The plan was to change the title image once the election had ended. The new plan is to change the title image from within a bunker seven miles beneath the Earth’s crust while WW3 breaks out overhead, brother turning on brother, in an age old battle between individual liberty and centralized authority. As if we all did not expect exactly this sort of finale to 2020, if not at least in the back of our tinfoil covered minds.
There are about a million and a half plus one ways to steer this month’s column, and none of them seem terribly accurate. Faith based news abounds. Are the high paid dolled up news anchors telling the truth? Are the citizens who signed affidavits telling the truth? Is Donald Trump telling the truth? Is Joe Biden telling the truth? Are the MIT analysts who declared a 99% chance software was being used in Michigan to alter votes telling the truth? Are the whistleblowing employees telling the truth? Are the lawyers telling the truth? Are the judges telling the truth? Rumor rides her chariot, circling the confused masses in a victory lap.
Only one thing is certain regardless of the legal outcome of the election. The ‘Office of the President-Elect’ is not a real office of anything. It’s nothing more than a show on TV. Check the fact checks. Professor Leonard Steinhorn at American University told Reuters that the term is not an official term, his exact words quoted as being, “As I understand it, there’s nothing in the law that specifies an official or government-approved Office of the President-elect.” The show first aired featuring Barack Obama, was then hosted by Donald Trump, and now guest stars Joe Biden. A historical part of the United States of America’s system of government it is not.
Tinfoil Hat Time is here in more ways than one, and odds are there are a whole lot more people sporting shiny silver headgear these days. Mask or tinfoil hat, tellingly enough, seem to be the sides by which we divide.
But enough about politics. Let’s talk business. That’s where facts, cold hard numbers, are rather easy to come by. That sort of information is verified. Bragged about. Made public record in demonstration of glory, and pursuit of opportunity.
How many are already familiar with Rupert Murdoch and Fox Corporation, who loom over Fox News, and their $21 billion in assets?
Now how many realize that what accounts for ‘reliable information’ on ABC is provided by the Walt Disney Corporation, a company estimated to have over $200 billion in assets? Or that ‘truths’ told on NBC are brought to you by Comcast/Universal Studios and their over $263 billion in assets? Do the people know that the ‘news’ on CNN is a product of AT&T/Time Warner/AOL, a company with an astounding $551 billion plus in assets?
These ultra rich corporations own almost every mainstream network and movie studio. Every TV channel and show. All the political opinion shows. All the children’s movies and animated films. All the romantic comedies. All the action flicks. Almost all the beloved intellectual properties from Marvel to Star Wars, Star Trek, Disney, and beyond lay in the hands of these massive businesses. They even provide ‘educational content’ for taxpayer funded public schools.
Companies who have acquired a combined trillion dollars in assets peddling fantasies. Producing fictions. Plagiarizing classic themes. Placing ads that tug on your emotions, then charging you fees. Promoting division and destroying civil discourse. Constructing toll roads on the information superhighway. Sensationalizing gossip. Selling you things you do not need or want. Lying about when the cable guy will show up. Providing the complete opposite of transparency in either their billing, or their business associations. Animating and peddling co-opted folk tales from other cultures. Preying on your wallet via nostalgia and your childrens’ desires. The list goes on and on.
It takes conditioned ignorance on a scale this world has never before seen in order for tens of millions of people to get their information from The Fox Corporation, The Walt Disney Corporation, Comcast/Universal Studios, and AT&T/Time Warner/AOL, and then believe themselves to be hearing the truth, to believe themselves to be more informed than others, and to believe themselves to be fighting against rich corporations in any way.
The subsidiaries of these mega businesses, otherwise known as ‘trusted news sources’, are by account of fact nothing more than properties owned by corporations. Parts of a larger business operation that spans a wide range of interconnected and highly profitable goods and services. A link in a money making chain that, just like every other pack of subsidiaries, in every other industry, works synergistically toward the goal of making the parent more money. It’s just business, as usual. They do not get more honest if more people listen to them, they just make more money and become more powerful.
In fact, over the past few decades telecommunications, broadcast, and information technology companies have been consolidating like inverse rabbits. Slowly but surely (and quietly thanks to being the ones who own the ‘news’) joining their empires in an ever upward lust for more. Merger upon merger, buyout after buyout, they have grown into global nightmares.
MSNBC (which is MSN), for instance, started as a joint effort between Microsoft and General Electric’s NBC unit, which was then purchased and is now a part of Comcast/Universal Studios. As a purely hypothetical example, in one fell swoop this single multi headed business entity could use its ‘news’ to tell everyone to be afraid of a virus, control searches for information on the topic, convince people of their reality by integrating it into trusted TV shows, advertise intellectual properties in public service announcements for free as a tax write off, then make millions off virtual meeting software and services, all while landing an owner a key role at the center of finding the cure. Each mouth lending credentials to the other in a single unified goal, profiting all the way. With control over perception, information, and communications, there really is no end to what could be accomplished.
They have no authority over truth, other than assumed authority and advertising budget, which costs them zero as long as it’s covered under their own umbrella, or less than zero when its a government backed PSA. An argument could be made for longevity being the mark of trust, that age gives them rights. In which case it should be noted that CNN, which first aired June 1st 1980, is two months younger than the author of this column.
Google it. Check it out on Bing. Do a Yahoo search. Ask Jeeves. Look it up on AOL if you are feeling old school. It makes no difference. Almost all search networks are either owned by, or powered by, Google or Microsoft Bing. They’ll all tell you the same thing. In the case of some, such as AOL, it’s a deal between AT&T/Time Warner/AOL and Microsoft, the same Microsoft partnered with Comcast/Universal Studios on MSNBC. Some tentacles specializing in communications technology, fictional stories, and ‘news’, others in information technology, data processing and…
...vaccines?
Rumor can ride her chariot all she likes ‘round the game of politics, business is where the facts reside. As the third season of ‘The Office of the President-Elect’ is transmitted via cable networks onto digital devices and TVs that run on software, and quietly collect data, in homes all across this nation, one more thing is solidified in at least this tinfoil covered mind. To steal the words of Gil Scott-Heron, “The revolution will not be televised.”
