A lot of people describe our press as “free & open” because it is not owned by the state. They ignore that it is owned by six multinational conglomerates whose shareholders have a unified set of class interests that get reflected in nearly 100 percent of media coverage every day.
A free press means more than Potemkin dissent from MSNBC and the New York Times. It means mainstream outlets critically questioning the economic and political order that rules our lives. There’s a reason Americans consume media 24/7 and know nothing about their country or world.
It’s easy to find stories that criticize whoever the POTUS is at the time, because this form of dissent puts no stress on a corporate-capitalist worldview. Try finding one MSM outlet that reported accurately on the failed fascist coup to privatize Bolivia’s lithium last year.
“People who think they're free in this world just haven't come to the end of their leash yet.”
—Michael Parenti, Blackshirts & Reds
"Excuse me sir I've been a senior producer at Hypnotoad Broadcast Group for 20 years and I've only been cattle prodded once for using a Level Three Hostile Adjective to describe Monsanto lobbying against clean water laws. Unlike you I stick to the facts."
Within the corporate-controlled media system there remain good journalists doing a good job. That's not the point. Ask yourself: Why are the most essential stories/themes of our time (climate change, imperialism, poverty and wealth, etc.) barely topics of discussion in U.S. life?
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The Green New Deal is a jobs program and if you oppose it you’re a radical centrist who hates America and God also.
Gonna start talking like this from now on.
Medicare For All is the patriotic health care solution. Far Center extremists oppose it for one simple reason and that is because they hate freedom. Why does the Far Center hate freedom?
A Congress and Executive Branch that allow homelessness to exist are job-killing freedom haters too scared of Real Estate to stand up for Real Americans.
If I were a salaried Vox reporter I would spend more time asking why only two Democrats voted “No” last week on the 161st judge Trump has appointed to a district court than I would about the 1.07% of the popular vote Jill Stein got four years ago.
Let’s simplify this for the highly respected political pundits among us: If you believe someone is an “existential threat to our democracy,” you do not vote to confirm their judicial appointments.
Again for the highly respected political pundits in the room: If you believe someone is an “existential threat to our democracy,” you do not vote to give them a $738 billion war budget and the permission to militarize outer space.
With respect to Larry McMurtry fans it’s time to grow up and admit Blood Meridian eats Lonesome Dove for lunch with room to spare and the world no longer needs to pretend otherwise.
Exhibit A - Cormac McCarthy:
It makes no difference what men think of war, said the judge. War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner.
Exhibit B - Larry McMurtry:
Immediately Jake Spoon began to change the way her thinking worked. Before he even brought his bottle to the table to sit with her, she began to want him to. If he had taken the bottle and gone to sit by himself, she would have felt disappointed.
Joe Biden shut the fuck up and offer us health care during a pandemic and win easily challenge
American media outlets stop covering Kamala Harris’ shoes and start asking the Democratic ticket for President why it opposes health care for all people during a pandemic challenge
Joe Biden announce you’ll close the concentration camps where they’re force-sterilizing migrants challenge
The problem with developing your entire political ethos off a series of $5,000 Robin DiAngelo anti-bias seminars co-sponsored by Halliburton is you eventually forget how to oppose Nazi prison experiments because the Guatemalan men were perhaps getting off too easy.
Joe Biden has not yet promised to close the for-profit detention camps on the US/Mexico border.
“Kids in cages!” has become a weird sort of moral cudgel for wealthy white liberals to wield against a demographic of voters that has opposed said policy (on the border and elsewhere) even when Obama and Biden were doing it themselves.
Just found out I got blocked (and described as a “grifter” and “thief”) by someone I like on here who made a similar point a few minutes before I did, responding to the same dumb political cartoon I am. Twitter is not for the faint of heart my friends.