Bill Moyers And The Death Of American Decency

Scoop

29-06-2025

Monday, 30 June 2025, 10:25 am
Opinion: Martin LeFevre - Meditations
One of the greats of American journalism and political life, Bill Moyers, died in the last few days. In 1989 he famously asked, 'Can a nation die from too many lies?' The answer is now self-evident.
Despite serving as Lyndon Johnson's press secretary during LBJ's fabrications and massive military buildup in Vietnam, and despite covering and commenting on the erosion of American values and decency in his career as a journalist, Moyers was the rare man that was able to remain uncorrupted and uncynical.
Most Americans, including former Republicans, agree that the Republican Party is moribund, having become a cult-like captive of a despotic, petty, vengeful man that epitomizes the now dominant, darkest side of America.
What many Americans refuse to see is that the Democratic Party is moribund as well. And only a few acknowledge that what Moyers foresaw in 1989 – the death of the nation's soul.
In his characteristically clear and nonthreatening style, Moyers said of his colleagues, 'I think my peers in commercial television are talented and devoted journalists, but they've chosen to work in a corporate mainstream that trims their talent to fit the corporate nature of American life. And you do not get rewarded for telling the hard truths about America in a profit-seeking environment.'
To his credit, Moyers quit as Johnson's press secretary in 1966 rather than be party to the mendacity behind the war in Vietnam. He later wrote: 'We had become a war government, not a reform government.'
The closest you'll come to hearing the truth now, even in non-commercial national media, is the euphemistic refrain: 'We must not let ourselves become numb to the Trump Administration's authoritarianism.'
The reality is that a deadness of heart and the death of decency in the United States is what gave rise to this monstrous president and his right-hand man, the hatemonger Stephen Miller. After all, he was elected not once, or twice in succession, but after an interregnum and last gasp of faltering decency in the form of Joe Biden.
Of course the death of America's soul began long before the manufactured 'good' Gulf War pushed the American people's psyche and spirit into the abyss of Trump-Vance.
Slavery, indigenous genocide, and the cold-blooded justification year after year for dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki led inexorably to the monumental mistake of Vietnam. Then came America's glorious victory in the cooked up Persian Gulf War, which killed over 200,000 Iraqis to less than 200 US soldiers, and supposedly exorcised the ghosts of Vietnam. It was, spiritually, the last straw.
If decency is the minimal requirement for civility and the last guardrail against the abyss, just what is decency in a body politic?
One definition of decency is 'the conditions considered essential for a proper standard of living.' Obviously 'standard of living' in a pathologically externalizing and consumeristic culture is viewed in strictly material, economic terms.
More importantly however, it applies to the intangible bonds between a people, the true qualities beyond nationalistic identification that define them as an intact people, what Lincoln called 'the mystic chords of memory.'
That's why Trump and his sycophants are hell-bent on banning books and institutional references to aspects of American history they want to whitewash, from slavery, to past and present genocides, to progressive advances in women's reproductive rights.
In contrast, Bill Moyer's obituary spoke of how he 'masterfully used a visual medium to illuminate a world of ideas, producing some of TV's most cerebral and provocative series for public television.' That reads like a dirge not for the man but for the nation.
Purblind political scientists even now talk as if the swings from one party to another continue, as if the pendulum isn't broken, stuck in the rafters of the right-wing extremism that have taken over America.
They believe blather like this: 'It's pretty common after the party who loses the election and obviously has no clear leader, for there to be a period where it's not clear who the leaders are going to be. That happened after losses in 1980 and 1984 and 1988 as well. So it takes a while for that to shake out. That's not surprising.'
Democrats are clutching at straws. It's absurd to believe that the death of this nation's soul can be restored by a change in party leadership, or barnstorming rallies by Bernie Sanders, or a charismatic mayor of New York.
Wishful thinking is like dropping coins into a deep well and hoping to hear a tiny splash. For a rebirth to occur, the death must be fully acknowledged and mourned.
Can the dead come back to life? Yes, but only if they see and own their deadness, and want their hearts restored more than they want to physically survive and have endless BBQs.
Of course, many people take the attitude of the Guardian columnist who cynically wrote: 'Assume the worst, as I do, and your life will be much simpler. Expect those around you to fail and flout the rules that govern our world.'
Such people become the worst of human nature that they despise. Bill Moyers saw the worst, and retained his humanity. So must we, the dwindling decent minority.
Martin LeFevre
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