STAFF NEWS & ANALYSIS
No Trust: The Tree of Liberty is Parched
By Ben Bartee - May 08, 2020

What did they do to the news? Walter Cronkite asks from the grave.

The nanny state, aided and abetted by a corporate news media thirsty for scared viewers confined to their homes, is about to jumpstart the nagging micro-management to level-10 warp speed – with the help of the neoliberal propaganda arms of the establishment formerly known as the free press. The rotten neoliberal 4th estate and the soulless cowards that staff them have to go.

The corporate news media has no respect for the citizenry, and we have no trust in them. No one under 50 trusts news actors in make-up reading scripts off of teleprompters anymore. This is the age of the internet – we know too much.

Beyond outdated, the corporate news edutainment/propaganda industry is dangerous. By now, after the erosion of civil liberties seen in North America after 9/11, we should know the routine. This is how we watch civil society consumed at the hands of ravenous governments and their corporate cronies:

Step 1: National Tragedy. (9/11, mass shootings, COVID-19, etc.)

Step 2: Nonstop coverage by news actors on corporate media channels and in corporate media print. Solutions that involve loss of liberty are offered to terrified, mostly elderly, viewers. Those viewers vote for politicians that they believe to protect them from such threats. They also write lengthy letters to their congressional leaders demanding action.

Step 3: Thirsty governments adopt the kind of authoritarian “temporary” measures recommended by corporate news actors on television who read their scripts from the deep state and Wall Street dutifully. Somehow, technocratic crybaby/thugs on CNN demanding ramped up federal powers lends moral authority to careerist federal authorities eager to erode constitutional protections with a brand new agency (funded by brand new taxpayer support in the form of healthy budgets).

If the world we leave to posterity will inherit any semblance of a society in the tradition of Western civilization, the time is ripe for a cleansing. God willing, we’ll see the blooming spring of 2020 become known to history as “Pitchfork Season.”

Here’s hoping for a deserving casualty of the pandemic – namely, the dinosaur media that’s choked the life out of Western society for decades with decadent, substance-free broadcasting and dutiful repetition of talking points sourced directly from their neoliberal overlords.

Anyone who’s been paying attention to real news from earnest sources understands intuitively the political realignment currently underway – the end-product of decades of failed neoliberal policies that have squeezed the middle class into oblivion and destroyed the institutions that make society function. Among the weary people, left vs. right political football is going the way of the buffalo, replaced by a more visceral, palpably true narrative of the elite neoliberal oligarchy vs. everyone else which speaks to the frustration of the populace.

As opposed to the fake moral authority assumed by governments to lock down entire states indefinitely, the moral authority to replace decadent and depraved institutions like the corporate media, which no longer serves the interests of average people, is legitimate. Indeed, the moral authority of the people to demand redress for their grievances is necessary on an occasion such as this. As Thomas Jefferson famously wrote, “the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

The liberty tree has never been so parched – the time for its watering is now.

Ben is a Bangkok-based American journalist, grant writer, political essayist, researcher, travel blogger, and amateur philosopher. Contact him on LinkedIn and check out his portfolio. Cheers.  

Posted in STAFF NEWS & ANALYSIS
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