Corporate Media Elected Trump And Apparently Intend For Him To Stay In Office No Matter What Happens Nov 3

 

I used to write this blog to keep my head from exploding over current events and I have really missed it while running for the US Senate in Maine under ranked choice voting.

Running for federal office is a bully pulpit but also constrains the topics one speaks out about if the intent is to stay on message and reach prospective voters.

So, this is off topic for my campaign. But as a participant in this quasi-democracy I would be remiss not to point out that:

• Corporate media elevated the current occupant of the White House to prominence and eventually to the highest office in the land by featuring his not-very-attractive face on every outlet they controlled i.e. nearly all of the outlets for several months before election day 2016.

 

How much is all that free media Donald Trump gets worth? We think we know. https://t.co/Gu6wvmpikV pic.twitter.com/QOLuMWYXkL

— The Upshot (@UpshotNYT) March 15, 2016

• This was hardly limited to conservative publications. Even allegedly liberal publications like the New Yorker contained a glut of articles, cover stories, jokes, references and so forth to keep his name constantly in our minds and on our lips. 

 

• They are doing it again now in the run-up to election day 2020 but are promoting an even more dangerous idea: that the election does not matter and that he will retain power whether or not it is the will of voters.

• Since this idea is being universally shared and amplified over corporate media outlets, it's clear that this outcome is desirable to our corporate overlords.

• The power of propaganda is not so much telling people what to believe, but rather telling people what and what not to pay attention to. As in relentless messaging directing information consumers to "look at this" while pretending that other information is not worthy of being acknowledged.

As I've noted here before, when I was a young history major in the mid 20th century THE essential question was: How could the German people have allowed fascists to take over their government and commit genocide on 6 million mostly Jewish people?

I think we all understand now how fascism, that is, a system where commercial interests entirely control government to their benefit, has taken hold in the USA. We've watched it happen. Some of us have spoken out about it. 

But children still suffer in concentration camps our taxes fund, and white supremacist police are constantly stoking the fires of an incipient civil war -- while the media shore up the mad emperor as Rome burns.

Bloodless Coup As Media Selects A New "Decider" For U.S.

I have been wrong before, but I called this one spectacularly wrong. I suppose Trump being anointed by the press a long while back should have tipped me off that there was a bloodless coup coming. 

Wall St. is freaking out and stock markets are tumbling. Looks like two factions of our shadow government are at war with each other, and the media won. Because, as we know, propaganda works.

My screen grab of the New Yorker magazine "most read" list from last week.

Will people eventually catch on that saying a candidate's name over and over helps build their brand recognition and significantly increases the likelihood that you'll wake up to find them voted into office?

My family in Australia wrote to ask if I had put in my application for immigration yet. I think younger people who are appalled by waking up to find themselves living in Hitler's Germany will be (already are) leaving in droves. That will make things even worse, probably.

It certainly now officially ends the hundreds of years when the U.S. was viewed as a desirable destination for immigration in order to pursue the American Dream. What's left of it, anyway. Health insurance premiums under the health insurance you're required to buy from powerful wealthy corporations is set to go up by more than 100% next year in some locations. Electing Clinton wouldn't have changed that one whit.

There will now commence much shaming of those of us who voted for Green Party candidate Jill Stein. 

My husband will be blamed for the coup in the same way that he has been blamed for years for supporting Ralph Nader for president in various elections. As if Maine was a swing state in the bizarre electoral college system. 

We will be vilified for "wasting" our vote or casting a "protest" vote. But guess what? It looks like Maine voters passed the first law in the nation for ranked choice voting. (Having our current odious governor rammed down our throats twice probably contributed a lot to that.)

If we had ranked choice voting, like other wealthy nations, the false dichotomy used to drive voters to the polls would evaporate overnight.

The person who should be most ashamed of himself this morning is Bernie Sanders. If he had not made the back room deal to galvanize idealistic youth into the Democratic Party fold and then abandon them to Clinton, he'd be celebrating victory right now. Instead of sitting in his brand new $650k vacation home on Lake Champlain wondering how he got there.

The silver lining for me is that maybe now all the numerous people who used to oppose U.S. wars when a Republican was in the White House will come back out of hiding. Eight years of Barack Obama killed the antiwar movement except for a few radicals like us.

Or as a tireless peace worker in Maine eloquently put it last night on facebook:

Join us, won't you?