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.

Stop Helping Your Oppressors

“People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come into the mind of others.” — Blaise Pascal

If you’re going to “call out fascism”, you’d best get started ASAP, since the US has literally been a neo-fascist oligarchy in the model of Mussolini’s Italy since Bill Clinton handed the Democrats over via his Third Way. Is The Donald finally exposing the authoritarianism that’s underlaid our society for most of its existence? Yes. Yes, he is, and for that we should be thanking him profusely.

The ongoing effort of the US corporate media to conflate Donald Trump with Hitler, and thus maintain the false view that a country must look and operate like Nazi Germany to be fascist is nothing but propaganda, and the fact journalists I know are aware of how propaganda works choose to ignore it in favor of embracing that propaganda does the US voting public a shameful disservice.

In my observation, that’s what most of the pearl-clutching over The Donald’s proclamation he won’t remove himself from the Oval, and his “orders” to the White extremist groups he and who knows how many others have been encouraging for at least the last 40 years is about. Any student of real history, as opposed to the watered-down version we’re taught and which he wants to, apparently, dilute even further, knows this. It’s what makes the ongoing propaganda effort to make him some kind of boogeyman Icon of Evil® so appalling.

When anyone focuses a discussion of authoritarianism and fascism solely on Donald Trump, they are either woefully lacking in historical perspective or deliberately choosing to reinforce the false narrative that supporting a different party with the exact same agenda as the one he belongs to will somehow save us all. It’s a lie, and an egregious one.

Does Donald Trump need to be removed from the Executive Branch? Without question, but not for the reasons on offer. He needs to be gone because he is a clear and present danger to our survival, being a narcissist who is both bored with his current worldview and feeling challenged to defend it. This is potentially fatal combination, as any number of victims of domestic violence can attest, assuming they survived it.

Nevertheless, pretending Joe Biden (or more likely Kamala Harris) is going to make any definitive reversal of the current administration’s policies that will benefit anyone other than the oligarchs is either painfully naive or unabashedly disingenuous. Wasting our time shouting at people to repent their evil ways will not help, so if anyone thinks confronting people by telling them they’re racist or misogynist or homophobic or whatever will result in anything other than hardening their confirmation bias, they need to spend sometime studying how you really get people to change their minds and/or viewpoints. Because that ain’t it.

“Don’t be in a hurry to condemn because he/she doesn’t do what you do or think as you think or as fast. There was a time when you didn’t know what you know today.” — Malcolm X

Tone-deaf Gaslighting: The New Democrats’ Plan for Defeating Donald Trump

Over the Christmas holiday, award-winning journalist David Sirota became the target of Democrat Party Twitter vitriol when he dared to publish a column criticizing the new DNC superstar Beto O’Rourke’s funding sources and voting record. It took less than 24 hours for an article containing nothing but facts readily available to anyone who cared to go look for them to become a “war on Beto” by supporters of Bernie Sanders. By Boxing Day, DNC mouthpiece Neera Tanden was shaking her head sadly that she, too, was suffered the pain of the innocent for the last two weeks.

For the record, I will be 71 in two weeks, am a White cis-female, have been a registered Democrat for 50 years, and resent being referred to as a “Bernie Bro.” So do the half-dozen women who responded when I posted that to Twitter. None of us has ever “attacked” a New Democrat with anything other than facts. Several women have been virulently attacked, however, by people alleging to be Sanders supporters, which suggests there is already a well-coordinated campaign in place to reinforce the idea real Sanders supporters are fanatical trolls. Remember Correct the Record? It hasn’t gone away.

The ridiculous assertion that criticizing a candidate is somehow an “attack” is the latest version of Democrat Party establishment gaslighting. The New Democrat contingent feels free to tell Sanders supporters, 80% of whom voted for their candidate, what they should be talking about. It’s the precise kind of “We know best” attitude that is really what drove those conservative Democrats in rural areas to vote for Donald Trump. I know because they’ve said so over and over to researchers and interviewers who actually went there to listen.

It’s the corporate media who persist in dismissing the Sanders message as “all about the economy”, not Sanders supporters. We are quite aware the needs of the many are much more complicated than “economic anxiety” or whatever euphemism is used for “people are one flat tire from being homeless and dying” in any given week. The media then go on to provide “examples” of a few white men in Iowa or somewhere else that’s not located on the East or West Coast who said they voted Republican because were against voting for a woman, or who’ll spout racist propaganda, ignoring the very real problems everyone not in the privileged 25% Thomas Frank calls the Professional Class suffers on a daily basis because of neoliberal economic policies and globalization.

Bernie Sanders saw a need to call attention to the real world, the one outside the Beltway and the suburbs where The Comfortable live, and he did that by choosing to challenge Hillary Clinton. He did so by declaring he was running as a Democrat, which is how it’s done in Vermont. Yes, there were people who heard his message and ignored the part where he said over and over it was not about him, but about the message. We’re a culture that’s been trained to expect superheroes to swoop in and fix everything for us. Bernie never said he’d do that, but it didn’t prevent people from assuming he would anyway.

He has also been criticized for focusing on economic issues to the exclusion of other things, like racism. Which, if one only looks at the surface, could appear to be true. However, anyone who has ever faced a huge job knows you don’t get it done by doing a little here and a little there. You figure out what you can do that will address the overall problem and start there. Bernie Sanders knows that people, and particularly women, of color are at the bottom of the economic scale. He knows that is partly a function of racism, but also understands the greater issue is systemic inequality.

Children are going hungry in this country as I write, not because they don’t have hardworking parents but because the jobs those parents can get are low-paying and all too often part-time/on-call gigs. Again, this is particularly true for women of color. “Economic anxiety” is very real, and a perfectly valid reason why people refused to embrace Hillary Clinton, a candidate who ignored what they said, and instead bewailed the fact they wouldn’t accept that she knew what they needed better than they did. Oh, and I know HRC never said that in public, but it was reported by two of her media fans in the book Shattered.

I don’t expect this to have any effect, as it’s clear the effort to block a Sanders run in ’20 is already polished and in full swing, just as the program to block progressive candidates from running in the midterms was blatantly obvious. The problem this time around is that people know that’s what it is, and the Democrats might want to pause a moment and rethink it. Unless they get past their arrogant assumption the voting public is too stupid to learn the facts and make an informed choice, they’re just another obstruction.

Book Review: Finks by Joel Whitney

These days, as the corporate media and, sadly, a fair share of the independent media are behaving as if the allegations of Russian state interference in the 2016 presidential elections are established fact (they aren’t), suggesting otherwise can earn the lone voice in the propaganda wilderness the label of Trump follower, Russian stooge, conspiracy nut or all of the above. I have literally had people who are shocked that I refuse to accept the word of that great patriotic organization the Central Intelligence Agency.

I was already aware of the CIA’s dirty fingers stirring the literary pot, not to mention journalism, film and TV. What this well-researched history provides is an in-depth review of one aspect of their meddling—their support in the creation of The Paris Review and its sister publications worldwide under the aegis of an agency front called the Congress for Cultural Freedom. They recruited George Plimpton and Peter Matthiessen, among others, to head the editorial board, guided by investment counselor and dedicated CIA good buddy John Train.

The goal of the Paris Review and its ilk wasn’t overt propaganda. Rather, the idea was to offer carefully selected material that would (a) promote “the American way of life” and (b) do as much as possible to put the Soviet Union in a bad light. In other words, applying standard propaganda procedures in a literary, cultured way.

What follows Mr. Whitney’s description of the Review’s birth is a history of how the CIA manipulated such writers as Ernest Hemingway and Gabriel Garcia Márquez in the name of anti-Communism. In time, it expanded into Operation Mockingbird, during which at least one CIA operative may have been placed in all the country’s major newsrooms.

Similar operatives worked to undermine the anti-establishment press in the 1960s and 1970s. So, perhaps those of us who are no longer buying what the CIA et al. are selling will be forgiven if we don’t embrace without question the “news” involving the current incarnation of the anti-establishment press. Doubly so, given the news organ that essentially launched it is owned by a man who received a $600 million contract with the CIA not long after he purchased The Washington Post.

A relationship, one notes, that is never mentioned in those “Russia did it!” articles.

There is a belief among us in the United States that the CIA was, until last year, prohibited from acting within the country’s boundaries. Mr. Whitney, however, notes that in fact the act of Congress that established the CIA never actually put that prohibition in writing. It was nothing more than a “gentlemen’s agreement.” Of course, anyone able to apply the term “gentlemen” to the CIA is in serious need of therapy.

Another myth dispelled in these pages is the accepted history that Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda evolved from the mujahideen armed and trained by the CIA during the Reagan administration to combat the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. In point of fact, Mr. Whitney reveals, there was a CIA-sponsored cell of “academics” in the country at least by the mid-1960s.

Once one accepts the premise that anything we see or hear in the media or on our screens may have as its underlying agenda the propagation of the message the government—or whichever agency feels the need to tweak the national mindset—wants us to embrace, it’s all but impossible not to see how the sausage is made. Indeed, sometimes, as with the CBS-TV series Salvation, the presentation is so ham-handed any decent writer would refuse to have their name attached.

If you’re tired of being lied to, if you’re exhausted by the stress of being told there are enemies from all over the globe lurking in the shadows ready to pounce, I recommend you read this book. It can be a bit of a slog now and then, as the continuity of the narrative jumps back and forth, and there’s a bit more repetition of the material than necessary. Also, it won’t help much with the stress, but at least you’ll be looking at the right enemy.

(Finks: How the CIA Tricked the World’s Greatest Writers by Joel Whitney; 2016 O/R Books; 978-1-94486-913-7 (hardcover), 978-1-94486-952-6 (trade paperback), ebook also available)

Those not with us are against us

In the February 5, 2016, debate, Hillary Clinton rebutted the accusation she was influenced by the huge sums of money donated by corporate and Wall Street financiers. Proudly, she shouted down Sen. Sanders with the affirmation that she represented “my constituents,” with the implication “despite all the money I received from Wall Street.” It wouldn’t occur to most people to pause and consider that, as the Senator from New York, Wall Street financiers were her constituents.

Now, more than a year and one catastrophic defeat later, it appears avid Clintonites are still incapable of seeing through obfuscation. As a result, the quickest way to be accused of being a “Trump supporter” is to suggest:

1. There are more important issues than obsessing over every ridiculous thing our new president says on Twitter.
2. The President of the United States can neither make or eliminate laws, and any executive orders he issues have to be backed by established law; in other words, he can only choose how those laws will be implemented, not change them arbitrarily.
3. No one is required to say who they voted for last November, and demanding they do so or be accused of the above is a violation of their right to cast a secret ballot. To assume by their refusal they voted Republican violates the rules of logic, in that correlation still doesn’t prove causation.
4. Declaring people had no right to vote for a third-party candidate or to choose not to vote at all if there are no candidates for whom they can do so in good conscience is a violation of the Constitution. Worse, it’s dictatorial and condescending.
5. People who did vote Republican may have had good reason, in their estimation, for why they chose to do so, which is precisely what the Constitution intended.

In addition, mentioning any of the above in conjunction with invoking item #3 will automatically label one a “Hillary hater” if, at the same time, one suggests that (a) there were very real reasons why she was a toxic candidate and (b) insisting people should have voted for her anyway because Trump is as totalitarian as what the GOP has in store for the country.

And then there are the ones who attack any woman who dares to say she sees no purpose in marching through the streets wearing a pink hat when there is so much that needs to be done. And just for the record, I find it painfully ironic that those who purport to be protesting women’s inequality choose to do so wearing the color the culture has dictated belongs to girls. I would think equality of the genders would have been better served by purple.

I suspect I shouldn’t be surprised that it appears most of those who engage in the above behaviors are rarely among those actively engaged in fighting the current regime in whatever manner possible. One never finds them on social media groups for activist organizations. One never sees them talk about what they’ve done or plan to do about changing the status quo. When, after having gone into defense mode at the drop of anything that contradicts their cognitive bias, they are presented with sources to support the contradictions, their invariable response is to ignore the information in favor of repeating their assumption one is a “Trump supporter.”

Thousands of little Neros, fiddling the corporate media’s tune while the GOP and the New Democrats burn the Constitution and raze the republic to the ground.

I do understand. The economic disaster that caused so many voters to flip from Democrat to Republican last November doesn’t impinge on their comfortable existence. Yet. They either never knew or have conveniently forgotten what it’s like to be so poor you have no idea whether you’ll have a place to live or food for your kids next month, or whether the water will be shut off because the car broke down and you needed to get it fixed so you could get to work. Sadly, not even calling them out for their classism does any good; the only “-isms” they acknowledge are racism and sexism.

The stubborn unwillingness of too many people to break away from the media manipulation that’s a constant stream 24/7/365 and understand the dire consequences of keeping on with what has gone before is a danger to everyone. We can no longer afford willful ignorance, and it becomes increasingly clear there is plenty of that on both sides of the discussion. The committed Trump people are convinced the disastrous measures he and his keepers in Congress are undertaking will fix what they think is wrong with the world. The other side is committed to believing the Russians ruined their anointed’s chance to continue the policies of the Obama administration, which the aforementioned media have convinced them were a rousing success. One individual I respect highly posted a graphic of Obama in a cape a la Batman to her Facebook timeline, along with a worshipful comment worthy of any fan.

Again, for this kind of cultist, telling them people who actually understand what happened over the last eight years know the Obama administration was, by and large, a disaster for anyone but the plutocrats, mitigated only slightly by a hugely popular health care law, is pointless. And that delusion will allow the New Democrats, who over the last eight years have all but made it possible for the states controlled by the same Republicans who want to resurrect the Articles of Confederation to call for a Constitutional Convention by pushing corporate shills for candidates, to continue doing so.

Fortunately, there are an increasing number of people who have seen the corporate media propaganda for what it is, and who either ignore it or actively resist the narrative. They do so with the full understanding they could be in danger as the oligarchy our country has become moves closer and closer to fascism. They don’t have time to waste checking to see what the Tweeter-in-Chief posted this morning, and they understand even one shared issue is enough to embrace people who otherwise may be our philosophical and political opposites.

Benjamin Franklin is said to have remarked after the Declaration of Independence was signed that “If we do not hang together, we will surely hang separately.” The men who wrote that document differed widely in ideals and goals, but they understood they had no choice but to set their differences aside to achieve freedom from what was, ironically, corporate tyranny. Those who continue to condemn anyone who chose to vote against Hillary Clinton, or who chose not to vote at all, or who they simply decide voted against her because they don’t adhere faithfully to the establishment narrative, are like the colonial loyalists who were certain revolution was unpatriotic and economically unsound. At best, they are something to work around. At worst, they are likely to undermine the efforts of those who understand the republic is crumbling, and only We the People can fix it.

As I mentioned last fall, I established a Facebook group to which I post articles, blogs, and other information either overlooked or under-reported by the corporate media. The content is public, so one needn’t join the group to read it. I won’t pretend I don’t have progressive bias, but I do endeavor to stick to facts, and when I can’t I identify opinion for what it is.

It’s one way I can try to keep the sleeping giant Bernie Sanders stirred up from falling back under the hypnotic sway of the mainstream narrative.

THE PROPAGANDA WAR ON BERNIE SANDERS

So, now that Bernie Sanders has shown he not only can obtain the Democratic nomination but has a very good chance of doing so, the mainstream media that learned much too late that ignoring him wouldn’t keep his message from spreading has turned to undermining his integrity.

 

A headline in this morning’s Boston Globe reads: “A dark turn for the Sanders campaign.” Based on that, and the first few paragraphs, the implication is that Sen. Sanders has reneged on his promise not to engage in a negative campaign but to focus on the issues. Given that 40% of readers never go beyond the first three paragraphs of a story, it’s easy to see how those who fall into that category are going to be misled.

 

However, further down in this piece of Clinton campaign propaganda we read this:

 

“Sanders is increasingly embracing the tactics he once decried. Rather than trying to unify the Democratic Party behind its almost certain nominee, Hillary Clinton, he is ramping up the attacks against her. While once Sanders refused even to mention Clinton’s name, now he doesn’t go a day without hitting her.

 

“And the focus of his attacks is always the same — that she is too close to Wall Street, that she has flip-flopped on trade, and that she was wrong on the Iraq War.”

 

In other words, the first complaint is that instead of acting as though he’s given up and telling everyone they really should vote for Ms. Clinton because she’s going to win anyway. This is followed by a complaint that Sen. Sanders is…accusing her of doing what she did. And is doing. Because everything in that “oh, heavens, how rude” list is just that.

 

Sen. Sanders is running first and foremost on his honesty and integrity. It’s therefore a given the mainstream media, who have made clear from the beginning of the primary campaigns they will support Ms. Clinton in any way they can, are going to find ways to attack him on that basis. It’s likely safe to assume his campaign people—and he—know that and are prepared for it. Nevertheless, that the Globe chose to run this misleading piece of glaring propaganda as Ms. Clinton’s lead in the polls in the upcoming primary states is dropping like a boulder is the real “dark turn,” and smacks of the kind of unethical excuse for journalism we’ve come to expect from the mainstream.

 

Let’s be clear. It is not “negative campaigning” to attack one’s opponent’s record. It is not “negative campaigning” to point out where one’s opponent is obtaining the funds he or she is using to finance their campaign. Anyone who believes otherwise wants to believe it, because they’re so convinced they know the truth anything that contradicts it is a lie. There’s a word for that: religion. And religion has no place in politics.