Page 2 - Sonoma County Gazette April 2018

Dear Readers,
You may wonder why I have a FILM REVIEW below, where I normally place an advertiser testimonial...because I was inspired by Robert’s review and this movie. I was young when Watergate happened while Nixon was president.
My friends (male) were shipped off to fight in a war that made no sense to
my generation under the Draft. People who never should have been soldiers risked their lives, and the lives of others because they were not meant to be soldiers. A real soldier lives, breathes and thinks like a soldier, not an artist, a musician, etc. So lives were lost by forcing people into a role they never should have experienced. My generation protested that war and the leaders who forced people to die ... for what? Someone else’s natural resources?
It was brave and bold of the New York Times and Washington Post to publish the Pentagon Papers and risk their businesses and the livelihoods of hundreds of employees. Why would they take that risk? Because it was the right thing to do. There are times, like right now, when people are taking risks to speak their truth. Officials are resigning posts in government because they can’t live a lie. Young people are taking to the streets the way we did when we were young, because you HAVE to express your rage at something that is so wrong you seethe with the tension of silence.
My generation did, in fact, inspire a cultural revolution. So to watch aspects of our society slip back in time to what we fought so hard to end is frightening and profoundly sad. We know that progress is often two steps forward, one step back, so since we have stepped back, we need help making
those two steps forward. Thank you every person who stands up
for what they believe to be RIGHT - whether I agree with you or
not, you are courageous, and right, just for doing it.
FILM REVIEW: THE POST
by Robert Feuer
The free press is under attack in a way not seen since the 1960s. The current
government is engaged in an ongoing attempt at degradation of some of the long-standing media pillars of our society, while promoting and using to their advantage online websites deficient in fact-checking and proficient in inferior writing. The latter are proliferating like weeds in cyberspace.
Steven Spielberg’s film, “The Post,” couldn’t have come at a better time. It portrays the New York Times and Washington Post locking hands in the early ‘70s in a battle for the truth in an environment of governmental suppression. Much like the political climate now.
The story revolves around Daniel Ellsberg, who initiated the events portrayed, by stealing and photocopying a 47 volume, 7,000-page top secret study later called The Pentagon Papers, a Department of Defense study of
U.S. political and military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967. He
had worked on them, but. after becoming convinced of the wrongness of the Vietnam War, Ellsberg, in 1971, slowly stole them and gave them to the Times. The Times and Post began writing about that report, which was rife with serious lies and misrepresentations to the American public, involving several presidents. The government came after Ellsberg with both barrels, wiretapping his phone, breaking into the office of his psychiatrist looking for dirt with which to blackmail him, and charging him with violations of the Espionage Act. A restraining order that discontinued further publication of this news for 15 days went to the Supreme Court which ruled against the government for failing to justify their actions. Next stop, Watergate.
We’re once again locked in a conflict with our government, which is seemingly determined to block facts. They’re engaged in a disinformation campaign that involves possible infection of our voting process, including collusion with Russia. They’re determined to cloud the truth in this and many other areas, leaving the public in a world of confusion.
2 - www.sonomacountygazette.com - 4/18