Corporate media is now fully engaged in exploiting the news-worthiness of the Russian hack of the US presidential elections. To hear them tell it, we should all be concerned about the atrocity of a foreign power's manipulation of our sacred electoral process. They want to now manufacture outrage toward Putin and his interests, and in the process expunge themselves - the Media that is - of any complicity in what is essentially a circus of economic corruption.
If Putin and his forces were able to drown the the prospects of a Clinton presidency through the power of speech, vulgar as it was... and always is... they were in fact only executing that same strategy that powerful imperialist forces have used to determine the political fate of many individuals and nations. I remember as a boy growing up in Jamaica, how the US Government of the time painted Fidel Castro of Cuba as the devil incarnate in order to foil any alliance between progressive movements in Jamaica and our neighbors ninety miles away. In an ideologically bipolar world this kind of operation remains a fact of life. Remember that old cliche... What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
We live in a world where power is measured in dollars and cents. An abundance of the one sets up the proliferation of the other. The US Supreme Court has ruled that "money is speech", so those with the most dollars are able then to rule through the drowning out of the voices of those without great wealth. Ultimately corporate media is driven... in all things, by its profit motif. Those who own and operate the media complexes that muscle their way into our attention, have no more noble an aspiration than to maximize their profit potential. They know that it takes money to make money... to wield power... and they are committed to the making of money by any means necessary.
If Putin and his forces were able to drown the the prospects of a Clinton presidency through the power of speech, vulgar as it was... and always is... they were in fact only executing that same strategy that powerful imperialist forces have used to determine the political fate of many individuals and nations. I remember as a boy growing up in Jamaica, how the US Government of the time painted Fidel Castro of Cuba as the devil incarnate in order to foil any alliance between progressive movements in Jamaica and our neighbors ninety miles away. In an ideologically bipolar world this kind of operation remains a fact of life. Remember that old cliche... What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
We live in a world where power is measured in dollars and cents. An abundance of the one sets up the proliferation of the other. The US Supreme Court has ruled that "money is speech", so those with the most dollars are able then to rule through the drowning out of the voices of those without great wealth. Ultimately corporate media is driven... in all things, by its profit motif. Those who own and operate the media complexes that muscle their way into our attention, have no more noble an aspiration than to maximize their profit potential. They know that it takes money to make money... to wield power... and they are committed to the making of money by any means necessary.
To accomplish their goal, programmers must attract and hold our attention. The formula for doing so is a rather uncomplicated one... present more and more of the stuff that their core audience loves to see and hear. Those who want truth and esthetically uplifting content will generally not be satisfied with the content on our most dominant networks. These networks feed at the very bottom of Maslow's 'Hierarchy of Needs'. They tap into the insecurities that drive those still focused on their own survival in a dog eat dog world, and cultivate their fears with an unrelenting persistence. This is the allure of a Donald Trump... this is what explains his perch at the pinnacle of American power. Trumpism is an appeal to the fears that drive the insecurities which provide fuel for the engines of a morally bankrupt society. The roots of that moral bankruptcy run deep in American history and culture.
A culture of insecurity has become the desired environment for those who seek to profit from an audience still preoccupied with issues of its own basic survival. Through well honed "dog whistles", groups are turned against groups. The crass political banter that passes as "discussion" on daily news programs are real representations of this dynamic. The most basic of our human concerns are exploited through the grossest of our individual instincts. Our need to procreate physically and economically, and our anxieties about our ultimate decline become the triggers that get us to act out against each other in the cultural and political arena. Sex and violence... Self-propagation and death... These are the triggers constantly being fingered to keep us on the edge of our existential seats. They grab and fondle the genitalia of the socially and economically vulnerable in order to keep them distracted from the real issues that affect their lives. This grossly aggressive indulgence greases the ball and socket that enables the long arm of our crass economic and political culture.
From cartoons to fake reality shows, every dramatic medium is utilized to cultivate mindsets that then become the agencies of the mayhem that we witness all too often in our society. Our preoccupation with the underlying insecurities in our psyches is what explains the phenomenal rise of politicians who continue to ride the angst of a declining middle class to the very heights of social, economic, and political power.
By generalizing about immigrants as rapists and murderers, and those with different religious convictions as terrorists, these charlatans tap into and exploit the most basic fears of the group they see as their ticket to the the top of the political hill. The whores in corporate media then partner with their political counterparts in the enterprise of hate-mongering to maximize their audience share... and therefore their profit margins. It is time for us to tune them out.
From cartoons to fake reality shows, every dramatic medium is utilized to cultivate mindsets that then become the agencies of the mayhem that we witness all too often in our society. Our preoccupation with the underlying insecurities in our psyches is what explains the phenomenal rise of politicians who continue to ride the angst of a declining middle class to the very heights of social, economic, and political power.
By generalizing about immigrants as rapists and murderers, and those with different religious convictions as terrorists, these charlatans tap into and exploit the most basic fears of the group they see as their ticket to the the top of the political hill. The whores in corporate media then partner with their political counterparts in the enterprise of hate-mongering to maximize their audience share... and therefore their profit margins. It is time for us to tune them out.
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