Corporate Control

It is a well-known and unfortunate fact in the United States that businesses, corporations, and special interests play a much greater role in our politics and government than we would certainly like it to. There has been, for decades, if not centuries, the element to our politics that is the corrupting influence of money. It has become particularly pronounced in recent years, especially in this 2008 Presidential Election, where candidates of both political parties are raising millions and millions of dollars each in campaign cash. In fact, this could be the first billion-dollar presidential campaign in our country’s history. That is, assuredly, not a positive sign.

The great influence of money in our politics is a very dangerous thing because, if the main emphasis in politics becomes money, the people who have the most money, also known as the people who can afford to donate large sums to political campaigns, will gain an inordinate influence in our government. This means that the rich and the corporations will gain a much greater influence in our politics than will the povertized and the Middle-Class. It is very important to ensure that this small minority of ultra-rich citizens never gains complete and total control of our government. That would degrade and deplenish our grand democracy, which is based upon the values of being of the people, by the people, and for the people.

Unfortunately, it seems as though the ultra-rich minority has already gained nearly complete control of our government, the Democratic Party, and the Republican Party, the media, and, not only that, but our entire country as well. Let me explain my thoughts on this matter.

Firstly, the financial and political elites are often the same people, for the reason that the financial elites have enough money to launch and run a political campaign, and to maintain a political career. These financial elites who gain political office have, first and foremost, their own self-interest, and therefore the self-interest of other financial elites, at heart. Adding to the reasoning of the statement that politicians have the self-interest of financial elites at heart is the knowledge that most politicians take extraordinary amounts of money from the ultra-rich and the corporations (financial elites). Political leaders find it necessary to take money from these elites, for the reason that they would not be able to win elections otherwise. In order to win an election, one political party has to out-raise another political party. Make no mistake, money is the greatest determining factor in the outcome of elections. The Republican Party has been raising money from the businesses and special interests for years now, and the Democrats, in an attempt to regain power from the Republicans and win elections, had to establish an allegiance to the corporations and ultra-rich as well, to raise enough money to be serious competition. Bill and Hillary Clinton accomplished this, by taking the Democratic Party to Wall Street, and removing it from Main Street, where it had resided for decades. Shame on them, and other Democratic political leaders, for degrading the sacred “Party of the People”.

So, both of our political parties, both competing with each other by trying to raise the most amount of money for elections, have sold out and both become the property of the ultra-rich and the corporations, who are the entities which can donate the most money to political campaigns. And, since our two-party system, with the Republican and Democratic parties, completely controls, and in fact has a monopoly on, our politics and government, our government itself has been sold out to the corporations, ultra-rich, and special interests.

It is also a noted fact in the United States that these same corporations, and the same ultra-rich people, who buy and sell our politicians on a regular basis also own all of the media outlets in the United States. All of the major media outlets in this country are owned by five large corporations. That is a fact. This has caused many to rightfully describe and decry the mainstream media in the United States as the “Corporate-Owned Media”.

Now, when I’m talking about the corporate media, some mistakenly believe that I mean FOX News alone, as it is seemingly the worst, most corrupt media outlet. But, in actuality, with regard to the corporate media, I’m talking about every single major news network. MSNBC, CNN, FOX, etcetera. They’re all owned by large, greedy corporations. And having all of our major media outlets owned by large corporations is very bad for our democracy, especially since it now seems that the corporations are allowed to exercise censorship with disregard to the public good, and to promote the interests of the corporations rather than the interests of the entire country. These corporations can exclude and include presidential candidates on their media outlets based on whether or not these candidates agree with the corporations and whether they would help the corporations as President. If you don’t have the best interest of the corporations at heart, don’t expect to be given an opportunity to talk and express your view and spread your message on their news media channel.

There was a recent example of this in the decision to keep Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich out of a recent MSNBC Presidential debate. General Electric, a beneficiary of the military-industrial complex which Kucinich would fight as President, instructed their MSNBC media outlet to keep Kucinich (and, earlier, Former Senator Mike Gravel) out of the debate. The Kucinich campaign appealed to a judge, because Kucinich had been invited to the debate, and then disinvited just a few days later. The judge ruled in favor of Kucinich’s inclusion and ordered that Kucinich be included (or he would stop the debate), so MSNBC (backed by GE) fought tooth and nail to keep Kucinich out, appealing the judge’s decision. The case went to the Nevada Supreme Court. The Nevada Supreme Court ruled in favor of MSNBC and GE, and set the precedent that the corporate media can determine who can and who can’t speak out on their media outlets, based on the 1st Amendment right of Freedom of the Press. But I thought that Freedom of the Press was supposed to bolster the already-given individual right of Freedom of Speech, not to allow large corporations to decide who’s allowed to speak and who’s not. Corporate control of the media needs to be more regulated, not less regulated.

Corporations owning the media gives the media, in my mind, two very unfortunate goals that they might not have otherwise. One of them is to maintain the status quo (under which both the media outlets, the corporations, and the rich are currently flourishing), and keep average Americans good and distracted and ignorant in order to do so. As long as the ultra-rich and the corporations maintain the ignorance of the poor and the middle-class, they can remain in power. If the People realized what was going on here, there would be a revolution. The other goal of the corporate media is to, of course, like any good corporation, make lots of money. Having a media outlet be owned by a business essentially makes that media outlet a business in itself, as the main goal of the business that owns it will be to make money.

The Corporate Media accomplishes both of its main goals (maintaining the status quo and making money) by using the material that they air on the corporate media television channels to frighten, misinform, and distract the People. The fear, distractions, and misinformation serve to preserve the status quo by promoting ignorance throughout the population. Also, the distractions that they air also appeal to the worst part of human nature (the most small-minded part of human nature, focusing on people, gossip, and celebrity). Because the media material appeals to the most basic, primitive, small-minded part of our nature, we all enjoy it and tune in and watch, and so the news media profits a great deal as a result. Sensationalist and celebrity stories are what the media lives upon today. They breathe it as we breathe air.

In reality, “politics” means “policies”, but the type of “politics” that the news media outlets air does not have anything to do with policies. It is a new brand of politics, “celebritics”, which focuses on the sensationalism and celebrity of certain candidates and their individual actions rather than focusing on policy issues.

The focus on celebrity has worked out so well profit-wise for the Corporate Media that they have even tried to incorporate celebrity into every aspect of the 2008 presidential race. This is reflected in the fact that, from the beginning, the media has tried to make the Democratic Presidential race a competition between the two most sensationalist stories. Of course, I’m talking about the stories of electing the first woman or first African American as President. The Media gave so much more media attention to the sensationalist and celebrity stories (which is profitable for them), and, also, the corporations who own the media have both Clinton and Obama very soundly in their pockets. It’s a double-benefit for the media and the corporations which own it. But, you have a third choice on the Democratic side, a candidate who is not owned, lock, stock, and barrel, by the corporations: Former Alaskan Senator Mike Gravel. However, it is unlikely that Gravel will ever be elected President, even though he is honest and has integrity and courage. The corporations of this country use the media outlets to further their goals, and ensure that they, the corporations, are firmly and completely in control of our government and all of the major leaders in it. The corporations, with the power of the propaganda sent from their media outlets behind them, can make it a certainty that only a presidential candidate friendly to the corporations will be elected in 2008.

When the corporations who own the politicians own the media outlets, it is essentially as though the state, the government, owns the media outlets, in an indirect way. It seems to me that, in that way, our press is no freer than the press in Russia, where the three major media outlets are all owned directly by the State. In my mind, the corporations are the government here in the United States, and they, even more frighteningly, own nearly all of our sources of information. Capitalism can be a force for good in the world, but only when it is regulated. And it is my belief that we certainly don’t regulate our corporations enough, especially with respect to the ownership of media outlets. But, really, how can we expect to get anything major done in the realm of regulating corporations when all of the political leaders lack the political will to do so, for the very reason that they are owned by those corporations? Only the most courageous of political leaders will forfeit their political careers and go against the corporations (their campaign donors) on the basis of principle. And it seems to me that, right now, we have quite a shortage of courageous and principled politicians; no one in our government today even has the courage enough to filibuster a war funding bill for this illegal, unconstitutional, damaging Iraq War that we are currently immersed in. Political calculation trumps political courage.

Not only is our government controlled by corporations, our entire country and our culture is controlled by corporations, and we, like good brainwashed sheep, march in step, on their command, to their tune of greed and selfishness. Our entire culture has been permeated by the values of the corporations. This is illustrated by the emphasis that the United States puts on both competition and the individual. These two values are ingrained into our beings. These two things combined, emphasis on competition and emphasis on the individual, breeds a culture of selfishness, one of the most notable characteristics of a corporation, which nearly always puts profit and its own self-interest before the public interest. We are seeing that culture of selfishness being bred in Americans every day; many of us all all so immersed in our own selfish little material pursuits, such as watching reality TV and American Idol and focusing on making a great deal of money and so on, that we care relatively little about informing ourselves about politics and focusing on our shared necessity for things to be done in the name of the public good. We are living in country ruled by the corporations, both in our government and in our media, so it is really no wonder that things are so bad here in the United States today.