A Flare in the Darkness

A Flare in the Darkness

In 1968, when I was in eighth grade, we often had the “old” guys come in to talk about what it was like to live back in “history.” World War II veterans, many our parents, would visit class and tell stories about the war or what it was like to live in the Great Depression. Hearing their stories, even though they must have been modified and sanitized, gave us a link to the past and an insight into living history.

In 2038 I’ll be eighty-two years old. As one of those “old guys” (if I’m not already there) what history will I tell those eighth graders about the “Trump Days” twenty years before? I’ll certainly speak of the constant twenty-four hour news, the “twitter” pronouncements and rumors, the on-going barrage of anxiety producing actions (from all sides) that led to a life of turmoil and concern.

And as an old former teacher, I  will want to document my story. Just as Churchill’s “Darkest Hour” or Roosevelt’s “Day of Infamy” documented World War II, so will speeches of our time demonstrate both our failures and successes to the future. One of those speeches will certainly be the one delivered by Arizona Republican Jeff Flake on the Senate floor yesterday.

Flake has little to lose. He has chosen not to run for re-election to the Senate, the writing on the wall is that he would lose badly in a primary to Republicans who were more “Trump-like.” He may have a future run for the Presidency, but it’s difficult to see where his constituency is in the Republican party outside of his home state and Utah. So Flake really isn’t speaking for his own political future, he is laying down a marker for history.

The headline of his speech, the one that the twenty-four hour news picked up, was his comparison of Trump and Josef Stalin, World War II dictator of Russia. To be fair, Flake didn’t really do that, he simply stated the Trump’s use of the phrase “enemy of the people” describing the news media was the same phrase that Stalin used. Flake went on to say that Stalin’s successor, Khrushchev, denounced the phrase because it was too easily turned into a death sentence.

But Flake’s speech wasn’t about Stalin. It was about truth, and the relationship of truth and democracy. Flake warned that Trump has weakened the public’s confidence in the press, calling it “fake news” or “alternative facts” when it doesn’t suit his needs, marking it as “the enemy of the people.” Flake states:

“…And of course, the President has it precisely backward – despotism is the enemy of the people. The free press is the despot’s enemy, which makes the free press the guardian of democracy.”

Flake also quoted Daniel Moynihan – “everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.” And that is what Flake is worried about, that the President is “creating” his own facts, denying others, and therefore obscuring the truth. In so doing, he is making it easier to deny or distract from the reality of events like Russian interference in the 2016 election, and efforts to prevent future intrusions.

In addition, Flake sees the President’s attitude as giving aid to suppression of the press, and the people, of nations around the world. He notes that Syria’s Assad, the Phillipines’s Duterte, and Venezuela’s Maduro have all used “fake news” to defend their despotic actions.

Flake briefly mentions George Orwell, who in his novel 1984 demonstrated how government manipulation of “facts” was a means to maintain despotism. For those of us who thought that Orwell’s vision could never happen here, Flake quotes the author: “The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those who speak it.” What seemed to be an anachronistic warning in class readings of the 1960’s, now rings with clarity today.

The United States has been through many periods of questioning “facts”: from the yellow journalism of the 1890’s to the government lies of Vietnam highlighted in the Pentagon Papers of the 1970’s, we have been misled. But the nation has always swung back to the truth. To this Flake issues a warning:

“We are a mature democracy – it is well past time that we stop excusing or ignoring – or worse, endorsing – these attacks on the truth. For if we compromise the truth for the sake of our politics, we are lost.”

 I hope, as the old man invited into a classroom to talk about our history, I can cite Jeff Flake’s courageous speech as signaling America to change course: a flare in the darkness, leading us to the light.

 

 

Text of Senator Jeff Flake’s Speech 1/17/18