Votto
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- Oct 31, 2012
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"The only security of all is in a free press. The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to. It is necessary, to keep the waters pure." --Thomas Jefferson to Lafayette, 1823. ME 15:491
After all, who will tell us what our government leaders are doing? Who will tell us what they should be doing what they are not? We have a hard enough time trying to keep up with those in our own household, let alone distant politicians whom we have never met and will never meet. So we rely on the press to do this for us. Without it, we may as well be voting blind folded.
But what most probably don't know is that US once forcibly silenced those voices as they threw journalists in prison for merely criticizing their government via legislation known as the Alien and Sedition Acts. Luckily, Thomas Jefferson rose up and challenged this legislation, otherwise, the US would have been a much darker place today. But what most also don't know is that some of the provisions left from the Alien and Sedition Acts, President FDR used to imprison innocent Japanese Americans during WW 2.
However, just because you have the freedom of the press, does not mean that such freedom can reach the masses.
Jefferson said, "The most effectual engines for [pacifying a nation] are the public papers... [A despotic] government always [keeps] a kind of standing army of newswriters who, without any regard to truth or to what should be like truth, [invent] and put into the papers whatever might serve the ministers. This suffices with the mass of the people who have no means of distinguishing the false from the true paragraphs of a newspaper." --Thomas Jefferson to G. K. van Hogendorp, Oct. 13, 1785. (*) ME 5:181, Papers 8:632
So having the "freedom' of the press means that any despotic regime also has that freedom. As Jefferson said, that despotic regime will control an army of news reporters to spew their propaganda. The only question becomes who can compete with that propaganda? There are various ways to control those media outlets that oppose the state media sources, such as forbidding them to speak, targeting their financial resources, or as we see today having Big Tech censor people as being "offensive".
So the question must be asked, how can the private citizen compete with their government in terms of how the press is controlled? Is it even possible?
When the US was first established, there was only one newspaper that was used for political propaganda for the Federalist party.
After the Revolution, historians write of the “party-press era”, that is, from the 1780’s to the 1860’s. It was a time when most newspapers aligned themselves with a politician, campaign, or party, and did so openly. Charles L. Ponce De Leon, an associate professor at California State University said, “Sparked by divergent plans for the future of the new republic, competing factions emerged within George Washington’s administration and Congress, and by the mid-1790’s, each faction had established partisan newspapers championing its point of view. These publications were subsidized through patronage, and, though they had a limited circulation, the material they published was widely reprinted and discussed, and contributed to the establishment of the nation’s first political parties, the Federalists and the Democratic Republicans. And it did not take them long to learn how best to steer public views”. De Leon continues, “Newspapers like Philip Freneau’s National Gazette, writes the most prominent Democratic Republican organ, crafted distinctly partisan lenses through which readers were encouraged to view the world. Specializing in gossip, innuendo, and ad hominem attacks, these newspapers sought to make readers fearful about the intentions of their opponents. The strategy was quite effective at arousing support and mobilizing voters to go to the polls, after all, the fate of the Republic was a stake.” Thomas Jefferson was attacked by a Federalist newspaper as being a godless Jacobin who would unleash the forces of bloody terror upon the land. There would be murder, robbery, rape, adultery, and incest that will be openly taught and practiced. The air will be rent with the cries of the distressed, the soil will be soaked with blood, and the nation black with crimes.
To fight back, Jefferson created his own media outlets, but Jefferson at that time was poised financially and politically to be able to do just that, otherwise, he would never have become President. Unfortunately for us, however, most are not, especially with a now well established monopoly on the press we have today.
But what of the press after Jefferson?
A Historian by the name of Harold Holzer describes the impact of the power of partisan journalism on voters in the years leading to the Civil War. “By the 1850’s, almost no independent voters were left in America, only Democrats and Whigs, and nearly all of them avid readers of newspapers. They were kept in a perpetual state of political arousal by journalism, and further stimulated by election cycles that drew voters to the polls several times each year, not just on the first Tuesday of November, the overwhelming majority regarded politics with a fervor that approached religious awakening, evoking interest characteristic of modern sports or entertainment. With only a few notable exceptions, few unaligned newspapers prospered.”
It could be argued, that the press has been the man behind the curtain all along to rouse it's citizens to act and think, whether it be to embrace the racism to justify slavery, or the call to arms to fight in wars abroad. You might even say that without the press, politicians are powerless to spread their propaganda.
No other figure has been attacked by the press like Donald Trump, but then, there is nothing new under the sun. Listen how the Left attacked Barry Goldwater in the 1960's who ran for President.
Fact magazine ran an entire issue on Goldwater’s alleged mental unfitness for the Oval Office. It stated with the title, “1,189 Psychiatrists Say Goldwater Is Psychologically Unfit to Be President!” The editor and publisher, Ralph Ginzburg, wrote, “Mr. Goldwater’s illness is not just an emotional maladjustment, or a mild neurosis, or a queerness. As emphatically stated by many of the leading psychiatrists in this country, the patterns of his behavior are ominous. From his sadistic childhood pranks to his cruel practical jokes today, from his nervous breakdown under pressure in his twenties to his present day withdrawals and escapes in time of crisis, from his obsessive pre-occupation with firearms in his youth to his present fantasies about brandishing nuclear weapons to scare his enemies, from his conviction that he is surrounded by deadly enemies at home, to his belief that every Russian ballerina is a spy, he show unmistakable symptoms of paranoia. Clearly paranoia is not just any mental disease. In a leader who commands the most powerful nation and the most destructive arsenal in history it constitutes nothing short of mortal danger to mankind. A little over 30 years ago a paranoiac with a charismatic effect on his audiences, supported by an extremist, highly patriotic group, was democratically elected to the highest executive position in the government of his country. His name was Adolf Hitler.”
The article ended with a poll of 12,356 psychiatrists asked if they believed Goldwater was unfit to serve as President of the United States. Many psychiatrists believed he was which gave his position support. But as a result of the Fact article, in 1973 the American Psychiatric Association issued what became known as the “Goldwater Rule”. “On occasion, psychiatrists are asked for an opinion about an individual who is in the light of public attention or who has disclosed information about himself through public media. In such circumstances, a psychiatrist may share with the public his or her expertise about psychiatric issues in general. However, it is unethical for a psychiatrist to offer a professional opinion unless he or she has conducted an examination and has been granted proper authorization for such a statement.”
How the media attacked Goldwater is EXACTLY how it attacked Trump. And like Goldwater, Trump was defeated with the power of that press.
Again, there is nothing new under the sun, but those not taught history or don't seek such facts out will never know. In their minds, there is human history, and then there is Trump who is an outlier who must be destroyed at all costs. The media launched an all out assault on him 24/7 for 4 long years. The only thing that has changed since the time of LBJ is, they now have control over social media thanks to Big Tech
So as we see, control over the media equals control over the populace. If so, how can we really say that democracy exists, assuming that there is no balanced media to give people the real news? Again, this is not saying that the freedom of the press does not exist. What I am saying is that to reach the masses, it takes a great deal of money to reach them, so it then boils down to what the top 1% of elites want us to read about as they censor the rest on social media because social media is the only poor man's way of reaching the masses, and we simply can't have that, now can we?
After all, who will tell us what our government leaders are doing? Who will tell us what they should be doing what they are not? We have a hard enough time trying to keep up with those in our own household, let alone distant politicians whom we have never met and will never meet. So we rely on the press to do this for us. Without it, we may as well be voting blind folded.
But what most probably don't know is that US once forcibly silenced those voices as they threw journalists in prison for merely criticizing their government via legislation known as the Alien and Sedition Acts. Luckily, Thomas Jefferson rose up and challenged this legislation, otherwise, the US would have been a much darker place today. But what most also don't know is that some of the provisions left from the Alien and Sedition Acts, President FDR used to imprison innocent Japanese Americans during WW 2.
However, just because you have the freedom of the press, does not mean that such freedom can reach the masses.
Jefferson said, "The most effectual engines for [pacifying a nation] are the public papers... [A despotic] government always [keeps] a kind of standing army of newswriters who, without any regard to truth or to what should be like truth, [invent] and put into the papers whatever might serve the ministers. This suffices with the mass of the people who have no means of distinguishing the false from the true paragraphs of a newspaper." --Thomas Jefferson to G. K. van Hogendorp, Oct. 13, 1785. (*) ME 5:181, Papers 8:632
So having the "freedom' of the press means that any despotic regime also has that freedom. As Jefferson said, that despotic regime will control an army of news reporters to spew their propaganda. The only question becomes who can compete with that propaganda? There are various ways to control those media outlets that oppose the state media sources, such as forbidding them to speak, targeting their financial resources, or as we see today having Big Tech censor people as being "offensive".
So the question must be asked, how can the private citizen compete with their government in terms of how the press is controlled? Is it even possible?
When the US was first established, there was only one newspaper that was used for political propaganda for the Federalist party.
After the Revolution, historians write of the “party-press era”, that is, from the 1780’s to the 1860’s. It was a time when most newspapers aligned themselves with a politician, campaign, or party, and did so openly. Charles L. Ponce De Leon, an associate professor at California State University said, “Sparked by divergent plans for the future of the new republic, competing factions emerged within George Washington’s administration and Congress, and by the mid-1790’s, each faction had established partisan newspapers championing its point of view. These publications were subsidized through patronage, and, though they had a limited circulation, the material they published was widely reprinted and discussed, and contributed to the establishment of the nation’s first political parties, the Federalists and the Democratic Republicans. And it did not take them long to learn how best to steer public views”. De Leon continues, “Newspapers like Philip Freneau’s National Gazette, writes the most prominent Democratic Republican organ, crafted distinctly partisan lenses through which readers were encouraged to view the world. Specializing in gossip, innuendo, and ad hominem attacks, these newspapers sought to make readers fearful about the intentions of their opponents. The strategy was quite effective at arousing support and mobilizing voters to go to the polls, after all, the fate of the Republic was a stake.” Thomas Jefferson was attacked by a Federalist newspaper as being a godless Jacobin who would unleash the forces of bloody terror upon the land. There would be murder, robbery, rape, adultery, and incest that will be openly taught and practiced. The air will be rent with the cries of the distressed, the soil will be soaked with blood, and the nation black with crimes.
To fight back, Jefferson created his own media outlets, but Jefferson at that time was poised financially and politically to be able to do just that, otherwise, he would never have become President. Unfortunately for us, however, most are not, especially with a now well established monopoly on the press we have today.
But what of the press after Jefferson?
A Historian by the name of Harold Holzer describes the impact of the power of partisan journalism on voters in the years leading to the Civil War. “By the 1850’s, almost no independent voters were left in America, only Democrats and Whigs, and nearly all of them avid readers of newspapers. They were kept in a perpetual state of political arousal by journalism, and further stimulated by election cycles that drew voters to the polls several times each year, not just on the first Tuesday of November, the overwhelming majority regarded politics with a fervor that approached religious awakening, evoking interest characteristic of modern sports or entertainment. With only a few notable exceptions, few unaligned newspapers prospered.”
It could be argued, that the press has been the man behind the curtain all along to rouse it's citizens to act and think, whether it be to embrace the racism to justify slavery, or the call to arms to fight in wars abroad. You might even say that without the press, politicians are powerless to spread their propaganda.
No other figure has been attacked by the press like Donald Trump, but then, there is nothing new under the sun. Listen how the Left attacked Barry Goldwater in the 1960's who ran for President.
Fact magazine ran an entire issue on Goldwater’s alleged mental unfitness for the Oval Office. It stated with the title, “1,189 Psychiatrists Say Goldwater Is Psychologically Unfit to Be President!” The editor and publisher, Ralph Ginzburg, wrote, “Mr. Goldwater’s illness is not just an emotional maladjustment, or a mild neurosis, or a queerness. As emphatically stated by many of the leading psychiatrists in this country, the patterns of his behavior are ominous. From his sadistic childhood pranks to his cruel practical jokes today, from his nervous breakdown under pressure in his twenties to his present day withdrawals and escapes in time of crisis, from his obsessive pre-occupation with firearms in his youth to his present fantasies about brandishing nuclear weapons to scare his enemies, from his conviction that he is surrounded by deadly enemies at home, to his belief that every Russian ballerina is a spy, he show unmistakable symptoms of paranoia. Clearly paranoia is not just any mental disease. In a leader who commands the most powerful nation and the most destructive arsenal in history it constitutes nothing short of mortal danger to mankind. A little over 30 years ago a paranoiac with a charismatic effect on his audiences, supported by an extremist, highly patriotic group, was democratically elected to the highest executive position in the government of his country. His name was Adolf Hitler.”
The article ended with a poll of 12,356 psychiatrists asked if they believed Goldwater was unfit to serve as President of the United States. Many psychiatrists believed he was which gave his position support. But as a result of the Fact article, in 1973 the American Psychiatric Association issued what became known as the “Goldwater Rule”. “On occasion, psychiatrists are asked for an opinion about an individual who is in the light of public attention or who has disclosed information about himself through public media. In such circumstances, a psychiatrist may share with the public his or her expertise about psychiatric issues in general. However, it is unethical for a psychiatrist to offer a professional opinion unless he or she has conducted an examination and has been granted proper authorization for such a statement.”
How the media attacked Goldwater is EXACTLY how it attacked Trump. And like Goldwater, Trump was defeated with the power of that press.
Again, there is nothing new under the sun, but those not taught history or don't seek such facts out will never know. In their minds, there is human history, and then there is Trump who is an outlier who must be destroyed at all costs. The media launched an all out assault on him 24/7 for 4 long years. The only thing that has changed since the time of LBJ is, they now have control over social media thanks to Big Tech
So as we see, control over the media equals control over the populace. If so, how can we really say that democracy exists, assuming that there is no balanced media to give people the real news? Again, this is not saying that the freedom of the press does not exist. What I am saying is that to reach the masses, it takes a great deal of money to reach them, so it then boils down to what the top 1% of elites want us to read about as they censor the rest on social media because social media is the only poor man's way of reaching the masses, and we simply can't have that, now can we?
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