newsom did what few political leaders have done effectively: he was real.  And he was real angry.  Some of that intensity survived in his TV address on Tuesday, though the political smoothness also returned. But at the end of it he seemed to be calling for peaceful but massive demonstrations and dissent. 

Newsom appears to be one of those who believes that the Chaos long game involves destroying the power of state governments to oppose him, partly by controlling its own affairs.  With a captive Congress, the federal bureaucracy in shambles, and at best a timid Supreme Court, and the opposition party in apparent leaderless disarray, the states appear to be the final institutional bulwark.   

Some court intervention this week might be possible, and unforeseen events could intervene, but otherwise things are building towards Saturday, with increasing stakes and danger.  Will there be a million, or millions of people who actually show up to protest, given the open intimidation by the bully with the army?  Though there are no No King demos scheduled in Washington itself, could there be protest anyway with unsanctioned activities that either provoke or simply get a violent response?

Whatever happens, there will be more millions of Americans (not to mention a lot of eyes around the world) who will not be directly involved.  This will be the first major test case of what gets through as credible information in this peculiar media age, different from any in a hundred years or more.  

In the era of mass media there were widely credible outlets, eventually with widely shared ethics, and trusted sources of news or of corrections to misinformation.  Wire services brought information from elsewhere to local newspapers, and radio and television news brought reports and then pictures into homes everywhere.  There were decades when I could watch how the three networks covered a particular story, and see where they agreed and where they differed, along with weekly newsmagazines, wire service reports and commentaries by respected observers.  So in a time of perilous events, there was widely shared and commonly held information, with political and ideological beliefs to the side.

We are about to see how much of that survived.  Back then it wasn't always instantaneous--especially when it involved dissent and protests.  It took awhile for even the now revered March on Washington in 1962 to achieve its now widely held story.  

Granted, that today's traditional media has engaged in traditional sensationalization (claiming that LA is "on fire" when nothing burned but a couple of self-driving cars), and has not shown a lot of courage in resisting Chaos intimidation. But now both the immediate and sustained view of what happens is fractured by manipulated and deliberately mislabeled video, doctored photos and false reports, circulated on social media.  

It's happening now in regards to events in LA, with footage of previous violent protests mislabeled as video from this week.  While actual photos obtained by the San Francisco Chronicle of unaccommodated National Guard troops sleeping on floors are called fake news. 

 How far the algorithm-driven ideological distortion of reality has come to dominate and perhaps destroy any common picture of what actually happens may also be answered soon.  How does democracy survive without commonly accepted truth, especially with weakened or seized supporting institutions?  That's another question that may be addressed in this moment.

As some have pointed out (particularly Lawrence O'Donnell in his brilliant June 9 hour), the timing of this militarized dictatorship manufactured crisis is also a huge distraction from newsmaking events that Chaos doesn't want in the forefront, such as his recent media mud-wrestling sessions with Musk, and his budget of cruelty and devastation.  We're all just starting to feel the effects of his tariffs, in gaps on shelves, disrupted supply chains and unpredictable delivery times as well as higher prices.  He sure doesn't want us thinking about that.