Finding Truth in Dystopia

How do we find truth in a failing industrial media complex? Dare we speak it?

Every breath you take and every move you make, every bond you break, every step you take, I'll be watching you. Lyrics from the final 1983 album by The Police, Synchronicity. Photo by Parker Coffman, Unsplash.

It’s been three weeks since the Fatal Election. Like many of you, I’m still processing the horror. Those that voted for Trump have long been down a bottomless pit of disinformation. The devastation that decades of Rupert Murdock’s FOX “news,” and the vitriol of Rush Limbaugh, his endless copycats, and bile spewing “Christian” AM talk radio cannot be underestimated. AM radio is particularly interesting, as I believe its influence is grossly underestimated. Listen to AM radio on a drive across a couple of states if you can stomach it, an endless shitshow of far-right, cancerous propaganda and call-in ignorance on parade. Show me a millionaire TV or radio preacher, and I’ll show you a cynical, manipulative liar.

Our media sources are in failure mode. There’s also a failure of education, whose primary purpose should be to instill the tools for critical thinking in people, which would inoculate them against disinformation. We also have a massive problem of government corruption that has insidiously allowed our media to be owned by a handful of wealthy people with undemocratic agendas. Local newspapers have long been dead, television and radio are controlled by a few large conglomerates, and the internet is rife with con men and propaganda from Steve Bannon’s Breitbart to Alex Jones’s thankfully defunct InfoWars which called the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre a hoax. This failure is also manifested in the twisted algorithms of social media written to suit the owners and the suspect ease with which these sites can be filled with bad foreign actors.

Since the Telecommunications Act of 1996 more than a third of all US radio stations have been bought and sold. Of nearly 5000 stations across 268 radio markets, almost half are controlled by a single company owning three or more stations in the same market. Radio has become as drearily homogenized as any exit off of any mind-numbing thruway, you know, the interstates that destroyed small town America and its communities. Each exit is lined with the same big box stores from coast to coast, soulless development called “growth,” stocked high with outgassing plastic and the products of child slaves in nations we’re taught to fear or despise. Fast food outlets abound, and we’re herded as mindlessly as the terrorized cows sent down narrow chutes in rivers of blood to receive a bolt in the brain, and fed diabetes, heart attacks and strokes with ultra-processed substances allowed to be called food, beef being the centerpiece all to the delight of the pharmaceutical industry. And much of the beef comes from the slashed and forever burning Amazon Rainforest, where indigenous, sustainable communities are unconscionably destroyed.

Television is an equal mess. In spite of having far more than “thirteen channels of shit on the TV to choose from,” a few of the disparaging words from Pink Floyd’s 1979 rock opera, The Wall, we have hundreds and hundreds now. The Wall, forty-five years ago, was a protest of abandonment, violence, and isolation. Have we learned from its observations? Aren’t we now more abandoned, violent, and isolated now than ever? Television today is controlled by just two media conglomerates, Nexstar Media Group, owners of 200 television stations across 116 US markets reaching 220 million viewers, revenue $4.93 billion, and Sinclair Broadcast Group, 185 television stations across 86 markets, revenue $3.13 billion.

As a result of deregulation, Clear Channel (now iHeartMedia) grew from just 40 radio stations to 1,240 in just seven years, thirty times more than the law previously allowed. Along with Viacom’s Infinity Broadcasting unit, just two companies now control over 40 percent of the US radio market. Reducing the control of information to the hands of just a few, is as destructive as laying waste to a diverse old growth forest, replacing it with a monoculture of trees, and calling it the same.

Writing responsibly requires far more time reading and parsing information than the words that result, and I worry that the day of being unable to find and discern truth is approaching rapidly. Since I started this project three and one half years ago new challenges have arisen, namely AI (even the voice of David Attenborough is subject) which is already being predictably used to further destroy truth and reality, and new challenges confront us as I write.

Billionaire owned media has with great deliberation engineered monocultures of information. There are two monocultures, “liberal” and “conservative.” Until now, the powerful have needed these two myopic“points of view” to divide and conquer us. Both ultimately answer to the industrial military complex, and work in concert to undermine reality. Reality is the Earth and her limits that we have now exceeded to the precipice of human extinction, overshoot needs to be addressed immediately and radically. This means getting off of fossil fuels NOW, among many other actions, no simple task since everything in your life and mine depends on them. Our chances were weak under Democrats, and non-existent under Republicans.

The contraction we require at this moment requires massive upheaval and sacrifice because we have waited far too long to transition gently, but if we don’t attempt this action, degrowth, the degrowth that is coming regardless from outstripping the planet and not addressing reality becomes worse with every day of avoidance. The movies in the Matrix series had it wrong. We’ve been living in a Matrix since the advent of the industrial revolution, a fossil fueled non-reality destined to be short-lived, and the industrial media complex won’t address it, because they are paid to maintain an illusion, destined to end.

With the election of Trump, our weak media is further crumbling. Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, hosts of supposedly liberal MSNBC’s Morning Joe, flew to the tacky golf motel called Mar-a-Lago where top secret documents are safely secured in a bathroom, to kiss the ring of the king about to be anointed. Apparently, their Nielsen ratings took a big hit. This gives me a modicum of hope. However, we’re on the path to state controlled media, not two bullshit voices, just one that will snuff out dissent. That’s how it works in dictatorships.

Will the press stand up to the man who has declared them “enemies of the people” or just protect their fat paychecks? We know the answer.

My writing depends on credible information from books, and the internet, access to science, history and current events. This article is prompted by fear. For how much longer can I depend on finding sound information? For how long can I depend on being able to publish? Certainly, the new regime will not be happy with my thoughts.

I am well aware of the compromised nature of some of my sources. The billionaire owners of the Los Angeles Times, Patrick Soon-Shiong and Washington Post, Jeff Bezos refused to allow their papers to endorse a presidential candidate, even though one has made his fascist intent well known. These are the acts of cowards driven by pure self-interest, rather than using their wealth and power to protect humanity. The New York Times, which I dropped some months ago for its obsequious writing on Trump, at least endorsed Harris. I have a tolerate/hate relationship with these publications, but have chosen to deal with them because occasionally they publish excellent articles on climate change and are easily recognizable.

Worthy of mention here as well is the legend in his own mind, Elon Musk. Certainly, Elon deserves credit for reducing once useful Twitter to a platform of far-right conspiracy theory and hate. While others thought he overpaid, I understood his purchase from the beginning. Now, the Apartheid South Africa product is about to be put in charge of cutting government waste. I’m certain this won’t conflict with the billions of dollars in government contracts he holds, illustrated in the table below. In fact, cutting some of those silly probes in said table would save taxpayer dollars and possibly accelerate his adolescent goal of colonizing Mars while you and I drown or burn in the latest hundred billion dollar climate change disaster hoax.

Bezos, merely the second-richest man in the world, also holds billions of dollars in government contracts. They’re linked to National Security Agency, Department of Defense and CIA. Sadly, he’s losing his pissing contest with Musk for dominion of outer space. South African crocodile tears, here. Let me grab a tissue.

Musk’s government contracts

The Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act

As I have written, our sources of information are wildly flawed and suffer threats and attacks that undermine their integrity. To balance the information I read, I include a lot of nonprofits. This doesn’t mean they can’t be wrong, that individuals can’t be corrupted or don’t have a particular slant, but I would certainly argue that resources not beholden to billionaire ownership or a corporate agenda offer a better level of basic integrity. I prefer informed hearts speaking from passion to those who seek profit and claim capitalism will solve our problems. On a finite planet, capitalism is the problem. One doesn’t have to be an expert on anything to grasp this self-apparent truth. Refusing to recognize this fundamental is at best ignorant, or worse, possibly malevolent and deliberate. It’s easy for me to imagine the “elite” deciding the simplest solution to our planetary crisis is the elimination of most of us. I wrote of this in Circumstantial Evidence.

Deceptively titled, the Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act (H.R. 9495) would give the Treasury Department the power to remove tax-exempt status from nonprofits deemed “terrorist supporting organizations.” This sort of naming is how our duplicitous leaders pull fast ones on us. Remember the “Patriot” Act? It brought us many steps closer to a surveillance state, but sounded right, didn’t it? Of course, that bill is prosaic now, with dystopia on the verge of full bloom in January. Call a bill something we can all get behind, fully intended to do something else. It’s only clever if we’re passively stupid. That appears to be about 50 percent of us.

Last Tuesday, November 12, fifty-two Democrats voted with Republicans to pass this bill, which in reality would hand Trump, you know, the flaming orange convicted felon and rapist the ability to shut down any nonprofit organization he doesn’t like. That I can safely assume could and would include government watchdogs, news, and humanitarian organizations. Two days later, when the bill came to the floor again, only fifteen Democrats voted for it, because they heard from their constituents. At least 130 nonprofits stepped up to oppose this bill. Little wonder because it’s deaths include the ACLU and Planned Parenthood, all of them.

Rep. Gabe Vasquez (D-N.M.) released a statement on Monday:

“I have heard loud and clear from folks in my district and understand the concerns of my constituents, non-profit leaders and their staff. The incoming administration's recent Cabinet nominations give me little faith that this tool would be used as originally intended. Therefore, I have decided to vote against H.R. 9495 and will continue acting in our district’s and nation's best interests.”

We are on the verge of the toughest years most of us will experience in our lifetimes. The cruelest, most narcissistic sociopaths who think you and I are baggage are about to take office. Marching against oil pipelines? Indigenous rights? Speaking out against genocide in Gaza? That’s what we have police for. Free speech is becoming a felony, trust me on that. It’s been happening state by state for years now.

These people, using the term loosely, intend to take every hard-earned right and social safety net we have literally shed blood for. Medicaid, Medicare, the Affordable Care Act? Forget it. Disability? You’re a drag on society. LGBTQ? You’re an affront to god. Brown or Black? You’re ruining America. Homeless? There are going to be more of you and you’re going to die. Problem solved.

Stop buying anything you don’t need. Boycott the shit out of everything. Please cancel your Amazon subscription. Encourage your friends to get off of fast food. Eliminate beef. Call the local media and tell them you’re putting your Tesla on the lawn and inviting the neighborhood for beer and $5 sledgehammer hits. Get your money out of fossil fuel banks. Make friends with a FOX News person. They’re going to be hurting soon, just like me and you. That’s an opportunity. Many aren’t bad, just misled. They will be looking for answers as this administration hammers all of us. Without politics, they would have your back. We need to make friends with these people as much as possible. The system has been used to dehumanize us and hide our common need of a just and reasonable chance in this world. Use judgement, though, many have been radicalized to believe you and I are the enemy and are incredibly angry.

I truly believe this is our last stand. I hate putting it that starkly, but we’re simply out of time with our refusal to cut the carbon and six of nine points of overshoot surpassed, that could still be reigned in, dammit, with sane behavior. Tragically, frighteningly, the most ignorant and vile people who have no clue of how the Earth works, or connection to their own souls, are about to take office. I’m putting myself out there with these words, and hoping they become more with you, because we must step up and be courageous right now. We are out of time for anything less.

Thank you for reading, and thank you to my many new subscribers. You keep me going. I’m just a guy who reads and thinks constantly. I need all of you to carry it forward. Our voices must unite into something much greater.