From our first children's TV show
sponsored by a major corporation,
we're barraged by image artillery
designed to stimulate salivation
for Coke or Pepsi, Ford or Chevy,
one from Column A, B, or C.
That's what freedom of choice has come to
in the market-driven Land of the Free.

Americans know quite a lot
about things that mean very little.
And it really is no mystery
when you take the time to consider

we're taught how and why to fight
for our "democratic" right to consume,
to care about our looks, "reality" TV,
pro-sports and who's doing whom.
We've watched TV and played video games
to the point of A.D.H.D.
'til we want the answers to all of our questions
to appear to us instantly.
We're impatient and anxious with anything
we don't immediately understand
and this desire for speedy relief
makes us quick to seek a McAnswer.
We no longer possess the patience
it takes to trace implications
so we're especially susceptible
to tempting either/or equivocations. 
And the more complex the issue seems
the easier it is for us to accept lies
as if it's almost a comforting relief
to have the wool pulled over our eyes.

*     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

Reagan killed the Fairness Doctrine
which gave opposing views equal TV time
and auctioned off the Public's airwaves
to corporate bidders at give away prices.
Clinton gave corporate media the gift
of telecommunications deregulation
by which they advanced perception management
by means of increasing consolidation
'til only five media giants now own all of
the Public's viewing/reading/listening time
and have no obligation to give
those opposed to their views equal time.

For instance corporate octopus General Electric
controls 1/5 of America's "news" through NBC,
allowing it to co-opt any independent press
and control the corporate-friendly pap seen on TV.

The producers of that "news" are corporate executives.
TV news-readers are multimillionaires
paid to peddle propaganda and titillating diversions,
their only obligation profit-making and market share.

G.E. further funnels campaign contribution-bribes
to all of "our" elected representatives
who then enact laws favorable to General Electric
and fast track all their contracts with the Pentagon
and military contractors like Lockheed Martin
for the production of war materiel
like jet engines and weapons delivery systems
that create a USA-made living hell,
the global source of death and destruction
into which America's manufacturing has devolved.
We're the world's Number One purveyor
of D.U., land mines and cluster bombs.
This rapacious corporate predator also owns and/or controls
vast connecting interests in the financial sector -
debt merchandising, real estate, and investment banks,
energy, healthcare, chemicals, insurance, and infrastructure.

AOL-Time Warner.  ViaCom.
News Corp.  Disney and G.E.
control and shape the parameters
of all the "news" they make you think you see.

And through predators like Sinclair Broadcasting
this propaganda machine's infiltrated our schools,
branding and neutering future citizens
to accept "he who has the gold makes the rules".

This makes it possible to believe
the degree of Americans' detachment
carefully cultivated during all of those years
of corporate/Right Wing media advancement.
The entire insidious network
is based on a wide-reaching foundation
similar to the network of infrastructure
we use for distribution and transportation.
But instead of highways, air routes,
bridges, tunnels and railways,
it's magazines, TV, newspapers,
talk radio, think tanks and cable.

With this all-encompassing system
they can put one or more themes into play
and reach tens of millions of Americans
with their extremist message every day.
And each part of this interlocking framework
reinforces and expands on the rest,

simultaneously creating and controlling
our views of world news and events.
This ability to construct the version
of the reality they want us to see
through the control of media images
dovetails nicely with public diplomacy.

News for mass consumption in America
is a feast of oversimplification
employing simple words and inane story lines
devoid of nuance and explanatory complications.
Events of stunning significance
are stunningly underreported.
Facts themselves may be omitted,
made up or badly distorted.
Sensationalism is fostered
by the pursuit of advertising dollars
and the glorification of trivia
makes smug, shallow fools out of all of us.

And the American Press doesn't do details
when it comes to political math.
Some reporters really don't know enough,
but they all focus on the horse race and tactics
and strategy as if American politics
were merely a sporting event
and what the winner does once in office
is of little or no relevant consequence.

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