The Free Press, the Free Market and the Tooth Fairy

by FRANK SCOTT

“Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.”

— A.J. Liebling

As major capitalist media claim threats to a free press tradition in America, the screams for mercy emanating from establishment sources have been accompanied by yelping from some alleged alternative voices from what often amounts to the anti-social online world. At the behest of minority owners of our democracy, proponents of this alleged freedom at the New York Times, Washington Post and their TV counterparts, along with please-go-fund-me-patriots from the revolutionary professional class have been working to impeach Trump since before he took office, with frenzied calling for the scalp which barely covers his nearly-empty-as-their-heads, and daily revelations of newer and juicier gossip crimes to assure freedom by throwing him out and setting president Pence up in the subsidized housing in Washington DC. What?

Among the increasingly demented folk running the country for their ruling employers, this would represent freedom worshipping, democratic national action. Yes, if you read, watch and listen to what passes for the information flow from the polluted stream pouring out of America’s national information toilet. And you can’t just flush the stuff away; almost instantly, it comes out of showers and kitchen faucets, with bulletins about Trump’s treason, sexism, racism, and just about any and every only recently discovered truth about our system being flung at this soon-to-be-revealed-a-capitalist (Oh! My! God! Who! Could! Have! Known?)  with an insect brain powering an elephant ego.

Well paid professional voices hired by our incredibly wealthy ruling aristocracy are joined by online media slum dwellers passing for an American left in crying for mercy from the alleged fascist Trump, who would have trouble fathoming the intellect of Mussolini let alone meet any other definition of fascism from material reality and not a Spielberg movie or Marvel comic. And when it comes to discussion of that wealth, its impact on our people, our nation and the world, you’d better check foreign information sources because the few that cover such things in America are confined to a news and commentary ghetto that makes the disgraceful homeless tent camps of America seem like gentrified property.

The people of our fictional democracy dependent on misinformation, booze and drugs to maintain tolerance for its disintegration at their loss and for the profits of a dwindling few might not take kindly being told the following, in the kind of headlines we read about Trumps scandals:

That we are collectively in debt for trillions of dollars which we borrowed from a relative handful of people who are actually loaning us our money which we print and then put in their banks so that they, in their passionate democratic love for usury, could extend it to us in loans charging us far more interest than what they pay us to allegedly save and which we will never be able to repay in this or any other lifetime.

The former allegedly free market which produced food clothing and shelter for all who could afford it and told the rest to drop dead has transformed into an allegedly free market which produces debt and credit with which to purchase food clothing and shelter and this has led to quite a few doing better than ever and a greater than ever crowd being told to drop dead.

And without floating on an ocean of debt which could become a desert at any moment, many in the servant-to-the-rich crowd doing quite well could wind up sleeping in their cars or under a bridge at the next upheaval in the market based on prayer, drugs and hallucination in defiance of the substance some still call material reality.

When global capital’s high priests and rabbis at their Vatican/Jerusalem, the International Monetary Fund, make uncomfortable statements about how the system may not be able to tolerate much more debt as it reached 164 trillion this March (but is over 200 trillion now, in august, according to the Institute for International Finance) we might be confused at the numbers but understand they are fantastic compared to what ordinary humans can fathom. Even millions of dollars can sound fictional to many of us, while billions are truly science fiction. But trillions? Hello?

The IMF debt figure represents 225% of global GDP. That means our debt is two and a quarter times more than what we produce. Even given that almost all of us are and have been in debt most of our lives, the fact is that all of us are in greater debt than we have ever been before, have less to show for it, and pay a far heavier price on it than we ever did in the past. Further, most of us would be in the market religion’s “drop dead” category the moment we could no longer borrow more money to pay part of our past debt and be assured of borrowing more in future to pay an even higher figure than we now owe. Huh?

We carry more than 830 billion dollars in credit card debt as a nation and among our most comfortable people are those of us dining on steak and salmon with an actual rice and beans budget but able to use our plastic to pay 170 dollars even if we only have 17 in cash. But going from gourmet foods to burgers and fries may lower quality but does sustain life. What happens to the larger number among us who are already dining on rice, beans, burgers and pizza, who have our plastic debt become so large we can’t “charge” things anymore? Our upper middle class will suffer, for sure, but our majority will suffer even more if-when the balloon bursts or the shit hits the fan, depending on vernacular used which also depends on how much debt we are carrying. But when you can’t meet the bill and your credit has run out, you might as well put your bedclothes in your car, if you have one, or borrow a tent and sleeping bag. The last estimate of our homeless population was more than half a million, a truly disgraceful figure among a population owing trillions in debt for war and pet care while reducing millions of its citizens to poverty and more than half a million to living in the street.

Do we need public banks, employee owned and democratically operated businesses, a dollar free electoral system and conversation with our fellow humans as opposed to mass murdering them every time there is an alleged disagreement among our rulers and thus our responsibility to kill and die for them? Does a snake have wings?

Obviously, we owe far too much and get far too little for it and the only way to end that system is to transform it to one that puts us, collectively, before only some of us, individually. Which means we not only need to pay attention to what the government of a minority of the people is doing to us but change it to a government of the majority, which it has never been in our history, was never designed to be in its origins, but needs to become if any of us are to have a future as a race, the only human one to have ever existed even if seemingly more divided than ever at the moment. And that’s only according to the minority rich. But the majority needs to move with all deliberate speed to transform a system and not just its figureheads. Voting for any more of them amounts to something far worse than putting teeth under a pillow in hopes of finding food, clothing and shelter when you wake.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/08/31/the-free-press-the-free-market-and-the-tooth-fairy
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