Somewhere in town last night there was a huge explosion that rocked my house. This morning, I can’t find anything on it anywhere. Not a news item, not a tweet.
It’s making me think about decline of local news and local experience that’s contributing to our current crisis.
It’s making me think about decline of local news and local experience that’s contributing to our current crisis.
Beginning a few decades ago, with media deregulation and the Gingrich plan to nationalize all experience for the purposes of political power, the downfall of local media has created a perfect environment for alienation and radicalization.
In small towns especially the economies are nonexistent. Jobs have dried up. Monopolies like WalMart absorbed everything and lowered living standards. These people are frustrated and the lack of local voices explaining the moment left a dangerous vacuum.
Because there were no local voices to explain the situations, those people turned to national voices. What they got was Right Wing fearmongering blaming the New World Order, traitorous liberals, dangerous people of color.
The GOP successfully plundered middle America, sold it off for used parts, and then turned around and used the anger and frustration and alienation for their own benefit. It’s as insidious of a thing as imaginable.
From a capitalist perspective what’s been done is ideal. Alienation means people of a shared class won’t talk to one another, share information, or realize they have common ground and common interests. Instead they reset to white identity politics, which are naturally destructive
The point is, there’s no talking about our current crisis of weaponized misinformation or fascistic movements without discussing the murder of these places and the organs of information. It isolates and it radicalized. It leads to giant, inexplicable explosions.
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