EMAIL FROM DAD - WHY AMERICANS DON'T TAKE TO THE STREETS

ME: Why do you think millions aren't in the streets demanding Trump's resignation?

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​DAD: They don't get it. It's not like the young people in Hong Kong who can see the future clearly. Or many in Britain.

The citizens of the U.S. including the young, have been brought up to believe that America is essentially good, that it's system of government is the best in the world, that no president can ever do anything really bad.

They've been brainwashed by their textbooks and teachers since grammar school to believe these things. That belief is actively supported by a supine media which bows before these American idols. It is terrified of saying the obvious, that the King (America) has no clothes.

Over and over again the media, left, middle, and right repeats this mantra by what it chooses to report and not to report, and by how it reports its choices. It's an underlying theme. They're American boosters. It's a chronic condition, one that will take 50 years or longer to cure.

(One searing example of this is that there is not one popular program on broadcast TV, cable, or radio, and not one major newspaper — NY Times, Washington Post, LA Times, Chicago Tribune, etc., which has a section on labor or regular programming on labor.

​Labor, working class people (even if they call themselves middle class) make up the majority of America's citizenry and its electorate.

The gap in the media's reporting  is so wide, we cannot fathom the stories we've missed or what we've not learned about our country.)

For these reasons and despite the huge number of detailed reports of the president's bad behavior and incompetence, most Americans think and feel it's not that bad. America is ok. It'll be alright in the end. There is no crisis. So only a few are aware enough to go into the streets to protest

My father Stuart Cooke lives in Jakarta Indonesia where he works on urban planning projects, writes, tells stories and emails me answers to questions.