Saturday Email Bag : Donald Trump, the Confederate Flag, PC Speak and Democracy in America

It's Saturday email box time -- and your comments and questions this week are about Greece and the Iran nuclear negotiations. But, dear readers, we've discussed these two topics all week and are now waiting for resolution...in Brussels and Vienna. So, with your indulgence, I would like to take up another question that I promised to address this week. Democracy in America. If Greece is forcing the European Union to pay more attention to the democratic voices of its member states and their citizens, the negotiations between the US-led P5+1 and Iran have been a poster child for how not to treat the democratically elected members of the American Congress and the citizens who elect them. ~~~~~ And we need only look to Donald Trump, who is personally feeling the battering democracy is taking in the US at present. Trump is being trashed by mainstream network media and politicians for his comments about illegal immigrants coming from Mexico, many of whom he says are drug dealers and rapists. Trump has seen some of his business deals come unravelled and his relationship with the Republican Party and its presidential candidates become what we could call testy, at best. Trump’s presidential rivals at first avoided his comments about Mexican criminals pouring into the US, although several in the last week have carefully distanced themselves from Trump -- carefully, because they know that Trump's position on illegal immigrants resonates strongly with GOP voters. The proof? Trump continues to poll strongly and now has a seat in next month’s GOP debate on Fox. In addition, Trump accounted for an amazing 48% of all social-media and traditional-media conversation about politics in the last week, according to analytics group Zignal work for the Washington Post. Trump had 1.9 million mentions, compared with just 448,000 for top Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton. And, the latest North Carolina PPP poll shows that Donald Trump's momentum wih GOP voters keeps on building. He's the top choice of Republican primary voters in North Carolina, getting 16% to 12% for Jeb Bush and Scott Walker, 11% for Mike Huckabee, 9% for Ben Carson and Marco Rubio, 7% for Rand Paul, 6% for Ted Cruz, and 5% for Chris Christie. Trump is polling especially well with 'very conservative' voters - 66% see him favorably, with only 24% having a negative view of him. Trump held a press conference last night with the family of an African-American teenager slain by an illegal immigrant. Trump said the media is suppressing such stories, and CNN cut off its coverage when the dead boy's family started to say that they know that this suppression exists. ~~~~~ Another example of the position of a majority of American citizens being ignored by the media and many politicians occurred during South Carolina's debate over the question of the Confederate flag being flown at a monument on statehouse property. A majority of Americans see the Confederate flag as a symbol of Southern pride, not a reminder of racism, according to a new CNN/ORC poll taken last week. Among participants in the poll, 57% said it’s a symbol of Southern pride, 33% called it more a symbol of racism and 5% said it’s both equally. Among whites, 66% said it symbolizes pride, while just 17% of African-Americans responded that way. But, in the South, the racial divide is broader, with 75% of Southern whites describing the flag as a symbol of pride and 18% seeing it as a symbol of racism -- those figures are almost exactly reversed among Southern African-Americans, with just 11% seeing it as a sign of pride and 75% viewing it as a symbol of racism. And, while the CNN/ORC poll shows that a majority (55%) support removing the Confederate flag from government property that isn't part of a museum, and 50% support private companies choosing not to sell or manufacture items featuring the flag, most Americans oppose other efforts, including redesigning state flags that feature Confederate emblems or symbols to remove references to the Confederacy (57% oppose that), renaming streets and highways named after Confederate leaders (68% oppose that) and removing tributes to those who fought for the Confederacy from public places (71% oppose that). Among whites overall, not a single one of the five tested proposals has majority support, whereas among African-Americans, most favor removing flags from government property (73%), private companies stopping the sale or manufacture of products featuring the flag (65%) and redesigning state flags that feature Confederate references to remove them (59%). To put this in perspective, in 2013, the US Census Bureau estimated that there are 45 million African-Americans in the United States -- that is, 14.1% of the total American population of 316.1 million is Black, those who identify as ‘Black Only’ or as ‘Black in combination with another race’. But, the mainstream media treats the 14.1% as the voice of America. ~~~~~ What do these polls have to say about American democracy? First, mainstream network media - Fox News on cable excepted - doesn't agree with American majority opinion and so it ignores it or derides anyone who represents it. This goes a long way to explaining why Fox has a bigger audience than any mainstream media network. Second, politicians seem more influenced by the media's position than by that of their constituents -- at least when they appear on mainstream media, they back away from their constituencies' positions in favor of the media's. This may explain why Americans have such a low opinion of Congress -- 15% view Congress favorably. Third, while the First Amendment right to speak freely is granted to mainstream media, which is usually a spokesperson for minority opinion, those who represent majority opinion are not given equal time or a fair hearing. Although I didn't use the example of the Iran nuclear negotiations, it shows this bias clearly. While 70% to 80% of Americans do not favor any deal with Iran -- because they see Iran violating any accord, building nuclear weapons and using them in the Middle East -- mainstream media focuses on whether Iran will agree to enough of President Obama's terms so a 'legacy' deal can be signed. ~~~~~ Dear readers, the media is not elected. But it is protected by the First Amendment and can say whatever it chooses. However, American citizens are also protected by the First Amendment -- and they, not the media, must preserve their own free speech rights, despite the efforts of the left and mainstream media to silence them through false "Politically Correct" rules. Ask Donald Trump about trying to break free of PC speak. Without free speech and its marketplace of ideas, democracy dies. Period. End of Story. Elections have meaning. Contacting a Congress member has meaning. Boycotts have meaning. Topnotch spokespeople for the majority have meaning. As Edmund Burke said : "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."