The Massive Allure Of 'More' In Today's America

This is what is known as an op/ed article, meaning that this in my opinion about whatever the issue here happens to be.You can agree or disagree, that’s your choice This kind of blogging I do is is mostly in aid of getting my opinion down so that, at the very least, I understand what’s bugging me.

For the last year and a half, I have been watching the United States’ political race. This, of course. means that I have exposed myself to a great deal of news media.
In that process, I have seen a fundamental change in how the news media works.
In the distant past, and part of the recent past, the news media was primarily a carrier of information. This information was presented in a fairly objective fashion by newscasters who were respected for their integrity and could be trusted to give you these facts in an intelligent and relatively unbiased way.
These people, at their core, were real journalists like Edward R Murrow, Walter Cronkite, Chet Huntley & David Brinkley, even a young Dan Rather. These were intelligent humans who understood that their job was to inform people of the issues facing them and by doing so help them make informed decisions about those issues.
Then in 1980, CNN, owned by Georgia rich guy Ted Turner, became the world’s first 24-hour cable news service.
This was widely thought of as an innovation at the time. But the 24 hour a day aspect of CNN forced a fundamental change in the way news programming worked. It created a great deal of time for news analysis, which I suppose was logical since 24 hours a day was a huge gaping maw that needed to be filled.
CNN has been with us for 37 years, and somewhere over the past 10 to 15 years, it began to change the way politics in the US actually worked.
First of all, it spawned a number of imitators, created mainly by the major TV networks.
Secondly, it became quickly corrupted by the major political parties in the US, which, of course, reduced 24 hours news networks to what they are today, which are mainly public relations opportunities for politicians, their parties and even the major lobby groups like big oil, big pharma, and the NRA.

What A Tangled Web They Weave

While CNN may have started out with the best of intentions and an innovative idea, the political and free enterprise systems in America quickly pounced on its substantial PR and propaganda value.

This, in turn, reduced traditional objective journalism to rubble and created a whole new breed of what was commonly known as ‘talking heads’. These people were all opinion all the time. And because they didn’t actually have any real journalistic credibility, they simply became the moderators of endless (so called) expert panel discussions.
Of course, these panelists all had their own left and right wing agendas, and this was actually encouraged in the name of equal representation. But all it did was manage to confuse people even more than the news itself.
CNN, of course, thought it had died and gone to heaven, and Ted Turner, being part of the hard-core conservative billionaire class, most certainly saw the substantial contribution that his news service was making towards the dumbing down of America, which is, without a doubt, the biggest conspiracy of the past two or three decades.
The decision by Donald Trump to run for president was really the ultimate realization that this dumbing down was complete.
The Republican party finally had a candidate who was such a chronic narcissist and corrupt individual that he could provide endless fascination for the 24-hour news cycle.
And behind the Trump facade, the Republican party, which had been pulled, by the Tea Party, to the far right, would be able to go about the business of paying their debt to the lobbyists who made them all millionaires in their own right, and turning the country as completely as possible into a nation of haves and have-nots.
All of this is clear, except for one key point. The reasoning behind it.
Up until the advent of this far-right wing of the Republican party, both parties were essentially centrist right and centrist left. There was something very civilized about that. And it created a good business climate in the US, as well as respect from the countries in most of the world.
The rich got rich. The middle class had good jobs and security. The poor were more or less taken care of, and America was seen as a genuine land of opportunity for enterprising people from all over the world.
But for a number of people, mostly already rich and powerful, that just didn’t seem to be enough.

The Massive Allure of “More”

There’s a great Humphrey Bogart movie called Key Largo, where Bogey and Lauren Bacall and a bunch of other people are held captive on a small Florida island, by a gangster named Johnny Rocco, played by Edward G Robinson.
Johnny and his henchmen are waiting for a valuable shipment of some sort of contraband.
Key Largo is a great study in megalomania and its weirdness.
During one of their confrontations, Bogey’s asks Edward G what he wants. And then goes on to give him the answer that he cannot disagree with.
Bogey: “You just want more, don’t you Johnny? You want all you can get, don’tcha?”
Edward G: “Yeah…that’s right punk…I want more.”
And that seems to be the core of the issue today, The super rich all about the ‘more’ and they are willing to do whatever it takes to get that ‘more’.
The media want ‘more’ and to do that they show more and more Trump. The Republicans in congress and the senate want ‘more’, and so they pass all the laws that the lobbyists are paying them to pass.
And the billionaires who own the lobbyists and, by proxy, the politicians, want ‘more’ power and control over the country.
And so it goes.
But for all the ‘more’ that these people accumulate, there is a ‘less’ to deal with, and the less started to be felt in a serious way during the financial crisis of 2008, and will soon repeat itself in another more profound way when the new Republican health care bill is passed.
And where is the media in all this? Still fascinated by the carnival clown that the powers-that-be have bought and paid for. Their ‘more’ is simple. More Trump. More ad revenue. More. More.

The Pendulum Effect

One of the keys laws of physics states that ‘for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction”.
Republican politicians in the US are now starting to feel this reaction in a number of ways, as they travel back to their home bases and need to confront angry supporters who are wondering:
How they can support a health care bill that no one can really afford.
Why the United States has refused to be part of the Paris Accord when it's widely understood that climate change is one of the key issues facing the world today.
And why they continue to support a president and an administration determined to dismantle many of the rights and protections that Americans consider fundamental.
These are questions that many Republican politicians can’t answer with any real credibility. And as a result, they are losing valuable support from their bases.
And where is the 24 hours news cycle in all of this? Still freaking out and analyzing to death Trump’s latest tweet.
And the definition of Trivial Pursuit keeps on getting redefined.
And the question of why people who already have more wealth and power than they can ever spend or wield would want to do this to the country that provides them with this wealth and power remains unanswered.
Finally, in the interest of fair op/edding, it should be noted that the Democratic party is every bit as corrupt as the Republicans. They had a chance to win this election with Bernie Sanders and shot themselves in the foot in the primaries.
The main difference is that Democrats have a better idea of what century we are actually living in than the Republicans.

Jim Murray is a communication strategist, writer, art director blogger and beBee brand ambassador for Canada. His partner, Charlene Norman is a business systems and operational analyst. Their collaboration is called Bullet Proof Consulting, located in St Catharines, Ontario and designed to serve forward thinking businesses in the Niagara and Golden Horseshoe regions of Southern Ontario. Web site coming soon.
You can find out more about us at:  http://tinyurl.com/y9zc9gvx

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