General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Eric Boehlert: What a mess -- the media's dopey Biden gotcha stories [View all]PatrickforB
(14,573 posts)Powell Manifesto, and the death of the Fairness Doctrine, followed by the deregulation of telecommunications, and most recently Trump's May 2020 FCC ruling allowing foreign governments to purchase our media outlets. So now we have six major corporations controlling virtually all the media, and the news become 'infotainment' because it is beholden to ratings and shareholder profits.
Now, all they have to do is take over the Supreme Court and the Federal Appelate courts.
Whoops!
Now, all they have to do is pack the Executive agencies, particularly DoJ, FBI, CIA, NSA and Pentagon.
Okay, we are fighting back there.
Finally, they have to take over legislatures at the state and federal levels with bought-and-paid-for politicians who will do what think tanks like ALEC tell them to...
Well, we have problems here.
See, the real enemy to the people is not the Republicans. Not really. Because they are bespoke, owned by the oligarchs. The real enemy is the oligarchs that control Wall Street, the MIC, the prison-industrial-complex, and so on.
One study, recently cited by Thomas Hartmann (I know some of you don't like him, but he does speak truth to power), found that while oligarchs can get pretty much anything they want from Congress (for example the giant 2017 tax cut for billionaires and corporations), the odds of people like us getting Congress to do stuff that we want or need are pretty much nil. Biden is fighting that, but it will be a hard uphill slog because of the filibuster.
So, we ARE fighting the good fight, but that fight is against the cancer of oligarchy.