I've been talking a lot about politics with a number of my friends lately, and i’m always texting my family when bad things happen to Donald Trump because we love to see it. It almost makes up for the years I spent watching MSNBC and CNN when he was being investigated for colluding with the Russians to sway the 2016 election. I don’t watch cable news anymore when I used to pay for TV service for that very reason. I don’t really trust the mainstream corporate media anymore, but not for the reasons your Q anon, MAGA crazy uncle doesn’t. for me it was the manufacturing of consent for what is going on in Gaza that sealed it for me, it was just too similar to drumming up support for the 2003 invasion of Iraq that left 1 million Iraqis dead, I could just easily draw that parallel. I get little bits from the Instagram accounts I follow, and if I get really curious i’ll go on Reddit or YouTube. I wrote this fact yesterday, but it still boggles my mind: six corporations control the large majority of American news media outlets: Comcast, Disney, AT&T, Paramount, Sony and Fox. The purpose of any cooperation is to maximize profit for it’s shareholders. This means that some things that are really bad for everyone as a whole, might also be really good for shareholders, look at the ratings something like a war might get, therefore selling more advertising space and driving up shareholder value. this Is why, I suspect that they all love Trump, not just Fox, but CNN too. He’s great for ratings, they may act like they are critical of him but it’s still screen time for him and helpful for what he’s trying to do (win the presidency).
so, I've been discussing politics a lot lately with everyone in my circle, because it’s interesting and I can keep up, while having a further left view than most. i’m lucky to live somewhere that has people from all kinds of different backgrounds and cultures, so I can get their unique point of view. i’ll say this, though: it’s hard to find a New Yorker who has a positive view of Trump, and that says a lot because this is his home town.
my friends and I have been talking about some of the things he’s been saying, and this is where i’m trying to go with this post, although I’m not sure i’ll get there. I’m not paying attention like I used to but he’s more of a fascist in the things he’s talking about than he ever was, and I think we should really consider what he’s getting at, because I suspect he could still be the next president. Joe Biden isn’t exactly a sure bet, but democrats seem to have some aversion to running candidates that are a sure bet for some reason, which is one of the reasons i’m not a democrat.
Trump keeps talking about illegal immigration, that’s one of his greatest hits. by the way: didn’t he build a wall at the border? a glorious one? no, he didn’t but Roger stone did get in trouble for pocketing funds he raised for said wall, which is what these people do, they’re robbing people blind. His whole angle to appeal to people is that violent crime is out of control, that the migrants are committing atrocities all over the place and Trump is the only one who can step in and do something about it.
my new thing is asking my AI assistant for answers to everything. everything from personal advice questions, to if my blog posts make sense (but never letting it write them). I used to use chatgpt4 just to clean up my spelling and grammar, but it wasn't plugged into the web, Gemini is connected to the internet, so that’s a whole lot of places it can go for facts.
I had two questions as I woke up to all of this stuff The Donald’s been saying about crime, and his new battle cry the “migrant crime surge”. first off I wanted to know if violent crime in general had gone up in the last decade (in the whole country) it seemed like a good amount of time to gauge for a trend. the answer I got back was that overall, violent crime rates have trended down in the last 10 years. so there isn’t actually evidence that violent crime is up, and we need to have Trump expand the police state and save us from it.
what about this “migrant crime surge” in New York City? surely we gotta get ICE involved, and deport these people back to wherever they came from. well, while the influx of people certainly is taxing on the infrastructure of the shelter system, and I’m sure all kinds of other systems of the city, there is no widespread evidence of this surge, in fact the crime rate is slightly down as a whole compared to last year.
what i’m getting at is: you are being lied to. It’s beneficial to many parties involved that you are constantly afraid, because it makes you more susceptible to being manipulated. it’s not just the republicans and Fox either. do you think those 6 media corporations only dabble in media? they have investments across the spectrum of business that stand to benefit from a population that’s afraid. might they have investments that could benefit from building more prisons, or inflating law enforcement budgets? what if there were more medications that could be sold to help with this constant anxiety?
prices are up for everything, wages are not keeping up. so many people point their fingers at Biden for this…which is great for corporate America because they are missing that corporate profits are consistently breaking records, every fiscal year. it’s a switcheroo, yes the cost of living is up but it’s not up for the reasons people think it is. it cost more to eat, because under a dozen corporations control the American food supply, with that little competition, who’s going to tell them to keep the prices down? their shareholders? the board of directors? not likely.
This is what I think is going on (I could be wrong) i believe that all of the fear, and the division of the country are manufactured to keep people’s eyes off of the class warfare that’s being waged upon them. if we are constantly afraid, living paycheck to paycheck, and at each others throats over drag queens and pronouns, we aren’t going to figure out how badly the wealthy are fucking us all, and realize that we outnumber them by a lot.
do you remember that “tea party” movement during the Obama years? they were all pissed about Obamacare. it was made to look like a grass roots movement to keep government out of health care. well, I read this book “Dark Money” by Jane Mayer, and it turns out that the whole movement was not at all grassroots was crafted in less than visible think tanks by some of the richest people in the world the oil billionaire Koch brothers. I cant imagine this practice has just stopped for some unknown reason, I imagine corporate interests are still being furthered in ways that are not so clearly seen, and why wouldn’t the media be employed to protect these interests?
oh man, i’m in a hole now, i think I should have breakfast… i’m going to come back to this. I just want to say that whole migrant fear thing reminded me of this quote, i’ll leave you with it.
“If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”
― Lyndon B. Johnson
