Fair Game and Toxic Assets in a Time of Love and War.

[omega minimo]

Two of the biggest, most ego bound hatemongering hypocrites that perpetrated the toxic attitudes of the past three decades on the U.S. public, from Capitol Hill and the public airwaves (while they were giving those public airwaves away to megacorporate private interests), including to our military overseas via military channels, are now at each other's throats. One inflicted on our nation the Contract On America and the other spews Excrement In Broadcasting. They are both insane.

They are among the best at what they do. The enabled the era of Reaganism's Big Lies. They are so slimy and slippery while spewing their venomous vitriol, that they know how to make it sound like they're making sense. Almost.

They are both insane. They are at each other's throats. They can both take credit for filling the swamp of lizard brain manipulations and adjusting the toxic brew just so, to keep American citizens alienated, marginalized and divided. They succeeded in building careers and their monumental egos on the reduction of issues and individuals to cookie cutter, cliche stereotypes.

They succeeded in poisoning the American political system and discourse to new, megamedia lows.

A Bible stops a bullet.

An insult ends a conversation.

A houseflipper points a finger at folks upside down in an hyperinflated market s/he hoped to keep milking for imaginary profits.

Weather patterns change rapidly, altering landscapes, causing disasters.

Hundreds of whales beach themselves.

Same gender marriage is approved, then denied, then approved, then denied.

The ERA remains unratified.

Big Pharma and Big Pharms continue disinformation campaigns on a public out of money and looking for low cost, healthy alternatives.

Children are put on drugs because they react to the craziness of modern life.

A man hits a women.

A single mom has 14 children.

A smarmy, phosphorescent preacher lies about potentially life saving scientific research.

The anti-abortion terrorist leaders of the 80's go on NPR to call women "babykillers."

An insult ends a discussion.

:think:

What's wrong with this picture?

The same party that used to represent the marginalized, the subgroups, in solidarity against the homocidal, hypocritical Powers That Be has spent too much time fighting the bully bigots on their own terms; too much time immersed in the swamp of lockstep attitudes and Excrement In Broadcasting.

We are eating our own.

Even with the new President, new era, new opportunities and challenges, we are not getting behind his messages of solidarity and hope. The most overwhelming of those challenges have been perpetrated on us by the hatemongers shilling for The Powers That Be. We are not facing them together.

Even this president wants to Look Forward, Not Back. That means the perps walk. A public now addicted to the painkiller of compromised, manipulative media doesn't recognize that this is what feeds the beast that brought us to this cliffhanger.

It wasn't always like this.

It was never perfect.

However, we knew tolerance, we understood respect, we practiced generosity to those we don't agree with or understand, even when it was difficult. Even when it was pretend.

We did this as a nation, as communities in the name of Community. Our leaders helped. Our media helped. We had a common cause.

Our new president is busy trying to navigate the waters that the hatemongering hypocrites' toxic assets have poisoned.

He rode in on a wave of goodwill and may not realize how pervasively the toxic assholes have poisoned the national discourse.

We cannot continue scrambling to bring each other down. That's what the hatemongers do. They have fooled those who don't agree with them to adopt the same misguided, short sighted way of thinking. They have reinforced the human ego tendency to look for someone else to blame, some other subgroup to marginalize and attack; to be reactionary, rather than be reflective and responsible.

They have reduced national discourse to a dog fight, where blood rules and death wins; to a cock fight, engorging bird brain arguments to battle wearing razor spurs over feathery nonsense.

Are we better than that?

[omega minimo]

1. Well, that's an answer...........

:spray:

[kentauros]

2. I would hope we're better than that.

Although I will admit that sometimes your posts go way over my head.
It could also be that I am really, really tired and need to get up really, really early and am not cognitive at the moment

[omega minimo]

3. that's okay

doesn't matter anymore........ :hug:

[Kind of Blue]

4. Yeah, we're better than that.

But, as you say, it was never perfect but because of our system, a small group that screamed the loudest was able to spew their garbage beyond any reasonable perspective and won. But the fight never stopped and the ball is in our hands. If we've decided to fight each other, supposedly on the same side, then what is it but the way of imperfect man? But the fight for rights and peace will never stop. That's life, y'all, and that's the way it is.

[woodwrite]

5. Omega,...... if anyone saw this coming,...

.. It was Marshall McCluhan. The medium is the message? Couldn't have happened quite like this without the Tube, eh? And by extension, the entertainment industry as a whole, replete with advertising messages, constant exposure, etc. Okay, Alvin Toffler got in some good licks, as well. And this was almost forty years ago. The point is, we KNEW this would eventually come around,.....

Nice one, BTW,... You got my REC.

[omega minimo]

10. yes, there's that

.... the Tube makes many preposterous propositions possible.... like W as president. Or Reagan for that matter.

You're right, it was predictable, which has been part of my problem with how the nation bought it so completely.

Wasn't the media consolidation that began in the late 70's a big warning sign?

Nice to meet you, thanks for the :kick: &R

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

6. Be impeccable in your word

If one speaks with the intention of helping and not harming, that is a first step. The second step is to choose to whom you listen. Empowerment comes from choosing to whom you give your attention. Perhaps a way to go about this is to email networks, etc, with positive stories and positive people, asking why they aren't being covered by their news; or starting or supporting an internet news service that does empower the positive. Frankly, the more I look at it, the more time we spend rejecting those insane people, the more power they feel they have--we have invoked their name, given them attention (and what person isn't rewarded by attention?).

Btw, my title is the first of The Four Agreements, a book or audio book I would highly recommend, as it helps you gain peace of mind.

http://www.miguelruiz.com/fouragreements.html

[omega minimo]

11. aye

Thank you for the link and your wise words. Very timely and apropos for at least this DUer.

"Perhaps a way to go about this is to email networks, etc, with positive stories and positive people... Frankly, the more I look at it, the more time we spend rejecting those insane people, the more power they feel they have--we have invoked their name, given them attention (and what person isn't rewarded by attention?). "

1. Be Impeccable With Your Word
Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.

2. Don't Take Anything Personally
Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won't be the victim of needless suffering.

3. Don't Make Assumptions
Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.

4. Always Do Your Best
Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse and regret.

[bridgit]

7. We aren't better than that by simple definition. Not in a world where there isn't a damn thing

civil about civil war when it was thought McClellan sat on his horse so long his command was relieved. Stratagems within stratagems? Patterns within patterns? And so by the absence of the flat of a hand; a progressive course of action we are defined by others as,

Our political skins being too brittle too tearful our personal futures far more important and if anything that's the one thing they've factored in from a genuinely adversarial position and play like a scratchy fiddle 24/7/365/52 and that doesn't play to the common cause being tagged without retort; liberal, effete, irrelevant; And even though I'm loving what Claire McCaskill has been doing; as a group we're not even all that good at declaring in the sunlight, "You sir are a scourge take it back!" fearing no mud on our shoes certainly no blood certainly not our own and in that vacuum; itself a form of apathy: "They have reduced national discourse to a dog fight" because we have allowed them to, we did not pursue them when they were on the run, we should have chased them through the bramble where the rabbits wouldn't go but we stopped.......

...

...

...

...

...

And played maybe one too many soul searching rounds of 'mirror mirror on the wall' and poof! It was gone, my question is: Do we really have it back?

[MorningGlow]

8. I have worked in the media, and I can speak to that

The most important thing to realize is that most of the people in the media just. aren't. that. bright. They're really not. They're just average individuals of average intellect (and I've seen plenty below-average as well). Now, I'm not making excuses for them. I think anyone involved in the media SHOULD be of above-average intelligence. Unfortunately that's not how it's worked out.

So what do we get? Execs and producers whose heads are turned by sensational stories--the newsroom equivalent of the guy in the recliner with a can of beer in his hand. "Hey, Martha! C'mere 'n' lookee! Some crazy chick had EIGHT KIDS! Day-um!" The lowest common denominator producers pandering to the lowest common denominator audience.

Plus these execs and producers are in it for the ratings--they will latch on to any story that will keep viewers or readers coming back over and over again. And what gets the ratings? What's even better than dumb, bread-and-circus style stories? A clearly delineated us-against-them argument that never seems to end. They LOVE that.

Of course not everyone in the media is like this. But too many are. And that allows other folks who ARE smarter to manipulate the media into covering exactly what they want covered. (Sometimes it doesn't take much--when I worked in a newsroom I was appalled at how frequently producers picked up a press release that came in over the fax machine or via e-mail and wrote a news story directly from the press release without questioning it, investigating it, or even consulting a second source. Why? Understaffing, mostly...and because nobody told them they shouldn't.)

Was it ever thus? I don't know. My time in the news media was fairly brief. I suspect it was, if Edward R. Murrow was a startling exception to the rule, and if Network needed to be made.

Are we better than that? Yes. Do we deserve better? Yes.

What do we do about it? I don't know that either. Yes, of course we should demand fair news coverage and intelligent analysis instead of more "what's Britney doing today" garbage. But unless millions make themselves heard all at once, the argument will be dismissed by media execs as the whingeing of an overeducated minority. (Plus they don't like to be told they're not doing a good job.)

Speaking of bread and circuses, we all know what happened the last time the masses were sated with brainless entertainment, don't we? ;)

[omega minimo]

9. "Was it ever thus"?

"Was it ever thus? I don't know. My time in the news media was fairly brief. I suspect it was, if Edward R. Murrow was a startling exception to the rule, and if Network needed to be made."

The tendencies were there. The media and the market had yet to become the same, incestuous, megaconsolidated, free giveaway of the public airwaves, monster that it is now.

Independent businesses and independent voices were possible. Rush Limbaugh was a joke. "American Idol" would have been (still is) a futuristic nightmare of, yes, fiddling while Rome burns........ manufacturing false "idols."

[MorningGlow]

12. Media consolidation definitely let the inmates control the asylum

I loved Clinton, but removing the limits on how many media outlets could be owned by one company was a boneheaded move. Mega media corporations squelched the voice of the small, independent media owner in the same way Wal-Mart crushed the small, local shops.

It's hard to reverse such a monstrous machine once it gathers so much momentum, so I don't think that's possible. But it IS possible to derail it and replace it with something new. :evilgrin: The mega-corporation monsters are topheavy and have started to topple. I look forward to seeing what happens to media in the future.

[omega minimo]

13. "Become the Media" -- Jello Biafra

http://alternativetentacles.com

[I Have A Dream]

14. I tried to give it a rec, om, but I was too late.

:(

Here's kicking it back to the top. :kick: