Hello All, I've been doing some think about the advent of the "internet" and how this seems to be contributing to a decline in religious thinking, and at the very least an increase in diversity of thought or ideas. It occurred to me that the current political monopoly may be attributed to a media monopoly for the past 100 years, starting with the advent of radio and then television. Part of the national history has been national media. In the 1800s and before, it was all about the newspapers. I doubt the civil war would have ever created the union of all the states if it weren't for national newspapers, or atleast newspapers to communicate to lots of people. In other words, there seems to be an association with the consiladition of communication and the consiladation of political power. So, it seems to me, that the current political monopoly (and likely its coming decline) is related to the media monopoly starting mostly with television. Television has been probably the single largest "teaching tool" for most Americans for the last 80 or 100 years. Because of the nature of television based on a specific broadcast systems, it has been monopolized. However, now that distribution of media is free, ideas must stand on their own, because there is no clear endorsed information authority. Will we see a rational rebirth...or are we going to enter into an Orwellian era of "group think," where group perceptions become the standard of reality, and people become further integrated into some sort of collective whole ?
I just think media needs time to adapt. When cheap printing was invented and the masses learned to read, it was argued that now, people will have all kinds of ideas whirring about, but after a while, it settled into being a small group of newspapers that everyone read. I think we will see something similar. Not that single sites will dominate, the internet is too flexible for that, but once all ideas have been optimised for the new medium, people will settle in into groups. Complete freedom is nothing but a constraint to do the optimal, and when it comes to media, optimal isn't always the best.
Err... If we're talking about the consolidation of political power in the two main parties, then that's easily explained without media consolidation - it's simply one of the nasty side-effects of a first-past-the-post voting system, that you will inevitably have only two major parties, as voting third party is usually voting against your own best interests.
Basically, my point is that if media is centralized, you don't have a functioning democracy, because there is lack of information, or the non-existence of the freedom of ideas. Also, in my opinion, media monopoly leads to unbridled power, because dependency is based on information. As far as the 2 party system. You could argue that they are basically the same party. In other words, the positions of the two parties are not that far apart, and most elections are bought through mass media campaigns (based on central control of media). The government has learned that they can feed the American public bull**** and by and large they will eat it up. So, I am relating mass media control, to the intellectual wasteland that exists in popular culture, and especially in the United States (because television is the number 1 public teaching tool). A lot of government power is related to popular ignorance. People believe they have to give over power, because they don't actually understand the issues, or have been lead to believe in a particular world view. To control media is to control the perception of reality, and control the actions of individuals, or predict them.
Well, good news! The media has never been less centralized. Well, okay, perhaps in times before mass media and large-scale knowing of things existed, but in recent years, the internet has basically broken that net wide open - for better or for worse. Again, thank god for the internet. This might have been an argument you could have made 15-20 years ago, but now? In the information age? Not likely. Actually, while there is a fair bit of overlap on the parties (Good luck finding a candidate who doesn't support the war on terror and the NSA spying program), there are significant differences. Except that this plays to a completely different issue - it doesn't matter how differentiated or varied the news networks are, or how many sites like FactCheck or Politifact show up to correct the lies if people aren't engaged enough to do a little basic fact-checking of their own. The fact is it doesn't matter how many alternative news networks there are if all people want to watch is Fox News and the only opinion they're interested in hearing is Rush Limbaugh's. And this is the far greater problem. Not that the mass media is conspiring to hide things from us, but that we, collectively, don't care enough to find the truth. I see this time and time again. You correct a person on something, and they just ignore you because your sources are "biased" or because they simply don't care. Hell, try starting a discussion over "hide the decline" and you'll see exactly what I mean - a large number of people who completely missed the point and will intentionally continue to miss it. And a lot of the time, we go too far in assuming that everything is bull(*)(*)(*)(*), and end up with really bad results - people like Alex Jones who rightfully belong in a mental institution being taken seriously. Or worse, the creation of an insular bubble - "No, you can't trust anyone else, they're just going to lie to you, the only people you can believe are people who think like you." See also: creationism, alternative medicine, conspiracy theories, etc. (For what it's worth, I rarely have gripes with the BBC, CNN, PBS, NPR, CBS, or numerous other major networks, beyond the all-too-common sensationalist bend which all news will generally have, and how many of them get science very wrong from time to time as a result.)
Stagnant, So, if I am understanding you correctly, you attribute the present political system to general human nature, or you just see people as lazy? In other words, you see pop culture more as a product of how people are or how they act, rather than the information they been exposed to throughout their life? If this is how you feel, I think I disagree on this point. I do believe people are free to search for information and learn and inform themselves, but I also believe that people are also a product of that which they have been exposed to, starting from their personal culture and family, to all of their basic life tenants and beliefs. I think pop culture has mass influence on beliefs and tenants that are formed at a young age. So, I think media control does have a massive impact on our political system. And yes, media is much more free now, thanks to new technology. However, for the most part, the establishment sticks to its beliefs and things don't change until they become a minority, or get old or die, or whatever. So, I still see the "establishment" as having majority control. These people don't look to "new information" or "new media," but stick to their "trusted sources," such as church, news channel and tradition. And perhaps this is old news, because there is a fundamental shift happening now, I think...or in actuality, I would call it a massive political rift, between the new and the establishment, and by establishment, I probably mean the fundamentalist religious right. I agree here. And this always a difficult call. When you decentralize media, it makes it harder to know "who to trust." That is why I try to minimize speculation and focus on "facts" that I can find through alternate sources, rather than "thoeries." As far as the government goes, I somewhat understand why they don't tell the American people the truth, mainly because it could/would create histeria. In other words, people don't necessarily want to know the truth, when it comes to foreign policy, the role of economics in political decisions etc. In other words, I think perhaps that the public plays dumb, because they want the government to do "the dirty work" and not really know about it, as if the government is sanctioned to go outside of an ethical framework. I'm sure in the back of the mind of most Americans is the vague, if not pressing notion, that perhaps a couple hundred thousand Iraqi's died for oil, or that Israel exists in the middle east by a false divine right, and that we are in the midst of a manifest destiny holy war. (I know, I'm getting off topic here) There is obviously mass collusion between business and government. And the country is basically a fascist state. So, as far as not trusting media, I think there is a lot of reason, not to trust media. I mean government is basically a shifting doorway between office and big business. Lobbyists completely work for business, and in this country it is better to be a corporation, rather than a person (at least corporations only get taxed on profits). So, I can't completely agree with you on the media being trustworthy, or the government existing "for the people." In other words, big business has a vested interest in government controls, and in my opinion has corrupted the political process by controlling information, nearly completely over the past 100 years.
Well, I attribute the present political system primarily to inertia more than anything else - it started as first past the post, there's never been any effort to change that, and one of the inexorable consequences of FPTP voting is a two-party system. Not so much this as that it doesn't matter how many alternatives you have if nobody cares about them. I do believe that pop culture is modeled by what information we're exposed to; I think however that complaining about the centralization of popular media is aiming your sights wrong. You may have a point here. However, even within the mass media, there's a significant degree of difference between the news networks. I mean, what exactly is the gripe here? Not to put words in your mouth, but most of the time when I talk to people about this issue, it has a lot to do with "no major network will spend a lot of time talking about my personal hobby horse (which is not news for a variety of reasons beyond "the corporate masters don't want us to talk about it")". So I guess I don't quite understand what the problem is here. And as said, this is a far greater problem. You can have all the TYT or NPR you want, but if all you care about is Fox News, it won't matter. I'll hit the rest later. GTG.
