Aired Tuesday, 28 November 2017, 5:00 PM EST
A Conversation With Alt-Left Journalist Mark Crispin Miller and Alt-Right Commentator Paul Craig Roberts
“We need more forums, and fewer againstums.” — Swami Beyondananda
Friday … March 6, 1981.
A notable date, and I’m willing to bet no one recognizes it or its significance. I only know it because I looked it up. It was the last broadcast Walter Cronkite made as anchorman on CBS Evening News. It was the last time he would say, “And that’s the way it is…” and have the majority of Americans regardless of which party they favored believe him.
It was the beginning of the end of an era where Americans shared a common narrative, and a commonly-sensed faith in the “goodness” of America, its institutions, and its people. It was before the polarization brought on by the weaponized politics of Newt Gingrich, and the betrayal of America’s working people by neoliberal Democrats. It was 20 years before the 911 attacks that recalled other perpetrations against the American people like the JFK, RFK and MLK assassinations.
It was back there — way, way back in almost ancient history — when “fake news” was called by its real name, “lies”.
A key purpose of Wiki Politiki — quixotic as it may seem — is to bring awakening elements of left and right front-and-center in a conversation to go above and beyond both mainstream news and fabricated disinformation, and to find a likelier story that will help us metabolize the past and move forward as a healed and healthy body politic.
The question isn’t “Can we do it?” but “HOW can we do it?” A common sense consensus of “what’s so … so what … and now what” is REQUIRED for the survival and thrival of our experiment in self-governance.
In the first of what I hope will be many such conversations for possibility, I am bringing together two courageous outside-the-box thinkers, alt left journalist Mark Crispin Miller and alt right commentator Paul Craig Roberts in a conversation for co-creation. What DO the alt left and the alt-right agree is “so”, and how can this become the foundation for a new, truth-based narrative that will heal the disheartenment in the heartland and move us toward the future the vast majority of us desire?
Mark Crispin Miller and Paul Craig Roberts have one significant thing in common: They’ve both held prestigious positions in mainstream journalism and politics. Miller is a communications professor at NYU and wrote a humorous and mainstream book in 2002 called The Bush Dyslexicon. However, two years later his book Fooled Again, provided ample proof that both the 2000 and 2004 elections were stolen by hacked voting machines — and he became less of a mainstream darling.
Paul Craig Roberts served as an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during the Reagan Administration and was an editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal. He has been a critic of neo-conservativism and neoliberalism since the Iraq War and has been outspoken in his critique of the official 911 narrative.
In addition to finding out how each of these individuals found the perspective and courage to venture outside the mainstream narratives, we will also discover what common ground they share, AND how we the people can call forth and empower a media we can rely on, and a government that does the bidding of the people, not the bidding of the highest bidder.