As I cut my lawn or weed my gardens, I wonder about things that are (I think) that are different from consideration from lots of my neighbors. And, maybe that isn't truth. They might be considering the same concerns.
Like lots of suburban Dad's, I use Facebook to stay connected to friends near and far. And the basic question to me is from what I see them post: Is the American Dream still there and as fair as it can be. And I, am beginning to see destruction of the truth.
There are lots of things it could be and might not be. For a kid raised on Walter Cronkite and and overall "free press" allowed to criticize the government and driven by high quality investigative journalism, its hard for me to wonder about the impact of a "profitability driven" press. Whether its the "liberal drive by press" (as described by Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hanity and others of the conservative media fame grouping) also known as ABC, CBS, NBC, (and their cable outlets), or the hard wired "Faux" news of fair and balanced right wing outrage sponsored by Rupert Murdoch, the mutually abrasive strongly aggressive demeaning of each other within the "free press" makes me wonder what moneyed interests are really benefiting from deriding a "free" speech driven "free" press". The current situation suggests there are parties trying to crush a true rationale debate in America about Truth, Fairness and investigative journalism in the US media.
My Dad, a great guy, was a banker most of his life. Not the Wall Street time, but more of the kind you and I know at our local branch or local HQ branch. Over time he became an executive, but his values and principles that guided my work ethic stayed true:
- A day's work for a day's pay
- Show up - dressed and acting in a true heart correctly for the role.
- Pay attention to the bottom line, but also not to the corrupting influences. No "kiting" checks or blowing smoke up some ones "face" to get your way forward.
Today, I wonder if the game is still fair.
Airlines and many other corporate interests (and government ones also) want to violate fairly negotiated contracts on pensions and insurance they promised. State and local governments are doing the same and buying TV and radio ads claiming they are balancing the budget - see for instance the airwaves battles in NJ.
Federal government candidates call reasonable fees Taxes or Penalties depending on which side of the aisle they are working (the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) debate). All the while, the real money is working the top of the house - giving campaign money to people that help with their agendas. And the media, which makes lots of money on advertisements paid for by those ads, allows money to steal the from the electorate, the power of their individual mandate.
I work in the science of marketing, communications and education. I know that you can do powerful things with wording, linguistics, tonality, presence and frequency. Videos, personal stories, emotive language can all make your story more emotive and powerful, but not necessarily true. Often to the betterment of those paying for the messaging and at the expense of the truth or reality.
I hope this post is seen as apolitically leaning. Those who know me, know I lean a definite direction. But I am trying to say that the entire system is being manipulated by those with out the interest of regular old, middle, lower, upper middle class Americans in mind.
My point is that our preferences and political choices, even here in the bosom of suburbia are being distorted by larger, heavily moneyed interest not representative of our local, state, national or worldwide interests. Only their own narrow parochial interests are being served by very large $ investments with high quality communications firms skilled at manipulating the truth into fallacy and biased facts into singular perspectives. And the larger media outlets - Fox, CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, are allow complices in this this because they two can make tons of money playing both sides of the aisle and not taking care of you and me down in here in the upper, middle and lower middle class. And those in the lower class are getting the worst edge of all of this (and their voting rights are getting tightly contained at the same time).
We are Americans and we get the government we chose. But, if we don't pay better attention, that government will represent those that only a few chose. Get active, go vote. engage. Its out patriotic duty as Americans.
