Opinion/Editorial
THE DAY THE NEWS DELIVERED US TO FEAR
The Yellow Press is a phrase that brings to mind the William Randolph Hearst Empire, our country’s involvement in the wars of the times, and the support of political candidates merely for their backing instead of qualifications or honorable value. Yellow Press’s actions have never been far from consideration when thinking of early media. Yellow Press, as a phrase, has faded into history. The word propaganda arose to better describe what the Soviet block and China were attempting to transmit to the world during the years of the Cold War. That word too has been retired into little-used obscurity. What we have today, right here at home in America, is a form of Yellow Press or propaganda that is more pervasive, effective, and ‘right here’ every day in our faces than any of those previous attempts or applications. We are receiving into our homes, businesses, and lives information that is so slanted that any data it is based upon has disappeared, except for possibly the ‘teaser’ or the motivational occurrence driving the ‘story.’
This morning a presentation on ABC News ran for almost fifteen minutes about an eight-year-old boy who was Maced by the police after grade school officials called them in because he was acting out. The child was interviewed on the ABC set by two anchors while his mother sat next to him. The motivational draw, or ‘teaser’ as I term it, was mace used by police to subdue a small child. The presentation was, however, based on anything but that. The child was questioned and then instructed time after time by both anchors as to the cause of his ‘acting out’ and his fault in behaving in such a manner to cause the authorities at the school to call in the police to mace, cuff, and subdue him. By the time the segment was done both the child and mother agreed that the entire incident was the boy’s fault. He should not have been a bad boy, and he wasn’t going to be bad again. He’d learned his lesson.
What happened there? What happened is happening all the time throughout our current system of transmission of the ‘news’ on television. A slant or angle was taken and then followed up on. There was no discussion about the inappropriate behavior of any police officer or agency that would support or endorse Macing an unarmed eight-year-old under almost any circumstances, much less placing him in handcuffs and transporting him to be held in a common jail environment. No arrests were made at the scene, of the police involved, for illegally assaulting a child, kidnapping him, or violating his civil rights. And there have been no accusations since against this child’s treatment, save here, wherein I use the incident to illustrate how information is being cut and diced to serve a greater master. That master is the conservative monster of Judeo-Christian Calvinistic brutality, which lies lurking at the bottom of our right-wing republican belief system. It is well served by elements of the Christian right, Mormons, and evangelistic Christians across the heartland of America. That master is building more and more walls and detention centers at an ever-increasing rate. That master has crime increasing while it is, across the board, decreasing. That master is rising out of old obscurity to kill our culture, and it is being enabled by the evisceration of fact from most of the ‘stories’ we receive through the media. We are being deeply conditioned to accept a belief system in place of facts. And it is working.
There was no way the incoming President could have won the last election, and the media would not touch the subject. He had no support from almost anyone other than rural white pick-up truck drivers. He didn’t have women or any of the minorities. In Iowa, he was expected to lose by fifteen percent but on election day there he was comfortably winning. The only accurate thing about the entire shambling scandal that is about to visit itself in and across what was America is that the elections are no longer valid. It is the ones screaming this who are stealing elections under the cover of gaslighting democrats who are attacked non-stop. The mass media supported this coming nightmare and intends to profit from it. The mass media is owned completely by Republicans but again gaslights and claims its reporters and editorial staff are liberal. The Washington Post sold out, as did the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times…one after the other. CNN went right wing along with Twitter under the tutelage of a man who’s begging to resemble nothing more or less than a prancing monkey on a stage.
What’s happening in America?
The publisher of this newspaper, who’s probably going to have to shut up or face prison or worse, has been to 122 countries with the CIA and watched country after country follow the same plan that’s been successfully applied to the USA. Turkey, Hungary, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Syria, Eritrea, China, Russia and so many more. The press is taken over, a dictator assumes almost uncontrolled power, and religions are taken apart or become part of the propaganda system. Schooling goes away. Government offices only serve those in power. Social programs end. Regular people can see what’s coming and the fact that it’s a crying shame is just too bad. Evil abounds across the land and like with the black death in Europe a lot of people are going to die or at the very least live in fear and misery and that’s not happened in so long nobody can yet believe it in this country. About the only good news that’s come out of the Republican party platform is guns. Everyone has a gun. That’s not true in these other totalitarian regimes and that single thing may be the worst thing the republicans must face in these coming four years of social terror.
Should you be afraid? Half or more of America is living in fear of what is coming while the other half, blind as bats without radar, will slowly be following. The United States was a wonderful country but because too wealthy and powerful those, who were the fascist takers, decided to take it all.
