Editorials & Other Articles

Why?

I won't go on a big long screed about how corporate corruption has literally been baked into our system for the last 108 years, and has accelerated alarmingly since Powell's 1971 manifesto (An Attack on American Free Enterprise) which he wrote at the request of the US Chamber of Commerce. I will not belabor how this plan for the oligarchic takeover of the republic has come near to fruition.

Do you, I wonder, subscribe to a belief in deeper human trends, collective trends? For example, we can take racism (oh, I know we'd all rather leave it, if you'll pardon the play on words), and see that it is an outlook that is energized by the power of strong emotion and thought in hundreds of millions around the world. Or the greed of Wall Street, the envy that is generated for the sake of profits by Madison Avenue. We can look at the weapons industry, the warrior caste, and we see that this is based in pride and wrath. It is very sophisticated really. Money has changed hands, and we are propagandized by well-paid individual talk show hosts and pundits to resist gun control, and yet encourage war (and massive arms sales) by isolationism. We see the wreckers as well - Trump, Bannon, Miller, Putin, Kim Jung Un, Viktor Orban, the Italian PM, who is a member of Mussolini's party. Nationalism is quite powerful and it is rising again with the passing of the WWII generation.

Sometimes I wonder if our so-called sociological trends aren't just a little deeper, a little more spiritual.

It amazes one, does it not, how these people are so loyal they will come out in deadly heat to see Trump and hear him tell them he doesn't care at all about them, just what they can do for him (vote) and still cheer him?

How is it, we wonder, how the bronze bull-idol of Wall Street and the greed of oligarchs has us in such a stranglehold?

In that sense Yo_Mama, the media is partly to blame. The fiduciary responsibility of your senior editors, producers, and directors, not to mention higher corporate officers is ONLY to generate profits for shareholders, nothing about truth in news reporting. And you know, Rachel, Joy Reid, Chris Hayes, Alex Wagner, Nicole Wallace - they work for a company owned by Comcast. The only thing that keeps their left-leaning news on MSNBC is their ratings. And, of course, they are opposed by Hannity and his ilk, who also have high ratings. Both groups keep those shareholder profits rolling in. They polarize us in order to manufacture money for the oligarchs.

I did not know you were in media. I am an economist, formerly a counselor.

Warm regards.