In which I’m not looking forward to the upcoming Even Greater Depression.
1. Fox News lies regularly, and this behavior isn’t even illegal.
The country is fractured, and it’s partialy because news reportage is terribly damaged. The people who watch one station honestly believe the people who watch another station are insane because they can’t agree on “the facts.”
Well, it turns out that the news isn’t required to tell the truth, nor to give equal time to opposing views. In fact, it’s actually okay to knowingly lie on a news program:
This means that Fox, for example, can say anything it wants, without restraint, regardless of its truthfulness or accuracy, and sell this product as “news”:
If you happen to have a conservative bent and have been watching Fox News, much of what you “know” about the state of your country is demonstrably untrue. You’re making decisions without real information:
This is a huge problem, because it creates dissent. It disallows meaningful dialog and communication.
I fact-check liberal news sources as well; they tend not to engage in outright lying as much as the more popular conservative sources do.
2. Due to this unchecked amount of media spin, the part of the nation not actually involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement is baffled by its existence.
Newt says the Occupiers want to tear America down; that they want free rides; that unlike members of the Tea Party they don’t want to get up in the morning and go to work.
It’s apparent to me that they would all be at work… if they had jobs. 9.1% to 16.7% — depending on what color they are — are still unemployed, and that doesn’t count the number of people who have run out of benefits or stopped looking for work. People do want to go to work; they’ve been going to work for decades. They’re protesting now because they must.
Inequality isn’t just a moral issue; it’s destabilizing. Unemployment is at the highest level since the Great Depression, corporate profits are at an all-time high, wages as a percent of the economy are at an all-time low, and top earners are capturing a higher share of the national income than they have anytime since the 1920s.
One in three Americans — 100 million people — is either in poverty or in the fretful zone just above it.
People are pissed because it doesn’t have to be this way:
- Four Charts That Explain What The Protesters Are Angry About
- Older, Suburban and Struggling, ‘Near Poor’ Startle the Census
- Income inequality is a growth killer
3. You’re part of the 99% whether you admit it or not.
I don’t consume conservative media, so I’m not sure what they’re telling you 67%ers these days, but you’re not doing okay. You’re poorer than you’ve ever been, and you’re no longer middle class. Your perception of yourselves and others is wrong. You’re not strong, and the 99% aren’t hippies looking for handouts.
The very rich have been filling your head full of fluff for the past few decades, getting you to subsidize their increasingly absurd ways of life. You have no savings, no equity, and no health care, and they’ve somehow managed to make you proud of it. You should be mad as hell.
Your obsession with reading Federalist paperwork is a distraction. It keeps you from having any idea at all what’s going on in government today. Your elected officials are taking away more and more of your rights and freedoms every single day, and you’re quoting documents that are three hundred years old.
You’ve been duped. It’s okay, so have the rest of us.
4. What shall we do?
I don’t know. It looks like a clusterfuck to me. But here’s a good idea:
Letting corporations run rampant like cancer is an experiment that has failed. Time to stop letting these instruments of wealth do whatever they want.
I mean, a brief review of the last Depression teaches us that when most of the money is at the top, economies fail. The very rich can’t produce enough demand to keep an economy running.
Theories that state that ‘Corporate taxes are found to be most harmful for growth’ are demonstrably untrue, because right now we have corporations paying zero taxes and the economy’s in shambles. Corporations and the rich must pay taxes, because they have most of the money. Period. There’s no other way around it.
And news NEEDS to be regulated. If you’re not telling the measured and balanced truth, you’re entertainment, not news.
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