RIP Bill Moyers (June 5, 1934 – June 26, 2025)

Creative Commons CC BY-SA 2.0 Photo by Gage Skidmore

I know.  It's just a pipe dream.  

 

Yet, once again, I want to launch a campaign to confer Sainthood on a secular public figure.  

 

As best I can see it, that title shouldn't just go to goody two shoes, in your face, religious types.  

 

As an old Zennie, I thinks it's a good practice to carry your prayer closet around with you in your heart.  I remember reading that Jesus thought so, too.  Its seems he was a bit tougher on show-offs and hypocrites than the other sinners.

 

So, while others may parade their piety while dressed to the nines on Sunday -- men like Moyers simply roll up there sleeves and get the job done.  Moyer's service to the world became a form of prayer.  

So, here's the Deal:   

 

I suppose it's highly unlikely that an ordained Southern Baptist minister is going to make the cut with the Catholic Crew.  (Moyers completed a Master of Divinity degree at the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas in 1957 and served as a Baptist pastor before entering the world of politics as a top aide to Lyndon Johnson in the 1960 Election campaign.)  Yet, I think its worth a shot.   

 

I'm hereby nominate the late Bill Moyers for Sainthood!

 

This brilliant, spirited, principled journalist, who the Washington Monthly  characterized as a "Collasus of Public Service and Journalism in an obituary penned by contributing editor, Jonathan Alter was the Real Deal. 

 

Unlike so many broadcast journalists today, this erudite and talented man made a career serving the public.  He championed the values of traditional journalism. 

 

Back in those days, News was news. Facts mattered.  Truth, not corporate profit, was the bottom line.

 

In the era before the "fairness doctrine" disappeared from the FCC regulations, at a time that the three commercial networks still made an effort to separate facts from opinion as part of their evening news shows, Moyers. donned the hat of senior news analyst and commentator.  

 

Like Walter Cronkite and others in that era, Moyer's skillfully crafted words mattered to everyday people. That's because everyday people mattered to him.  He listened deeply to their concerns and aspirations.  He did his research.  Then, unflinchingly, with he spoke Truth to Power.  

 

Moyers left CBS, when he saw that their commitment to traditional journalistic standards had eroded.  He then briefly joined NBC, where he served as its last "senior news analyst and commentator on the NBC Nightly News in 1995. That feature of the nightly news simply went away.

 

By then, the game plan first outlined in the infamous Powell Memo in 1971 had gathered a full head of steam.   The right wing in this country took tighter control of the media.  Network owners no longer had space for Moyers well-crafted progressive opinions on the challenges and promises of the American Democracy. Though Moyers political and cultural commentary was assiduously researched, sound, -- and widely trusted -- it wasn't good for business.  

 

Moyers then moved on to focus his full attention to producing and hosting regular programming and numerous documentaries on PBS.  Public broadcasting was, after all, one of the visions he had brought into being decades before.

 

Creative Commons CC BY-SA 2.0 photo by Gage Skidmore

As a member of LBJ's White House back in the mid 60's, he was a central player in bringing the Great Society into legislation. 

 

A crucial element of this effort was the creation of public media as an educational and cultural answer to the"vast wasteland"of a radio and television landscape monopolized by huge profit-driven corporations.  PBS and NPR were only a gleam in the eye of the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 that he helped bring it into law as an essential element of the Great Society. (Moyers was also central in the creation of the Peace Corps.)  

 

It's obvious, no? Bill Moyers was a man that knew that public service wasn't just a  career.  It was a calling.  It was a way of life. 

 

His first PBS offering had been This Week with Bill Moyers in 1971.  Nearly four decades later, with a legacy of hundreds and hundreds of productions,  he"retired" from PBS as the George W. Bush Administration took aim on the PBS leadership and its "liberal bias. " Although he had prevailed when a Bush appointee on the board of the Corporation for Public Broadcasted launched an attack on him, Moyers saw the handwriting on the wall. 

 

Bill Moyers being the man he was, acted.  That wall wasn't going to silence him. 

 

He quickly surfaced with the nationally syndicated Moyers and Company. Three years later, at age 80, he finally "retired." 

 

A journalistic career which began at age 16 when he was a cub reporter for the Marshal (TX) Messenger, had spanned  6 decades.  His legacy included

30 Prime Time Emmy's, 8 Peabody's, and an assortment of other prestigious awards.

 

Though he had plenty of laurels to rest on, Moyers a difficult time staying totally silent, though.  At a time that the Trump administration's  rapacious capitalists and their cronies were taking a chainsaws to American Democracy, the series of Moyers on Democracy Podcast ensued.  The final one was dated August 18, 2022.  He was 88 at the time.  

 

Like Saint Paul, Moyers had "fought the good fight.  He had finished the race. He had kept his faith." 

 

So, This should be a no-brainer.  Bill Moyers had dedicated his brain, heart, and soul to service of his God and the Public Good with courage, integrity, and great skill.  Pope Leo XIV and his folks should immediately dub Moyers Saint Billy. (Moyers was born Billy Don Moyers, in Hugo, Choctaw County, Oklahoma.)

 

In an ideal world, one where sectarian differences don't muddy the living waters of a deep faith based on Love, Bill Moyers would then join his fellow Southern Baptist, President Jimmy Carter, in that circle of notables. (I pitched for Saint Jimmy's sainthood here: Saint Jimmy Gets My Vote.)  

 

These two forces for the Public Good emerged in public service before the Republicans had successfully turned the Old South crimson Red through fanning the flames of racism and a pseudo-class war against federal government and a demonized liberal elite. Their Democratic Party, the Party that FDR had championed to forceably bend the moral arc of history toward justice. had not yet been completely co-opted by the seemingly unlimited $$$ of Wealth and Corporate Coffers.  

 

Both of these men, of course, had their flaws.  If I were to make it past the pearly gates myself, I'd definitely find myself quibbling with them about some of the stuff they did.  Yet, their hearts were in the right place.  As Pope Francis once said, "Who am I to judge?" I only wish we had more public figures around these days that had their heart, courage, -- and, most importantly, moral vision to do what needs to be done.

Perhaps, though, seeing and hearing Bill Moyers in action makes the best case for his Sainthood.  Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! memorialized Moyers and included an interview with him she conducted with co-host Juan Gonzalez in 2012.  

 

Moyers' critique of the corruption of the media and government by wealth and corporate power was clear and compelling.  His passionate call for a resurgence of democratic public institutions stirred my soul.    (12 minutes)

 

 

 

FYI: There are hours and hours of his interviews, videos, clips, etc. archived at BillMoyers.com 

 

Reclaiming the Boston Commons

 

​Reclaiming the Boston Common for Democracy

by Brother Lefty Smith, S.O.B.*

April 6, 2025

 

"The moral arc of the Universe is long, but it bends towards justice."

-- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 

The event organizers expected 25,000 people to gather in Boston on Saturday for the Hands Off march and rally. Their numbers, drawn from the people who officially signed up online with one of the organizing groups, may have been a bit conservative.  The tens of thousands of us¹ who showed up ​on the Boston Common yesterday certainly weren’t.  

If I was looking for a sign that the progressive spirit ​was alive and well​​ in this country, I was gifted with thousands of them.  In a multitude of colors, ​in personal expressions ​that ranged from acerbic outrage to unbridled humor and ​unabashed hope​, the message was clear: We the People will resist the Trump administration's heavy-handed attempt to deflect the moral arc of history.    

Make no doubt about it. The common everyday citizens of America are a people who are, at heart, kind, generous, and decent human beings. Embracing our diversity, we will recapture our democracy to serve the interests of the vast majority of us, not the insatiable greed of a few. 

Although T(Rump) Rex, the Muskrat, and their cadre of billionaire misanthropes may have tried to grab the levers of federal power for the past couple of months, ​the throng that marched and sang and chanted here today ​made it obvious.  It will take a lot more than a bevy of misguided, often illegal, executive orders to sink our democratic ship of state​.

 

I haven’t felt this much human energy since the days I spent in Zuccotti Park in September 2011. Back then #Occupy Wall Street​! erupted into a national movement.  In fact, some of the most exuberant chants, ​led by the many ​youthful participants who were loudly, yet ​peaceably, assembled yesterday, first emerged from the #OWS! and Black Lives Matter era​s!  Surging through the crowd with the pulsing drumbeat of congas, djembes, and bongos, the message was clear “We are the 99%!” Mr Trump, be advised: “No Justice! No Peace!” 

​All too often, mesmerized by the narrow focus of today's corporately controlled mass media, it's easy to lose sight of the larger picture.​  I tend to forget the wise words of legendary baseball sage ​Yogi Berra​ -- "It ain't over 'til it's over. “ ​

​Knowing now that there were at least a half million of us² registered nationwide to attend – and being reasonably certain that there were many, many, others that just showed up – it’s clear to me. Our democracy is far from over​!  

 

Enough is enough. It's time. We the People are able and willing to stand up and be counted -- and there are a lot more of us than them! 

 

1”Tens of thousands show for Boston ‘Hands Off’ protest against Trump, Elon Musk” by Lance Reynolds and Flint McCoglan, Boston Herald, April 6, 2025  

2 “Anti-Trump protesters gathered at hundreds of locations nationwide” by Sarah D. Wire, USA Today, April 6, 2025

A Time to Break Silence

"When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, 

are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, 

extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered."

-- Dr. Martin King Jr., Speech at Riverside Church, April 4, 1967

"It is my firm belief that Europe of today represents not the spirit of 

God or Christianity but the spirit of Satan.  
And Satan's successes are the greatest when 

he appears with the name of God on his lips.  
Europe today is only nominally Christian.  
In reality, it is worshiping Mammon."

-- Mahatma Gandhi, Young India, August 9, 1920.

d

 

 

The Truth, The Whole Truth, and....

For decades now, the corporate media has celebrated Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech. Yet, with few exceptions, the MSM has assiduously buried Dr. King's teachings on economic justice, materialism, and militarism.  

Like Mahatma Gandhi, King's message was Spiritual.  Each of these courageous sages saw that Mammon worship, the soul-sucking evil of materialism/consumerism, was alive and unwell, lurking in the belly of capitalism.

Throughout the history of capitalism, racism, economic exploitation, and warfare have walked hand in hand.  The prosperity of the capitalist English Empire and it's rebellious teenage offspring, the USA, were built squarely on the horrors of genocide and slavery.  Sadly, it still exists today systemic oppressions.  Although the current ascendancy of  Trump and his MAGA Minions will try to deny its history -- and its reality today -- genocide, both literal and cultural,  systemic poverty, jailhouse slavery, etc. continue to emerge from the assumptions and actions of a white supremacist capitalism.

Like my identical twin brother, Lance, I usually tend to be more Buddhist in my lingo.  Yet, I just gotta say it out loud (and type it clearly): 

I agree with Mahatma Gandhi.  Capitalism is the work of the freakin' DEVIL!  Its the dark side of the force.  With it's unbridled greed and exploitation, "business as usual" continues to slaughter and oppress people -- and it is taking aim on the survival of the planet.

Dr. King, like Gandhi, was not merely a political leader. He was a Saint, a Prophet, a Holy Man.  With astounding vision and passion, he sought to alleviate the needless human suffering created by a political and economic system that feeds on greed, hatred, and delusion.  Like many other prophets throughout history, both King and Gandhi threatened the ruling order of oligarchs and the preachers who supported them.  And, they were both martyred. 

Although Dr. King focused on the evil of racism in his "I Have a Dream" speech on that late summer day in Washington DC, his words were delivered to the throng that had assembled for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.  This effort, which he had helped organize, challenged economic exploitation and suggested bold governmental action to alleviate poverty. 

The FBI claimed the event was inspired by Communists and lobbied to prevent it from happening.

King continued to march.  He continued to preach love and championed a non-violent resistance to a system that has always used violence.  Like Jesus of Nazareth, and a myriad other martyrs, Dr. King knew full well that he would most likely be killed for challenging the ruling order -- and he chose Love and "Good Trouble" instead.

Dr. King's assassination, five years after the "I Have a Dream" speech, occurred when he traveled to Memphis to support striking Afro-American municipal sanitation workers as the leader of the National Poor People's campaign.  That campaign demanded an Economic Bill of Rights which included five planks:

1. "A meaningful job at a living wage"
2. "A secure and adequate income" for all those unable to find or do a job
3. "Access to land" for economic uses
4. "Access to capital" for poor people and minorities to promote their own businesses
5. The ability for ordinary people to "play a truly significant role" in the government

When's the last time you saw the Economic Bill of Rights highlighted in the corporate media coverage of Dr.  King's life? 

A Time to Break Silence

When Trump's legion of misanthropes, materialists, and militarists first attempted to loot our country and the world, it was easy for Progressives to protest.  Then, with the election of Joe Biden, we saw that the same collection of neo-con's, foreign policy "experts,"media pundits, and the moguls and minions of the military industrial complex dominate US foreign policy! A Democratic administration continued to stoke the flames of warfare in Ukraine and Gaza.  And the rich got richer, the poor got poorer.

WTF!?

Now,  Trump has returned.  His slim electoral success (a 1.5% margin) does not constitute a mandate.  Yet, he has had four more years to enlist the energies of a powerful cabal of moguls and right wing theorists.  They are dead set on scuttling our ship of state. And its clear that the cards are still out on whether our constitutional checks and balances will be able to thwart his efforts.

In part, Trump's margin of victory was fueled by his pretension and/or personal delusion that he is a man of peace.  Yet, the genocide in Palestine/Israel continues.  He's threatened to invade and annex both Greenland and Panama. His efforts to curb the bloodshed in Ukraine haven't yielded a successful diplomatic resolution -- or even a ceasefire.

It's clear.  It's time for those who believe in the creation of a world of peace and shared prosperity -- as opposed to the accumulation of wealth by the world's oligarchs -- to speak out.  Dr. King did so, dramatically, on April 4, 1967, at the Riverside Church in New York City.   

On that day, Dr. King proclaimed, "these too are our brothers," and came out against the US involvement in the Vietnam War with a passion and an eloquence that many believe caused his assassination exactly one year, to the day, later.

The corporate media today ignores this speech and remains silent.  I hope you don't.  Please listen and pass this along.  Then join some folks, speak out, act -- with love in your heart!

It's a tough job, but somebody's got to do it!

Beyond Vietnam: A Time To Break Silence

 

 

 

 

Thanks -- and No Thanks!

 

Thanks -- and No Thanks

Some Personal Reflections on Thanksgiving Day 2024

"Oh, Great Spirit whose voice I hear in the winds, 
and whose breath gives life to all the world, hear me, I am small and weak,  
I need your strength and wisdom." 
 -- from a prayer

by Lakota Chief Yellow Lark, 1887
(Read Entire Prayer)

"Treat the earth well: it was not given to you by your parents, 
it was loaned to you by your children. 
We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors, 
we borrow it from our Children." 

-- Ancient Native American Proverb

 

The three day feast that brought together 90 Wampanoags and the 50 surviving Pilgrims at Plymouth Plantation in 1621 has become part of our nation's mythology.

Unfortunately, the idyllic tale that was presented to me as a child was distorted and incomplete.  It didn't portray the dark side of the European colonization of the Americas. 

If the truth be told, a genocide began as "our forefathers" descended upon this continent.  They brought with them a three-fold horror.  

Embodying a worldview dominated by white supremacy,  a distorted and highly judgmental Christianity, and the avarice of an emerging capitalism, "our forefathers brought forth on this continent" a cultural cauldron that still wrecks havoc in the world today. 

Although the set of ideals set forth in the foundational documents of the United States reflect humanity's quest for an egalitarian, democratic, and just society, the settler colonists (who received a land patent and funding from London investment corporations) brought forth on this continent disease, death, and domination. With their vision obscured by their worldview,  most of the Pilgrims who invaded Massachusetts at Plymouth didn't recognize the humanity or the rich spirituality of the indigenous people of this continent.

The indigenous people had lived in the vast expanse what came to be called the Americas for upward of 10,000 years.  Like other indigenous people, an ethos of connection and reverence was embedded in their worldview.  All of existence, the sentient and inanimate, the seen and unseen, was perceived as an interconnected web of relationships.   Reciprocity rather than personal advantage were widely valued.

Our forefathers brought with them, instead, the unbridled greed buried in the belly of capitalism and their myopic form of doctrinal Christianity. Each produces a profound sense of separation.  Increasingly, each individual is experienced as fundamentally separate from other individuals, from the natural world, and from a notion of the immanence of the sacred dimension of being. 

Through force of superior weapons, germ warfare, and the power of European political and religious"law," the European settler colonists arrived at Plymouth and elsewhere, then swept across the continent.  Unfortunately for Mother Earth and her myriad beings, these forces still hold tremendous power in our world today.  Propelled by powerful elites and a misshapen worldview, those who have the most institutional power in determining our future, seem dead set on a suicidal mission.  If a nuclear war doesn't destroy life as we know it, a climate catastrophe may.

Yet, it doesn't have to be this way.

It is true that history shows us that those with more guns and less morals have often taken power.  Yet, in the 20th century, Mahatma Gandhi, armed with nothing but a spinning wheel, the force of Great Loving Soul, and the Power of the People, sent the mighty British Empire packing.  Martin Luther King and legions of non-violent activists toppled the framework of legal racial segregation that had existed here in the "land of the free." Non-violent revolutions toppled the Marcos dictatorship in the Phillipines, and the communist governments of eastern Europe. 

So....? 
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