The problem with the "no Kings" movement is that they have no idea what they are talking about, which I affirm as someone who has lived in monarchies (UK, Canada, and Belgium).
The real issue is the duopoly, which is realy only one party pretending to be different. The duopoly is the tool of the oligarchy, which is disgustingly obvious if one wants to admit it.
The US needs new players and parties that actually represent the people.
There are many advantages to ending the duopoly, but I am not sure I would go with the parties and the leaders proposed by this. While I talk about the Westminster system, coalition governments are much better than the gridlock which is endemic to the US system.
You would think I would be in deep mourning about this, but you are wrong.
There hasn't been any truly public media in the US for a long time. Commercials made their way into the public broadcasting long ago in the form of "underwriting". Money owns the narrative, which is why third parties and renegades such as Bernie Sanders got little coverage. The duopoly happily owns the US media.
And US media has long been consolidated in the hands of a few. You didn't need much of a brain to figure out that there were no real dissenting opinion. That was until the internet set it free. Then Speaker's corner came to your computer instead of having to get a soap box in Hyde Park. Of course, the Internet isn't really moerated so anyone can pretty much say anything.
It's nice to have media that are moderated with varied and informed opinions, but the US doesn't have that.
People say that Trump will bring fascism to the US, but the US has never really been a truly liberal democracy. It's had its propaganda, and the US is the best in the world at doing it: see Paul Weber's Propaganda: Nobody Does It Better Than America.
After all, the US Constitution does start with the words "We the people..." despite it having been mostly written in secret!
American propaganda, however, is much cleverer. American propaganda, they patiently explained, relies entirely on emotional appeals. It doesn’t depend on a rational theory that can be disproved: it appeals to things no one can object to.And the US's most obvious propaganda is called ADVERTISING!
Ones that are free of propaganda.
and advertising.
One thing I notice when I watch non-US media (Sky News Australia as an exception) is that they usually try to have opposing opinions. Not so in the US. I have yet to see a serious opposing opinion on the US media. For example, I have yet to see someone who voted for a third party in a discussion of why US politics is screwed. Even Joe Rogan has not interviewed Jill Stein.
That's pathetic.
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| OK, I wanted a picture of steak frites... |
Likewise, I heard a Fox News piece on "Climate Change" hypocrisy which didn't feature anyone who had a real idea what goes on in the environmentalist community. So, they were making it sound as if people who are Green are vegan.
Tu rigole ! I like to eat meat, but I don't do it that much for various reasons: more in line with my health than the planet. Slow food, on the other hand, which is traditional and regional cuisine that encourages farming of plants, seeds, and livestock characteristic of the local ecosystem makes more sense to me than having people go vegan. I'm not alone in this since people who push veganism can be shouted down for a lot of reasons: one of which is that truly being vegan is actually a difficult thing to do. Food needs to be certified as vegan!
On the other hand, it doesn't make sense to knock local meat production while eating quinoa flown in from South America.
Anyway, if you really want to get down to it: not having children is the best thing you can do to fight climate change. That gets really interesting when the vegans start their attempts to get people to go on their diet.
The problem is that things are indeed an echo chamber without opinions being challenged.
I am going to make a disclaimer that I believe in true public broadcasting, but US public broadcasting is commercial. It has commercials in the form of "underwriting" by large corporations, which is pretty much the same thing as being commercial. Yes, the fact that it is not free of big money influence make it a part of the rest of US media. Big business can threaten to take away its money and PBS is SCREWED--BIG TIME!
Which takes us to this clip from PBS News Hour where one of the commentators says "There hasn't been any obvious gaffes, big scandals, or anything like that."
Funny how Hunter's Laptop has been missing from the media (and I never heard back from Burisma about my job application).
It will probably also be missing again this election cycle (PBS shut off comments to this).
I should add that these two clowns are from the New York Times and the Washington Post. The Washington Post is owned by Jeff Bezos who would be eating 50 cent burritos if the duopoly wasn't in power and was whacked by someone vaguely like Bernie Sanders enforcing US competition laws.
But this gets to where Fox News is wrong: The Democrats are nowhere near left wing. In fact, the Republicans have also strayed from their true populist roots, which makes it even funnier when I read Shot in the Foot's blog: they might want to look up Minnesota Justice Harry Blackmun. Or even better, look up Richard Nixon's comments about firearms ownership.
As I like to say, I was rather shocked when I watched a documentary about Nixon (on PBS) and realised how lefty he seemed in the early 1990s!
Sorry for the digression, but US Politics has moved to the right. The Democratic Party has pretty much extinguished anything vaguely New Deal-Roosevelt, which means that someone like Bernie Sanders has no part in that party. Which is why I distrust anyone who claims to be to the left and is associated with that party. It cannot be fixed from within.
The reason that Biden is president is that he appeals to the big donors, which is why the Tech giants can deny the existance of Hunter's laptop and what it means to Joe Biden. So, that really wasn't that much of a digression.
There isn't much of a "lefty media" in the US other than some things on the internet (E.g.: Real News Network and Democracy Now), but they don't have much of an audience. Which means we are left with Fox News and Sky News Australia who get only part of the story, and are taken about as seriously as Democracy Now.
I feel like someone in occupied Europe trying to get reliable information when I look at the US media because it isn't there.
"All the News fit to Print" is propaganda, or at least explains their editorial policy in that they only feel they need to print what they believe should be printed.
And Hunter's laptop and associated scandal is nowhere to be seen.
I occassionally watch Fox News for an opposing opinion, which is where I heard about Kari Lake. I am pretty sure I don't agree with her on most issues, but her being questioned about "election denial" was very interesting. One thing I learned is that one needs to use the same vocabulary when discussing an issue. If "election denial" is a term meaning that there is some sort of conspiracy to steal an election, then it makes things look like anyone who points out the fact that US elections are anything other than free and fair and held on a secret ballot sound cray-cray.
On the other hand, one of the essential principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is:
Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives. . . . The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures."
Article 21, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948
The United States and other western nations spent a good part of the 20th Century pushing these principles on other countries, yet the US has moved further and further from this principle since the end of the Cold War.
The funny thing is that the election denial comes from the results of the electoral college and the fact that US elections are not "democratic". Bernie Sanders would probably be president if that were the case.
And people would probably love him. Just remember that Vermont is pretty much a "red state", and I mean that in the ass backward US sense where "red" is conservative. Otherwise, it might make sense that they have a socialist representing them. Yet another thing which gets lost in the US media.
Which is another thing Kari Lake attacks.
The reality is that the US needs serious election reform, yet it won't get it if it obfuscates the issues. The Electoral College is problematic, yet no one is willing to address it. Point out that Trump won the election despite losing the popular vote and his supporters aren't upset. I won't get into the machinations of the 2020 elections, but they are another glaring example of the need for election reform in the US. Had Barack Obama won an election with only 23% of the vote, I am sure that the people defending the "Constitution" would realise what an Amendment actually means and that the founders were well willing to use that process when the Constitution proved to need tweaking.
Maybe what is needed is to have some serious, adult discussions about the issues facing the United States instead of tossing ad hominems.
"It has become clear to us that the candidates' organizations aim to add debates to their list of campaign-trail charades devoid of substance, spontaneity and honest answers to tough questions," Neuman said. "The League has no intention of becoming an accessory to the hoodwinking of the American public."lwv.org/press-releases/league-refuses-help-perpetrate-fraud
Neuman said that the campaigns presented the League with their debate agreement on
September 28, two weeks before the scheduled debate. The campaigns' agreement was negotiated "behind closed doors" and vas presented to the League as "a done deal," she said, its 16 pages of conditions not subject to negotiation.
Most objectionable to the League, Neuman said, were conditions in the agreement that gave the campaigns unprecedented control over the proceedings. Neuman called "outrageous" the campaigns' demands that they control the selection of questioners, the composition of the audience, hall access for the press and other issues.
"The campaigns' agreement is a closed-door masterpiece," Neuman said. "Never in the history of the League of Women Voters have two candidates' organizations come to us with such stringent, unyielding and self-serving demands."
Neuman said she and the League regretted that the American people have had no real opportunities to judge the presidential nominees outside of campaign-controlled environments.
open debates run by an impartial body like the League of Women Voters, shorter election cycles, open primaries, ranked choice voting, return of the fairness doctrine and equal time rule (Trump used the lack of it to get shitloads of free publicity), campaign finance reform--if not publicly funded campaigns, easier access to the ballot for parties, reform or abolish the electoral college, end gerrymandering, handcounted paper ballots or receipts, and I am sure that is only the beginning.While one can dream that there will be internal change, it doesn't seem likely since the parties still seem entrenched in the same behaviours which have led to the US political system being the disaster it is.
