Jon Reisman

As a young boy growing up in the ‘60s and ‘70s, I distinctly remember watching and listening to Walter Cronkite on our bulky black-and-white TV. His coverage and commentary on JFK’s assassination, Vietnam, Watergate, and the associated political and social unrest remain vivid in my memory. I wish I could hear and credibly believe his famous tag line — “and that’s the way it is” — again. 

I trusted Uncle Walter as a fair-minded and accurate news anchor. And most Americans agreed with me. We had a common base understanding of events and reality. It surely had its own biases and blind spots, but it was a shared foundation that promoted cohesion. 

Today’s more diverse media and algorithm/AI-influenced information silos on flat screens and phones promote Tower of Babel communication chaos, division, and dysfunction. Americans and Mainers no longer have a shared basic understanding and definition of “reality.”

I’m an absolute believer in the 1st Amendment, free speech, and the wisdom and necessity of avoiding a Government Ministry of Truth that regulates and controls speech. I used to think that was a shared foundational value, but calls for regulating political speech are increasing. The left dissembles and denies their desire to silence and censor political speech they disagree with under the banner of reversing Citizens United. It’s only the bad, ignorant, dangerous fascist Republican speech that will get regulated and controlled .....

One of Maine’s leading leftists, Secretary of State and likely Democratic Gubernatorial nominee (ranked choice voting and a sympathetic legacy press are true blessings) Shenna Bellows was the head and card-carrying member of the Maine Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union before becoming a lying liberal lion. You’d be hard-pressed to find an Augusta pol less committed to free speech, voting rights, election integrity, democracy, and transparency. 

Her record includes trying to remove Donald Trump from the ballot, killing voter ID by lying about its effect on absentee voting, and using her power as license plate doyenne to harass and endanger ICE agents. As much as I abhor and fear Shenna, her fellow leftist tribal members see her in a completely different light. 

Maine’s left-leaning legacy press (Bangor Daily News, Portland Press Herald, Maine Trust for Public News, Newscenter Maine) will do everything in their power to spin a narrative favorable to Shenna et al. That includes misleading headlines, conspicuous errors of omission, and reminders that Republicans tend to “pounce.”

So we have a dilemma. There is no common foundational agreement/understanding of what the heck is going on. The country is divided and dysfunctional, and becoming more so. There is no clear path out of the dysfunction maze. We are either in or perilously close to a state of civil war. And that’s the way it is .....

Jon Reisman is an economist and policy analyst who retired from the University of Maine at Machias after 38 years. He resides on Cathance Lake in Cooper, where he is a Statler and Waldorf intern. Mr. Reisman’s views are his own, and he welcomes comments as letters to the editor here or to him directly via email at jreisman@maine.edu.