Air-headed capitalism — eagerly feeds President Trump's genius for attention getting — what could be happier?

© 2018 Peter Free

 

19 November 2018

 

 

We are witnessing an entertaining tide in human events

 

I thank William Astore for the following introduction my theme:

 

 

Media owners seem to see synergy here: empower Trump with free and sweeping coverage and watch ratings and profits soar.

 

Trump is a parasite. He’s drawing strength from the media even as he sucks its power and influence dry.

 

But the biggest loser is democracy, since the Trump-media nexus is degrading (and perhaps destroying) fact-based decision-making.

 

[W]hat’s truly shocking is how the mainstream media is so supinely subservient to him.

 

How unwilling they are to call him a liar when he lies; and how unwilling they are to critique their own obsequious coverage in a way that would lead to meaningful changes.

 

© 2018 W. J. Astore, Trump and the Media, Bracing Views (16 November 2018) (excerpts)

 

 

The larger observation is that the public contentedly eats all this up

 

Otherwise, where are those frantically pursued media-supporting dollars coming from?

 

So, who's to blame, again?

 

 

The moral? — We've tossed our primitive brains into already dug graves . . .

 

. . . and are enthusiastically shoveling dirt back over them. (Piquant pun and metaphor, huh?)

 

America's alleged democracy is, we should probably hypothesize, too reality-shorn and partisanly stupid to exist. President Trump is Providence's tool for exposing those traits.

 

We are (thus) seeing cultural evolution — or devolution, depending on one's perspective — in minute-to-minute progress.

 

What could be more intellectually enrapturing than that?

 

Of course, when it eventually comes time for American society to "eat shit" — as a result of our penchant for vacuous self-entertainment — perhaps we will be less delighted. But that's so far off, who cares?

 

Let not Sense block the Dollar's route to the one supreme pedestal.