Article: The Rules of the Game

I've rung this bell before and I don't want it to sound like the ex-smoker trying to tell everyone to quit. I was knee deep in this crap myself and I thought I had a pretty good handle on the intake. I used to fall asleep in front of the TV; what does that say about stimulating your mind? After six months off the stuff I watched TV again and was revolted by it. It's blaring absurdities and annoying music and sound effects, I had become a junkie who didn't want to get high no more.

Somebody is paying big money to plow those messages into your brain -- Bank of America, Citi Bank, Capital One, BP, Coca Cola, McDonald's, Burger King, Taco Bell. The top ten movies at the box office are all fantasies, nothing real, kids movies loaded with special effects and product placements. The message is simple, don't think about it. Better still, just don't think at all.

Why do the Republicans call Obama a Muslim? Because it's scary and derogatory. Why do they call him a Kenyan? To delegitimize his administration. Why do they call him a Communist? To distract from Obama being the most right-wing President since Reagan. The Republicans want to push the agenda further to the right, so if they can paint Obama as a liberal, then God help us all, with what we'll get!

It doesn't matter what the truth is, if the lie will be repeated a thousand times. Maybe you won't believe this one, but what about the next one?

Tune in to your family and your friends, play cards, shoot pool; stop feeding this monster that lies to you. Read, and if you find an interesting story find another source for it. Read overseas newspapers and magazines, read what they say in the Pakistani press about predator drone attacks!

It's never too late to drop out; if you don't like Fox News, then quit paying for it. You can boycott their sponsors until the cows come home, but when you stop allowing it into your home, they will take notice. You get to keep your money and Fox News and the cable corporations can explain to their sponsors why their customers are leaving.

With the extra time and money perhaps we can start food co-ops to take corporations out of retail groceries. Then perhaps banking co-ops to help people out of credit card debt. We could create an industry under an industry and, as we go, we create jobs with an eye not to shareholders returns but community returns. These things have been done successfully in the past in America back before we had television.

If you want to change the world then stop paying for this one, stop buying their soma. Don't change the channel, change yourself. You can't understand how television affects your thinking until you get away from this multi-billion-dollar colossus predicated on selling you ideas, overtly, grotesquely, subtly and subliminally. Contrary to popular opinion, we make the rules of the game.

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."~~Mark Twain

"Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds."~~Franklin Delano Roosevelt

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