I Have a Message for the Medium

With Obama's job approval ratings in the mid to high sixties and his favorability ratings even higher, it's no wonder that the right-wing shrieks echoing from the inside of history's garbage can are rising a to terrified and desperate pitch. The wingers are now very afraid. And they should be.

But you have to wonder why that point of view, suddenly so distinctly in the minority and heading rapidly toward marginal status, is about the only thing you hear on the TV news networks. If you were to turn on CNN right this minute, I'll bet you'd see and hear one of three things: a) a commercial (most likely); b) a Republican operative or Congressperson going on about how unfair it all is, while a corporate manager from Time-Warner stands behind the set pulling the string that makes his mouth move (second most likely); or, c) a network talking head reciting Republican talking points (third most likely). You might see something else, of course, like a human interest story about a woman whose dog ate her baby or something, but the chances are better than 50-50 you'd get either a commercial or Republican propaganda.

It's now painfully obvious which party represents our ruling class, and equally obvious that our ruling class is scared stiff. For the last 60 years they've had everything their way, and exercised nearly total mind control over a passive and complacent population through manipulation of the news and other information via the electronic media they own and control. They've done this almost effortlessly, with news that reinforces the commercial ads, so that most of us ended up thinking that Wall Street financiers, drug pushers, and backward-ass fascist-leaning politicians were our good-guy pals.

Who is this ruling class I'm speaking of? Well, all the NBC networks are owned by General Electric, a giant corporation which is also a major war contractor and profiteer. CBS is owned by Westinghouse; ABC by Disney; CNN by Time-Warner.

I've been watching the news closely for 50 years, and it's not hard to figure out why, up until now, the overwhelming majority of Americans have assumed that living with history's biggest war machine is normal, or even desirable.

Forty years ago, Marshall McLuhan told us "The Medium is the Message." Now we have a message for the medium.

Public perceptions are changing fast now, and there's nothing the ruling class fears more than a public which is awake, aware, and capable of acting in its own self-interest. This is why network cable news since the election has become a nonstop Republican propaganda blitz. Don't take my word for it; turn on MSNBC or CNN (don't bother with Fox -- you already know who they are) and count the numbers of Republicans you see on the air, and the numbers of Democrats, and the even smaller numbers of dissidents who adhere to neither party. But of course, the latter are outside the frame of "acceptable" or "mainstream" or "recognized" discourse.

What are people who scream that Obama was born in Africa and wants to appropriate all private property then?

In this environment, a news organ like the New York Times becomes more important than ever, because it's independent (owned by the New York Times Corporation). Only in the independent print media will you see editorials challenging the status quo, such as Bob Herbert's anti-war piece, a masterpiece of clarity and focussed concentration on the real issues, on this morning's editorial page.

Read that editorial, which challenges Obama to keep his promise, end the Iraq War, and goes even further, to show why it is necessary that he at least begin dismantling the war machine, and you'll come up against precisely what the ruling class has striven at great pains to exclude from the national political conversation.

We can no longer live with this ruling class, because their continued existence is incompatible with the existence of any kind of orderly or coherent society. But they're very dangerous at the moment, because they're running scared. They look out their 31st floor windows and say to each other, "My goodness! Look! The people are revolting!"

I always knew they felt that way about us.