Devaluing the Democratic Process
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Tonight I sat in front of the television and went through my usual process of perusing the evening news, switching between the blather on Fox, MSNBC, CNN, and various other networks to see what was important and to whom. And tonight was so very special: the ideological biases and priorities of the newscasters were more obvious and more offensive than any other night in recent memory.
O’Reilly droned on and on about the superiority of “traditional” holidays, while Olbermann and Matthews were comfortably fixed upon Rush Limbaugh and his great “misdeeds” of [ignorant] free speech. Glenn Beck…jesus, just whatever there.
But that’s not what’s important. The thing that bothered me was the obsession of all these different journalists (and I use the term with the loosest of loose generalizations) with a select few candidates for the Presidency. The whole thing brought the concept of “tiered candidates” into the forefront of my mind. And of course, in typical fashion, it was followed by a question: What is a “first” tier or “second” tier candidate? What is this stratification of candidates even based upon?
The answer is pure bullshit, scooped directly off the farm and force-fed into your mouth. The media has narrowly selected the candidates on each side of the isle “worth” talking about and has inflated their campaign for the nation’s highest office through engineered hype. These illustrious idiots, which now comprise what the media has dubbed the”top tier” of prospects, includes the likes of Clinton, Giuliani, Obama, and Romney. There you have it, folks. Your list of the best candidates based solely on what? Nothing. Don’t bother listening to anyone else…they don’t have a chance. I know this because funny men in suits tell me every night at 7p.m.
We are talking about the Presidency of the United States. We are talking about an election that will decide whether the dollar slips further into the swamp, eventually floating nicely beside the pesos. We are talking about an election that will decide whether America will continue to dump dollars and souls into the sands of Iraq. The United States is in crisis, and we as a public have allowed the media to focus our attention on a handful of candidates who do not stand for anything significantly different than what we have.
Why have they done this? Simple: the news industry has become a vortex of political and capital investments. Our media is owned. And in turn they own us. Don’t believe me? How many times have you thought to yourself quietly, or maybe you are brazen and stupid enough to say this aloud, that a person was “throwing their money or vote away” on a “second tier” candidate? On a”loser?”
The media doesn’t want us out of Iraq, they don’t want real change. Why? Because the men with the money don’t want change. So they put men in suits on every night to engineer support for “top tier” candidates. It’s the Presidency of the United States! How can you simply stratify political discourse? You can’t. But they have. And we have allowed them to do so.
Unless we vote to affect change, unless we tell the Owners of this country that we are no longer asleep–lulled and stupidified by that once glorious American Dream–we will not lose an election; we will lose everything.
You like Hillary? You like Romney? Tell me why. Articulate their positions on the war in Iraq, on the declining dollar, on America’s role in the world, on the clusterfuck that is our health care system. You can’t. Not all of them. But you support them regardless, because you are sheep.
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