The Cherry Orchard

Here’s an amazing fact: according to every USA television news show I watched yesterday, including ABC World News Tonight with Charles Gibson, Nightline, The O’Reilly Factor on Fox News and yes, even my favorite, Countdown with Keith Olbermann on MSNBC, there is nothing much going on in the Gaza Strip at all. No story. No coverage.

I caught a few moments of video footage from Gaza, finally, on Fox’s Hannity and Colmes, where they used the video as an opportunity to deliver some dumb cliches about Hamas as an irrational “death cult” that supports the use of pregnant women as suicide bombers. I guess the “right to life” angle is what got the story some TV time on Fox, which is more than it’s getting anywhere else.

I don’t even have a theory as to why this big story is being ignored on TV (thankfully, my local newspaper the New York Times is doing a better job). I don’t see that this disinterest serves any political agenda. Maybe the only explanation is an existential one. When real news happens — events that are shocking and upsetting, like a military takeover by a fundamentalist political organization in a massively overpopulated and depressed region of a horribly war-town part of the world — our journalistic community is stunned into silence. I’m guessing they’ll start reporting this news by Wednesday of next week or so, at which point they can begin using the safe past tense instead of the scary present tense.

It’s ironic that, several months after starting this blog with the express purpose of allowing me to vent my thoughts and frustrations on political and global issues, I find myself so overflowing with things to write that I end up writing nothing at all. (And, yes, that is my excuse for not posting much here in the last couple of weeks).

I’ve spent more time in the last few weeks reading up on politics and keeping up with the latest news than I have in many years. I check several of the political blogs listed on the front page of this site many times a day (most often Daily Kos and Huffington Post), and I watch a lot of Jon Stewart (when I need to laugh) and Bill O’Reilly (when I need to get pissed off). But my characteristic ability to mouth off freely about politics is stunted. I have too much to say, and I don’t know what to say first, and sometimes it’s easier to just talk about books instead of “dwelling in the real”.

I’m sure this won’t be a permanent condition, though. The upcoming USA midterm elections have many people on edge (witness the hysterical tones of every political blog, television news show and newspaper these days), and I certainly can’t remember ever feeling like so much was at stake in an non-Presidential USA election. I believe our current Iraq policy is a disaster, and I do not believe our President or Vice-President have the courage to admit their mistakes. Thus, we need to elect a Congress and a Senate that can take decision-making power away from the Executive branch, and this is why November 7 is so important. I will not be able to rest easy until I am sure that George W. Bush will spend his last two years as a lame duck.

Let’s say the Democrats do take the House and the Senate — what next? Well, first of all, impeachment proceedings can wait, and may not even be worth the trouble and the distraction. Instead, I want the new Congress and Senate to quickly pass legislation withdrawing past Congressional support for our current Iraq war, and to set a firm timetable for the fastest exit possible. I’d then hope for the beginning of a new kind of battle, which we can call a Diplomatic War (because the United States electorate really does love war, so let’s call it a war) to build an international coalition that can continue to work with the moderates in Iraq and contain damages to the best possible degree. Our current administration has gotten an F in diplomacy from day one, so the new Congress and Senate will have to work hard to establish new diplomatic channels that do not fall under the influence of the Executive office.

I pray that we wake up on Wednesday, November 8 and discover that we have elected a new government of the United States of America.

I used to hope for things like world peace. My expectations have been battered lately; the most I can hope for right now is a fresh start. Hmm, five days away …

This is the last of a quick seven-piece series on a basic question: we all say we hate war and violence and injustice, so who among us are doing anything about it? I decided to approach this question by looking at those who hold several key roles around the world, grouped not by nationality or religion but by function. Here’s what we looked at:

• Politicians

• Religious leaders

• The United Nations

• Independent Activist Organizations

• Writers, Artists and Musicians

• Theoreticians and Academics

I’d like to conclude with the group I feel closest to: journalists and bloggers (I’m really not interested in discussing the differences between journalists and bloggers, which is probably an overplayed topic). I think we’ve got a pretty lively public dialogue going on here in the USA. We’ve got loud voices like Michael Moore, Bill O’Reilly, Jon Stewart, Ann Coulter. I disagree with at least half of them all the time, and all of them probably half the time — but in the end I’ll just say I’m glad they’re all around to keep the dialogue jumping (as annoying as Bill O’Reilly is).

But there is no shared dialogue on a global level. Over here, we read our over-here newspapers that show upsetting pictures of casualties in Israel and don’t show upsetting pictures of casualties in Lebanon. Over there, they read their over-there newspapers that show upsetting pictures of casualties in Lebanon and don’t show upsetting pictures of casualties in Israel. Oh yeah, and both sides think it’s shocking how the other side doesn’t show photos of their casualties, and never notice that they do the same thing. We need better dialogue between nations, between religions, between languages. I wish some of our proud superstar journalists and supposedly innovative media executives would figure out ways to make this happen.

This is an exciting time to practice journalism, due not only to advances in digital video and networked communications but also to a new level of confidence and bravery among both amateur and professional journalists. I have no doubt that this trend will continue, and I can only hope that TheCherryOrchard.org will find ways to contribute to this trend.