Sunday, December 29, 2013

The greatest challenge to our democracy.

Mediacrats fill the airwaves with rantings about corporate influence on politics. The 800 pound gorilla of corporate influence on politics is the media. Candy Crowley's employer, CNN, is owned by Time Warner, the second largest media conglomerate on the planet. Not the country, the planet. The only media conglomerate bigger than it is the one that owns ABC News. But the Mediacrats never report on their own influence, never turn the camera back into the studio while warning about the danger of corporate lobbyists. But the corporate lobbyists sitting in the CNN studio don't just want to chat with a few politicians in a closed room, they do their best to dictate the outcome of elections.

* * * *

The greatest challenge to the integrity of our democracy may be the coup of the media corporations. Information is the lifeblood of a free society and the consolidation of information outlets in the hands of a small and powerful elite with no ethics and no boundaries is leading us down the road to a virtual tyranny that will maintain the illusory workings of a democratic society without any of the substance.

The old institutions of elections are becoming a charade . . . .

Daniel Greenfield has some trenchant observations about the role of Candy Crowley in one of the last election's presidential "debates." Who the hell was she and how did she inject herself in the debate as an equal or superior of the actual candidates undergoing a grueling process of vetting from which she was exempt?

The perplexing aspect of her presence -- to now depart from the major point of this post -- is that not one of the candidates objected to her selection or role. It seems that, time and time again, the supposed stellar lights of Republicanism simply blink out. Is border control one of the most important public issues imaginable? It most surely is and, yet, what do Republican leaders focus on but the amorphous – and treacherous – stellar lie of "comprehensive" immigration "reform." Why legislative action needs to be "comprehensive" is never stated. Similarly, the exact intention of immigration laws to keep illegals "in the shadows" for @#$% ever, or until they give up and go home, whichever comes first, is inexplicably billed as something needing "reform."

Were the Republican leaders all gelded at birth? So it would seem.

Mediacracy and gelded Republican leadership. God help us.

"Crowdsourcing the End of Free Speech." By Daniel Greenfield, Sultan Knish, 12/28/13.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

As a lifelong conservative and a reformed Republican I have reluctantly accepted the obvius reason why Republicans always fail to live up to the conservative beliefs they claim to have. It is as simple as this: Republicans first and foremost want to get elected/reelected. To that end they will say anything and do (or not do) anything. Once elected they will then do what all politicians dfo; that is they will pass laws for friends and donors, tax the middle class so they can use the revenues for pet projects and crony payoffs. Very few Republicans (and zero Democrats) are statesmen who put the country and the people first. Buth rather they are politicians seeking to gain control so they can be in charge of distributing the spoils.

Col. B. Bunny said...

I agree with you completely. If you ask Republican politicians to hold out two hands they'll stick one hand out palm down and the other palm up. That seems to be what they do figuratively on any issue. One simple objection to Obamacare is to ask where in Art. I Sect. 8 of the Constitution is there any mention of health care as a proper object of the federal legislative power. This kind of direct reference to the plain language of the Constitution never issued from any Republican mouth. Wickard v. Filburn was an absurd Supreme Court decision on the reach of the interstate commerce clause but it and many other judicial usurpations are meekly accepted by Republicans -- and practically every other living American lawyer or judge.

KG said...

They think Constitutional Fidelity is the name of a racehorse.