15 November 2020

The Fourth Estate Is Not What It Once Was

 On a friend's Facebook post, today, I read a comment about the media wanting to convince people that "half the U.S.A. wants socialism/communism/anarchy".  I agree with that comment about the media, but consider it to be only half of what the media is doing.

I agree that the media no longer makes a priority of functioning as the fourth estate to serve we the people and our freedoms.  It is totally bought off by advertisers, primarily in the form of corporate conglomerates who also work diligently to dictate to government in the form of the lobbies they create intended for that purpose.

Where my opinion differs from the comment I read is that the media is also at work trying to convince people that half the country wants lock-step Fascism, all the while fanning the flames of anarchy by glorifying riotous violent behavior due to all the coverage it is given.

I suggest that at least since 2000 there have been very obvious active efforts to force binary political extremism as political choices of we the people, by "bad actors" who want to define  every issue and candidate within those unacceptable parameters.  It seems much more obvious than in decades  past.  Since that time total package dictatorial governments under the auspices of the political  ideologies of Communism and Fascism have frequently been called on symbolically, and openly spoken of boldly as opposite extremes from which we have to choose, with labeling of the right as Fascist by the left,  and the left as Communist by the right.  It is an effort to replace liberal with left and conservative with right; right being  used as "code" for Fascist and left for Communist by those who are attracted to the extremism of one or the other.  

In actuality and symbolically both Communism and Fascism are manifestations of dictatorial political extremism to which people have reacted with riotous violence, which is often perceived as a desire the participants have for anarchy.  The behavior more realistically indicates a desire for autonomy as individuals within a system of government that is not a dictatorship.  It is what can happen when people do not use the rights with which they are empowered to be civically active for the purpose of continuing to maintain their freedoms.  

When people say "freedom ain't free" it is not only about serving in the military or running for office and doing the best job possible if elected.  It also means taking responsibility as a citizen to educate oneself about the issues and speaking up; voting; advising those who are elected and appointed to office, all for the purpose of working to maintain the freedoms with which we are empowered.

The same "forces" to which media is kowtowing ("foreign actors" or not) are hell-bent on trying to redefine our constitutional democratic republic in U.S.A. as a "capitalist political system",  base on  the way they use the term "capitalism".   However, capitalism is not the  political ideology nor the political system of the U.S.A.  It is merely a descriptive word associated with the way in which any nation's economy might function in an overly controlling way, be it completely government managed, free enterprise, or  some sort of hybrid of the two.  

Use of the word capitalism should not be suggesting a political ideology as a complete system of government which is how it if most often used when it is intended to malign the US.A. government.  It should, instead, be suggesting the dangers of monopolies, against which we have laws in U.S.A.  It also should be suggesting  the worse dangers of corporate conglomerates since they too are monopolies which are currently outside of the laws pertaining to monopolies - only because of a difference in how they are defined.  That difference was created solely for the purpose of putting them outside of laws pertaining to monopolies.  That is referred to as corruption because the  corporate conglomerates are doing the damage that laws pertaining to monopolies were intended to prevent, all the while protected from anti-monopoly laws being applied to them.  That danger from monopolies using the label of corporate conglomerates could be described as capitalism - that being  the damage that corporate conglomerates do in their efforts to manage governments and the citizenry of a nation.  

I suggest those same forces who are trying to redefine our system of government as something it is not, are people who are subjected to a system of political ideology, themselves, which is a total dictatorship government as a non-negotiable political system/religion or no religion system/economic system - a complete package deal; a system of government that requires  violence to overthrow it, since those subjected  to it are not empowered to change it in peaceful ways.

That is quite the opposite of a nation which  states the government is based on the consent of the governed, where there is 1) no required political ideology; 2) no required system of religion or nonreligion, and; 3) no required economic system.  Not one of these, not two of these, not all three are part of the system of government or dictated by the system of government in U.S.A.

Fact is when capitalism is used as a descriptor to malign the U.S.A., it is intended to infer a "capitalist political ideology", meaning it is superimposed as a total package government ideology that includes a political system, a religion or no religion system, and an economic system.  However that does not exist in the U.S.A. no matter what word people might want to use to suggest that it does.  Capitalism is nonexistent as a political system in U.S.A., except in the imagination of propagandists who can not see beyond the dictatorial system of government to which they themselves are subjected, or those who are enthralled by those political ideologies without having experienced the damage of their dictatorial governments.

Whether the pushers of dictatorship who want to redefine government in U.S.A. are "foreign actors", immigrants who do not give up trying to superimpose the type of government of the nations they left, or U.S. citizens who think Marxism, Maoism, Nazism as ideological political systems are "cool", the pushers are certainly not representative of collective U.S.A. citizenry.  At best the well known political ideologies of Marxism, Maoism, Nazism could be considered to be "philosophies" - political philosophies that do not function well on behalf of a nation's population when superimposed as dictatorial forms of government.

The dangers of corporate  conglomerates are visible in the glaring harsh ways they dictate to media through advertising, not advertising, and withdrawing advertising as a way to manipulate what is broadcast by media outlets.  Fact is most media outlets are part of corporate conglomerates.  So media will be doing their bidding along with that of whatever businesses they encourage or allow to purchase advertising time on their outlets, whether those businesses are part of their media conglomerate or not. 

The same situation is apparently selectively blinding to many in the ways that corporate conglomerates dictate to government.  They want to have more influence in government than we, the people are empowered to have which, again, is why anti-monopoly laws were originally enacted.  Unfortunately media outlets do not shine a light on that as they increasingly become outlets for relentless propaganda intended to both create public opinion and sway public opinion.  The desired opinion creating and swaying is often the result of what corporate conglomerate's lobbies and government, together, agree to promote as public opinion.

The dangers of monopolies, including in the form of corporate conglomerates, including the individual corporations with their "personhood" that populate the conglomerates of which they are part, must be recognized and remedied so that undue influence is reigned in, so that laws against monopolies also apply to corporate conglomerates; so that neither is any longer allowed to dictate to government and by doing so compete with the rights of we the people, who consent to being self-governing, collectively.  We have never consented to, nor are we required to consent to being governed indirectly through our own government by the lust corporate conglomerates have for increasing their net-worth by any means possible.