Once upon a time we knew where we stood. The mainstream media had a bias (and sometimes made genuine mistakes) but we could read between the lines and had a good idea of what was going on. The money for that army of reporters has dried up. We moaned and griped about the bias of the media but we had a good picture of what was happening. They had highly trained, experienced journalists on the ground investigating and reporting.
Not anymore.
For the past ten years Trump and other populists have been waging a war against experts, science and rational thought. It’s been relentless. They have successfully convinced people that all experts and scientists lie; that they are all in the pockets of either Big Business (Big Pharma) or some shady body they call ‘Deep State’. The only source of ‘truth’ are Trump and the populists.
These populists have one aim – to make money. Nothing else matters. To this end they look after the interests of their paymasters – the billionaires. They want a quick buck out of oil. To hell with global warming or the environment. We can’t allow that to get in the way of making money. Open up the wilderness, remove pollution laws and environmental restrictions. MONEY MONEY MONEY.
They’ve exploited terrorism, Muslim extremism and mass immigration to create fear, hate and division as a vehicle to get them elected.
They use targeted social media to reinforce conspiracy theories and sow the seeds of distrust and fear.
They cunningly exploit the publics own fears and doubts.
Conspiracies are endorsed – Global Warming is somehow a global scam, Covid is a scam, the CIA blew up the towers, we never landed on the moon, the holocaust never happened, all predictions are wrong, scientists can’t be trusted, the election was stolen, Trump’s convictions were all manufactured – a witch hunt. It’s calculated. We are taught to distrust the evidence of our own eyes. Trump’s crowds are bigger than ever before in history. We are living in the age of Orwellian double-think. This time it’s real. We are being orchestrated with a real ‘two minute hate’.
First Musk came out from the shadows to openly embrace the limelight. He used the MAGA movement and is making billions more. He banished fact checking from Twitter. Who needs facts? Under the banner of ‘Free Speech’ you can say what you like, put out lies and blatant propaganda and nobody can question it. The barriers have gone.
Zuckerberg could see which way the wind was blowing and quickly jumped on board.
The rule of law has been bypassed. We are now living in the Wild West where anything goes. It’s a scary place. A handful of billionaires now call all the shots. They manipulate us through their media platforms and, as we’ve seen with Trump, use their money to escape the law. They are effectively above the law.
There is nothing subtle about this. We see with Musk. He has become so brazen that he operates in the open. He seeks a future without any restrictions, where he, and his fellow billionaires, can operate without restriction. Forget workers’ rights, unions, environment or safety regs. This is the Wild West. To this end he is now taking on governments. He doesn’t like any government that has a left tinge. He wants the world governed by right-wing greed. They have their sights on the Labour government, NATO and the UN – anything that might interfere with unrestricted gluttony. Everyone is running scared because they can see the immense power these people have. They control the media. They control minds. They control elections. That power is very real and Musk knows it.
The truth is now what they say it is.
Trump, Musk and Zuckerberg have declared war on facts and truth. The pushback must start now
This is the new world.
The billionaires call all the shots.
The only question really is how far will they go?
How much money does one man need? When is enough enough?
(PS – despite the romantic representation of the Wild West in the films, it was a fearful, ugly, brutal time of death, prostitution, fear and violence. Laws were brought in for a good reason!)
Totally agree!
Cheers John. I find it extremely worrying. We’ve put all the power in the hands of profiteering billionaires. I think we should shut down social media altogether.