By:

Dave Kingsley

    Elites sneer at the idea that people in general are intelligent enough to make good decisions in democratic elections. This is a disgusting and ill-informed attitude mostly aimed at the middle- and lower-income classes. But historical evidence indicates that people en masse are not as dumb as the self-anointed educated class and the mainstream media would have us believe. 

    Hubris and ignorance on the part of political elites and the intelligentsia have led pollster charlatans, journalists, bureaucrats, and politicians to assume that public opinion is little more than clueless folderol, rife with nonsensical conspiracy theories.  In so many ways, the “people” are viewed by the affluent and college educated classes and opinion influencers in the media as “lesser thans” and “lower types.”

    Machiavelli knew better. As he wrote in Discourses on Livy, “But as for prudence and stability, I say that the people are more prudent, more stable, and better judges than a prince. And not without reason is the voice of the people compared to that of God, for popular opinion has been seen to predict things in such a marvelous way that it is as if some occult power[virtu] enables it to foresee the evil and the good that may befall it.”[1]

    Harry Truman knew better. Among other issues, he ran on the principle of universal, single payor health care and won. Elites, pollsters, and journalists predicted that he would lose in a landslide.   We didn’t get the health care – thanks to the bigotry of Southern Democrats – but we got the people’s opinion about government’s role in medicine for the masses. There is no evidence that it has changed.[2] 

    Women fighting for reproductive rights know better and are winning ballot measures to enshrine those rights in state constitutions across the U.S. Extremist conservative legislators are consistently trying to undermine the efforts of citizens for a “right of choice” through anti-democratic legislative maneuvers.

    In Missouri, where I live and where the Republican majority in the legislature has gone extremist right-wing bonkers, Medicaid expansion was passed by “the people” through a referendum.  Ballot measures on reproductive rights and a minimum wage will be on the ballot in November and will likely pass.

    Oracles from left-to-center-to-right elitist political ingroups were shocked when voters from so-called “red states” voted to enshrine reproductive rights of women in state constitutions.  The media – all the media from right to left – would have you believe that we are a “divided nation.”  We aren’t. But that story is good fodder for television and newspapers.  The truth is most Americans share the same values and want the same things from government.  The broad middle (the overwhelming majority) of the voting public can best be described as ambivalent with some conservative views and some liberal views – mostly commonsensical views.

    I will stipulate that a pathological, narcissistic-sadistic fascist was able to win the electoral college and become president – but like every other Republican since George H.W. Bush he didn’t win the popular vote. He lost by an even wider margin in 2020.  Furthermore, many counties in states like Pennsylvania that Barack Obama won in 2012 by an overwhelming margin flipped to Trump by a wide margin in 2016.  I believe there is an explanation for that – which is ignored by the media and political intelligentsia.

In this Age of Show Business, the Role of Media is to Entertain You – Not Inform You.

    No doubt, in a country with a population of 334 million people (231 million are 18 and older) [3] and 161.42[4] million registered voters, an unstable tyrant can round up tens of millions of ardent, true believer followers. Given the spread of mental illness, fractured egos, instability, financial stress, and other psychologically damaging stresses of toxic capitalism, it should come as no surprise that a demagogue could and would come along and with the help of the MSM drive the electoral process into nonsense and chaos. 

    This should be even less surprising when the demagogue’s persona is the creation of NBC, which is owned by Comcast, one of the most powerful corporations in the oligopolistic media industry. It was, therefore, the mainstream media that led a significant mass of busy stressed-out people into believing that Trump was a kick ass, savvy businessman who could and would straighten things out and lessen their pain.  For years, he was a corporate created caricature foisted onto unwitting and economically hurting television viewers looking for escape. 

    Since 2015 when Trump descended on the escalator in Trump Tower – and after setting up Mexican immigrants as America’s enemy – the media has feasted on his burlesque politics.  Nothing attracts attention like dangerous cartoonish politicians with slapstickish, outrageous performances.  For nearly a decade, Trump has been a prop for feeding the much needed noisy, shallow product on cable channels, morning talk-entertainment shows, and nightly news. Although we “have nothing to fear but fear itself,” fear plus titillation keeps people tuned in.  The corporate need to enhance and protect shareholder value enhances the value of all Trump all the time on cable political entertainment channels such as CNN, FOX, and MSNBC plus all of the NBC, CBS, ABC, and FOX Sunday talk shows.

    The media is responsible for Trump – not public stupidity.  The media has a vested interest in keeping him going.  The public does not. 

Venal Media & Political Forces with Dangerous, Self Interest Designs Have Hijacked Political Narratives through Propaganda, Chutzpah, and Manipulation

    As we have learned from history, industrialists, media, and other powerful institutions (think religion) with the intent to install a strong man and a fascist movement in power for their own benefit, have the capability to misinform the public about real conditions and move them to participate in their own destruction. Once falsehoods are instilled in desperate and unwitting citizens, it is very difficult to tear them down.   

    As the American people are subjected to another round of election time insanity, the MSM is at it again – minimizing the severe pathologies and dangers of Trump and magnifying real and imagined negatives of President Biden.  In their stressful, busy attempts at survival, ordinary people naturally and unconsciously process signals – memes and narratives sometimes subtle, sometimes not so subtle.  It is to the benefit of media corporations to create and maintain an appearance of normality and a “horse race” so that their customers don’t lose interest.  As former President Obama said last week “behavior that used to be disqualifying is now normal.”

Let “We the People” have Honest Information – not Propaganda – and then Let Us Decide

    U.S. leadership values have dragged mass culture downhill since the post World War II robust and optimistic middle-class and Golden Age of Capitalism (circa 1945-1975). Since that time, the former Republican Party has degenerated into a full-blown fascist movement – a phenomenon filtered out of MSM narratives. It is dangerous for the media to ignore the resilience of fascism [5] and concentration of wealth and power in mammoth corporations and super-rich individuals/families.

    The fascists have clearly laid out their agenda. The MAGA Project 2025 will take the American people to a place where an overwhelming majority does not want to go.  It is a blueprint for dismantling the administrative state, stacking the courts, white supremacist rule, repression of dissent, and oppression of the middle and lower classes.  The healthcare program is misogynistic, religiously fundamentalist, and identitarian.[6]

    None of the theocratically fascist program offered to the American people by the fanatics of a movement that could gain control of government in a few months would pass muster in a referendum on healthcare or any of the other scary elements of Project 2025.  The cruelty of the current healthcare system would become cruel in spades.  I believe that the media should be less sanguine about rising fascism for the sake of appeasing shareholders and provide truth instead of pablum to consumers of television and print publications. 

    Furthermore, the Democratic Party should stop its political poll idolatry and naïve idealism about “working across the aisle” and wage a more robust fight.  The overwhelming majority of the American people can see through all of this political theatre and are disgusted.  Why don’t we just have a national referendum on what the people want?

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[1] Niccolo Machiavelli (2003) The Prince and Other Writings.  New York:  Barnes & Noble Books, 182.

[2] David McCullough (1992) Truman. New York: Simon & Schuster, p. 532. It is widely believed by historians and social scientists that the American Medical Association blocked Truman’s single-payer, universal, healthcare program by convincing the American people that it was a slippery slope into socialism.  That’s false.  Southern Democrats killed Truman’s proposal for a national health insurance program that would look like the “Medicare for All” proposals devised by progressive Democrats.  The Democrats with a majority in Congress could have passed Truman’s plan and the AMA could not have stopped it.  However, Senators and Congressmen from the former Confederate States had to power to block any legislation that would threaten the racial hierarchy and plantation capitalism of the South.  When it came to healthcare, he American people in general did not share the Jim Crow agenda of the Southern Delegation. 

[3] National Population by Characteristics: 2020-2023 (census.gov)

[4] Number of registered voters U.S. 2022 | Statista

[5] The Allies defeated Hitler and  Mussolini, but fascism has been quite robust and is now more potent than ever. Consider the strength of Marine LePen’s National Front in France and the results of the recent EU elections.  See also: Richard Wolin (2004) The Seduction of Unreason:  The Intellectual Romance with Fascism from Nietzsche to Postmodernism.  Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

[6] Project 2025 – Wikipedia:

“Project 2025 accuses the Biden administration of undermining the traditional nuclear family and wants to reform the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) so that this household structure is promoted.^[18] According to Project 2025, state governments should have the authority impose stricter work requirements for beneficiaries of Medicaid,^[23] the federal government should promote the Medicare Advantage program, which consists of private insurance plans,^{[56]: 464–65} federal healthcare providers should deny gender-affirming care to transgender people, and eliminate insurance coverage of the morning-after-pill Ella required by the Affordable Care Act of 2010 (Obamacare).^[18] Project 2025’s healthcare plan would also remove Medicare‘s ability to negotiate drug prices.^[18]

Project 2025 aims at dramatically reforming the National Institutes of Health (NIH) by making it easier to fire employees and to remove DEI programs. Conservatives consider the NIH to be corrupt and politically biased.^[15]

Project 2025 accuses social media networks—directly naming Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok—of jeopardizing the mental health and social ties of young Americans by creating a form of addiction. “Federal policy cannot allow this to continue,” it states.”^{[56]: 5–6}