On How the Media Deflect Us from the Real Enemy

As I write this, the media, both corporate and social, are flooded with outrage over the draconian voting and abortion bills passed into law in Texas, and gleeful Shadenfreude on the party of the Comfortable Class as they sneer at all the ignorant hillbillies taking “horse dewormer” instead of just getting the COVID vaccine.

As a result of the latter, an anti-parasite medication for both animals and humans that has had some success as a treatment in some cases of COVID has not just been narrowly defined as being only for the former but even resulted in calls that its use be banned entirely with regard to COVID. Instead of responsibly reporting the truth—that there have been a small number of positive responses to treatment of advanced COVID with ivermectin but that there is insufficient evidence to draw any conclusion about it either for or against—they have created a deflective circus that once again reinforces the idea that anyone who dares question the demand for universal vaccination is a Trump-voting, science-denying ignoramus.

Why do I say it’s deflective? There are several reasons.

First, we are only just reaching the point where we can state with sufficient backing of evidence that the current vaccines in use show sufficient efficacy in preventing or mitigating the effects of COVID with only small incidences of serious side effects. Anyone who understands how medication trials work, and who has a personal reason for choosing to wait for more evidence before accepting one that was rushed through that phase, can now make an informed decision.

These would be among those who have been declared “science-deniers” by people many of whom still seem to believe the vaccine renders them immune to COVID, even though the actual science clearly shows otherwise.

Second, not one of those howling the “anti-vaxxers” are killing ourselves, our children, and every other living being susceptible to COVID, grasps the observable fact that if people are confused there is a direct line of responsibility leading to both the US government and the corporate media of both flavors, Fox and non-Fox. The former’s efforts to assure people the experts have everything under control when they clearly didn’t would have been enough to convince people who don’t have a college-level grasp of biology nobody knew anything for sure.

Add to that the media’s ongoing barrage of only that information likely to keep people’s stress levels at 11, changing it with every breeze as the next new thing emerged from the science, and making sure the only people being blamed for the mess were either the previous President or the current one, the Republican Party and the “liberals”, and all those “deplorables” Hillary Clinton mentioned, and how is it to be wondered people refuse to believe anything anymore.

The corporate media derives its very existence from playing to the confirmation bias of its target audience, and this has been blatantly clear for the entire course of the pandemic in the US. It ignored the initial outbreak in China for months—I was reading about it in October of 2019—until the US had broken China’s quarantine to bring home people who should have stayed where they were and “suddenly” there were cases here.

I watched as our government claimed it didn’t have a full report on the seriousness of the situation until the end of January, and then waited until March to decide something needed to be done. I watched as the media all but ignored how at least six members of Congress were caught using the information about the virus to benefit their stock portfolios all through February while at the same time politicizing the narrative to maintain their Trump-based revenue stream.

Last month, the FDA approved one of the two major vaccines, and the press were all agog that here, finally, was the “proof” all those vaccine-rejecting fools said they wanted, never mind that by this time that ship had not only sailed but sunk. Absent from their reports, curiously, was the fact that the other major vaccine, released at exactly the same time as the approved one, still awaited FDA imprimatur despite the scientific evidence it was more effective and provided protection longer.

I’m still waiting for that question to be asked, much less answered.

Finally, I see the media regularly inserting timely articles concerning the economy, and how it will suffer unless everyone gets back to work. That these stories ignore the number of people who have to work to get back to because the funds supposedly meant to help small businesses survive went instead to offshoots of mega-corporations. And were, in some cases, used to fund stock buybacks to benefit executives’ and stockholders’ bottom lines.

Still, the effort has been highly effective. People who ordinarily at least try to apply critical-thinking skills are now demanding people be vaccinated, willy-nilly. Suggest working to counter the media misinformation that’s led to so many rejecting the idea, and in some cases rejecting even the existence of the virus itself, might be more effective than getting them fired or thrown out of school or whatever authoritarian consequence they deem appropriate is met with cries of horror.

The fact that the majority of children dying from COVID now isn’t the fault of those who reject vaccination. It’s the fault of a for-profit healthcare business and a culture of systemic oppression that left those children undernourished and less healthy. It’s the fault of an economic system that exploits workers by paying them starvation wages to do the kind of labor guaranteed to increase their level of exposure to infection.

That these facts are not even being discussed, and at a time when demands for equality and justice are at a level not seen in more than a century, shows just how effective media deflection works. Once again it has us attacking each other instead of those who are truly responsible, all the while media conglomerates rake in revenue, and the government establishes more precedent for expanding its control over acceptable behavior.

Just so we’re clear, I believe anyone who qualifies for the vaccine and who wants to engage with the outside world should have it. I also believe they should do so with clear understanding what it will and will not do, and how it will protect them and those they have contact with. I will also continue to regard with those vaccines with careful regard for the ever-changing information connected to them.

I also believe we should have access to all available successfully tested vaccines, including those from China, Cuba, and Russia, with the information about their efficacy, side effects, and longevity provided in ways understandable even to those not versed in science. In other words, I object to having my options limited when I know the corporations associated with the two “acceptable” version made major revenue gains in the last two years.

The Gray Lady’s Underwear Is Showing

You will hear from those enamored of the corporate media—the people whose lives are just fine, thanks, and who therefore embrace the “resistance” narrative propagated by the likes of the New York Times and Washington Post, MSNBC and CNN with unquestioning enthusiasm—that those sources are the last bastions of responsible journalism. They repeat every bit of the latest “news” with absolute certainty they are in possession of the facts, and anyone who dares disagree is clearly the pawn of right-wing/Russian/conspiracy theorist propaganda.

As the guy in that old TV commercial used to shout, “Bunk! Don’t you believe it!”

As proof of this, I offer the following screenshot, taken the morning of 11 June 2017 after Bernie Sanders spoke at the second annual People’s Summit in Chicago and said essentially that the Democratic Party can either listen to the people or be made redundant. I will just note as an aside that CNN couldn’t even manage to note in its article where Mr. Sanders was speaking. Indeed, it referred to the conference as “an audience of nearly 4,000 mostly dedicated “Berniecrats.” I mention it in case the Times headline doesn’t make the utter disrespect the media have for you and me sufficiently clear.

I want you to ponder that headline for just a few moments, and then, for those who haven’t already recognized just how toxically slanted and screamingly ironic it is, I will explain.

(Tick…tick…tick…)

Let us begin with the notion the Democratic Party as it now exists is split. As was clearly demonstrated last year, that thesis doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. The party establishment was sufficiently of one mind to ensure their anointed candidate, who had been promised the nomination in exchange for allowing Barack Obama to be chosen in 2008, received her due. This was exposed when Wikileaks published the purloined DNC emails, followed shortly thereafter by the ones obtained after John Podesta fell for a standard phishing scheme.

They have since set in place as their party chair a man who is a loyal Clintonite partisan, shunning the one that “base” clearly preferred. A man who, while on the road touring with Bernie Sanders in the name of “unity” was utterly tongue-tied when confronted by those demanding to know what the DNC plans to do about single-payer health care, raising the minimum wage and getting all that dark and corporate money out of elections.

This brings us to the next part: “The Base Wants It All.” Notice how that wording makes “the base” sound like a bunch of greedy toddlers throwing a tantrum? It’s condescending, dismissive, and essentially suggests “the base” is incapable of understanding you can’t have all those nice things because it’s not realistic. Never mind that every other first-world country has those nice things and has had for decades.

And now that last part, which is by far the most hilarious. “The Party Wants to Win.” The implication being, of course, that standing for all those nice things will never get anybody elected because the Democrats need to win over the moderate Republicans who hate Donald Trump as much as they [pretend] to. To achieve that, they must continue their message of neoliberal center-right economics. You know—the policy that has sent half of all the revenue from the so-called “recovery” to the top 1% of the population. Yeah, that one.

They’ve been using that excuse for becoming the GOP-Lite since Clinton the First. In particular, they have used it over and over since Obama was elected. As a result, the Republicans now control both houses of Congress and the majority of state governments. Even where the occasional Democrat has managed to win a governorship, he or she usually has to contend with a Republican-controlled legislature.

Any sensible person would take note of that and say “Hmm, maybe we should try something different. What if we, you know, listened to the progressives and did a 180? What if we started supporting candidates running on platforms of helping the majority instead of the top 10 percent?” Not our good friends at the DNC. Nope. They poured $6 million into the campaign of Jon Osseff in Georgia, who is running ahead of his GOP opponent on that platform that’s lost them all those earlier elections. However, they couldn’t manage to find $20,000 for a progressive in Kansas who also had a good shot at beating the Republican; and the $60,000 they finally agreed to send to the progressive in Montana was too little too late.

Need we say it’s a given that if Mr. Osseff wins, the Democratic Party establishment will have a big mutual back-patting circle and shout for all the world to hear that see—they were right. That’s how you win.

Except when it isn’t. The dismal record of all the Osseff-like candidates who ran in 2014 on that same corporate-friendly “pragmatic” platform far outweighs one success. And he’s running in an upscale district full of more than a few of those 10-percenters and likely a slew of 25-percenters. In other words, not the kind of voters who got behind Jim Thompson in Kansas and Rob Quist in Montana.

I noted on implication in that headline. Here’s another one: the Democratic Party has become so self-satisfied and arrogant those running it seem to be under the mistaken belief that, in the end, that “base” they have no respect for will vote for whatever candidate is offered. The fact that so many members of that base stayed home last November because they were fed up with being told they have to vote for someone because that someone isn’t as bad as the other guy is lost on them.

And in that single headline, the New York Times—all unwittingly, one suspects, because its editorial board is as self-satisfied and arrogant as the Democrats—makes it clear just how little respect We the People get from our public servants and those who are supposed to represent us in choosing the ones we have to vote for. We exist, so far as they’re concerned, to do their bidding and settle for whatever crumbs we manage to glean from their table once the election is over.

I don’t know about you, but I hate crumbs. And I’m tired of being told I have to eat them while the people telling me to do so are schmoozing with bankers and billionaires at $5000-a-plate dinners. As for the Democrats, if they truly do “want to win,” I suggest they listen to General George S. Patton.

“Lead me, follow me, or get the hell out of my way.”