The QOL Toolkit
Jeff Einstein
Here's the real red-state/blue-state dichotomy in a nutshell...
The red states are full of media addicts who - on average - consume anywhere from 10-15 hours of commercial media each and every day. The blue states are full of media addicts who - on average - not only consume 10-15 hours of commercial media each and every day, but also produce almost all of the commercial media everyone consumes.
Yes, the contextual message of corporate mass media is largely progressive, but only because corporate media is institutional media, and Western institutions of any meaningful size right now are - with a few notable exceptions - almost exclusively progressive. Precisely why progressive media and progressive causes are so uniquely dangerous right now.
But all forms of media come with explicit biases. Not the contextual kind we hear about ad nauseum from talking heads on FOX News. Not the obvious progressive media bias denied ad infinitum by CNN, MSNBC, PBS, and NPR. No, unlike the manufactured media biases of corporate media, the biases inherent in various media don't exist to entertain us or sell us products we don't even know we need. They sell us the firmament of entire societies instead. Structural media biases, the ones we don't hear about, don't run in the shallows. They run out of sight and out of earshot in the deeper currents of a pervasive and eternal media ecology...
Mass Print Media...
The printing press destroyed Western theocracies. It promoted linear thought and reason as Enlightenment tools to replace theocratic power with something more populist and forgiving. It gave rise to nation states and the Age of Reason. It produced the scientific method, and the American, French, and Industrial Revolutions.
The fundamental social bias of print as a mass medium is democracy, regardless of political bias. No mistake, therefore, that freedom of the press - as enumerated in the Bill of Rights - remains a critical component in any true effort to protect democracy. Unfortunately, however, print as a mass medium surrendered long ago to the rise of another - far more pervasive and powerful - form of mass medium. Indeed, the Age of Reason ended more than a century ago with the rise of...
Mass Electronic Media...
No coincidence that Mussolini, Lenin, Woodrow Wilson, Hitler, FDR, Stalin, and Churchill rose to power with the introduction of radio as a mass medium. Like all electronic mass media since, radio greatly amplified the larger-than-life personalities of the day. But instead of reason and linear thought, it promoted emotionalism, tribalism, and endless distraction, and paved the way for television and digital to do the same - on exponentially more powerful and more invasive platforms.
Unlike print, the fundamental social bias of electronic mass media wants nothing to do with democracy. It seeks power and control, not as errant or wayward objectives of occasional tyrants and madmen, but on a structural level, deep below the glittering facade. The fundamental social bias of electronic mass media, regardless of political bias, is fascism.
Fade out, fade in: Digital is the perfect medium for fascism. The primary function of digital technology, digital media not least, is the accelerated consolidation of institutional power and wealth among institutions - private and public alike - already far too powerful and far too wealthy. The fascist relationship between public and private institutions is nowhere more evident today than in the relationship between massive government agencies - like the DHS, the DOJ, the FBI, the CIA, the Department of Education, and the CDC - and global corporate media, including and especially the mammoth corporations of the technomedia cartel.
Despite their occasional flirtations with freedom and democracy, both print and electronic media remain - like religion - the primary tools of theocratic power, tools of the rich and powerful first and foremost. A.J. Liebling once said that freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one. While it's true that writers and artists and priests and pagans alike can now self-publish their thoughts and images with relative impunity and abandon, we still don't own the presses.
The Twitter files remind us of what eventually happens when we don't. Meanwhile, those who own the virtual printing presses today are bigger and more powerful than ever - and every bit as theocratic as Pre-Enlightenment Europe. They just want us to worship a different pantheon of new-and-improved gods at new-and-improved alters - all in fealty to a new-and-improved and immensely profitable new commercial religion: polytheistic narcissism. Perhaps non-sectarian sanctuaries like Substack or outlaw subcultures like the book people of Fahrenheit 451 are - for now - the best we can do.
So don't fall for the red-state/blue-state media bias sleight of hand; it's a carnival sideshow - just like everything else on commercial TV being sold to you by the biggest drug dealers on the block. Know deep in your bones that the natural organizing principle in the age of digital media, what I call the Great Age of Addiction, is the fascist consolidation of institutional power and wealth on a massive scale. Know also that global class warfare is the obvious result. Then adjust accordingly...
Call to Action
We need to turn away from the incessant call to think global act local. It serves no one except the massive institutions - private and public alike - wealthy and powerful enough to think globally and act locally everywhere at once all the time. We need to turn our attention and resources instead toward a more sober imperative: think local act local first. We need to begin with our own families in our own backyards...
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