Peering Outside the Disney Media Bubble
Over the course of the last three years I’ve been doing a kind of study. Since January of 2022, I’ve been looking not only at Western news from the left, right and center, I’ve also been perusing news sources that operate outside the Western media bubble’s narrative. A bubble I’ve come to call “The Disney Media Bubble”. I’ve been looking at news emanating not only from independent US and European sources, but also from places like South America, China, India, the Middle East, Russia, Africa, etc.
After cross-referencing/cross-checking the information I’ve gleaned from this array of sources over the course of the last 36 months, with the clarity that only sufficient hindsight can bring, I can say with something close to certainty that when it comes to foreign affairs, specifically the coverage of wars and war related economic issues, we, the US, are one of the more ill-informed and heavily propagandized countries on this planet in the 2020s.
Maybe you’re thinking that this is impossible? Aren’t we supposed to be “The Land of the Free” and the home of all things democratic? How could we be as propagandized as places like Russia and China, not to mention the “less civilized”, “third world” countries out there? Our media is a free media unlike the media in those countries!
Well, I’ve got some news for you: While it was formerly true that the US media enjoyed a measurable degree of freedom and featured a not insignificant spectrum of points of view in the 20th century, these conditions have all changed in the 21st century and there are observable reasons why this has happened.
The Pre-established Boundaries of Discussion and the New Media Model
There’s pretty much always been a ubiquitous pre-established set of mainstream media parameters that define the limits of “acceptable” political discussion in the US. These parameters act as a hidden filter that prevents any serious and/or potentially dangerous critique of power from getting through. This limitation on the spectrum of admissible forms of discourse is a key, often overlooked aspect of US/Western propaganda.(1)
It’s also very important to consider the new media model that has evolved over the course of the last 10 to 15 years. With the advent of cable news and the explosion of digital media, the traditional media model, which focused on drawing in a wide spectrum of viewers with differing interests and points of view, has been replaced by a subscriber based model that focuses on developing and growing an audience with a particular interest and a particular point of view. (2)
This new factor, combined with the still existing aforementioned limitations on the parameters of discourse has generated a tribalistic political atmosphere in which the stances people take on issues tend to automatically fall within a pre-packaged range of positions that have been ratified by the group they’ve chosen to ally with and/or subscribe to.
Pitting Us Against Each Other
This change has, on one hand, created an increasingly polarized public in which members of team “left” and team “right” pit themselves against each other in clashes, taking apparently opposite positions on issues. What goes unnoticed though, is that these clashes ensue within a pre-assimilated, mutually shared framework that limits the possibility of the recognition that, from a broader vantage point, these opposing factions actually share a range of fundamental concerns that ultimately supersede the largely superficial differences they’ve become accustomed to focusing on.
Add to this the massive concentration of power and super-wealth that has occurred in the US over the course of the last 15 years since the passing of democracy shattering bills like Citizens United along with an array of other deregulative measures that greatly favor the super-rich and the moguls who now have nearly full control of the Western mainstream spectrum of news and information.(3)
What we’ve ended up with is a misinformation powder keg with a “mainstream” agenda that’s dictated by an extremely wealthy contingent of globalists who own the media and most of our institutions now. It’s a narrative that tends, more and more, to generate and pit factions of the public against one another.
5 Glaring Examples of Americans Misunderstanding Major Events That Have Occurred in the Current Decade
1) What’s Actually Been Going on in Ukraine for the Last Three Years
Although it’s become nearly impossible to hide the truth about the Ukraine-Russia war anymore, from what I’ve seen, people in the US and the UK remain pretty much neck in neck in their unique misunderstanding of what’s gone on during the Ukraine-Russia conflict. I’ve written twelve articles, in total, on this topic. Franky, my reporting, along with the reporting of a group of independent reporter colleagues of mine, has consistently been 6 to 12 months ahead of every well-known Western legacy news media source I’ve read when it comes to correctly reporting news about the war in Ukraine. We’ve been more faithful to cross-confirmed details than our corporate mainstream reporter colleagues who’ve been relying almost solely on the state curated narrative. In the citations section of this piece I’ve included three examples of this: (4), (5), (6)
Also, the proxy war, “Project Ukraine”, has been a US/NATO ambition for over twenty years. The portion of the conflict that began in Feb 2022 was supposed to be the final phase of “Project Ukraine”, the goal of which was to break Russia, financially and militarily. There’s a paper trail to prove this in the first of my three articles mentioned above. That piece includes a RAND corporation memo from 2019 that was funded by the US govt. It spells the multi-year plan out pretty clearly.(6A)
2) Israel’s Genocide
Like the truth about the war in Ukraine, it’s getting very difficult for the Western press to hide the truth about what Netanyahu/Israel have been and are still doing in Gaza and The West Bank for the last year and a half. Amnesty International has officially confirmed that Israel is committing genocide.(7) Well over a hundred thousand innocent civilians are dead now, via mass bombings, shootings, forced starvation and hypothermia.(8) I’ve written 3 articles about this topic as well. Here are two to look at if you wish to: (9), (10)
3) Joe Biden and His Administration’s War Crimes
After Joe Biden agreed not to run again in 2024, a bunch of articles came out in neoliberal publications like The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Time, etc., all praising his presidency and the fact that he didn’t govern over any US wars. The general tenor of the articles was that ol’ Joe was a heck of a nice guy who did a darn good job in office.(11)
In reality, Joe Biden has been one of the most inept, reckless, war promoting and escalating presidents this country has ever seen. Over a million unnecessary deaths occurred (in Ukraine, Gaza, The West Bank, Afghanistan, etc.) on his watch. Add to this the fact that Europe’s economy was dragged into massive inflation and near recession by the Biden administration’s destruction of Germany’s main source of affordable energy.(12)
The lack of knowledge among Democrats about what a disgrace Biden is is, to this day, breathtaking to me. I say this as a (still) registered Democrat.
4) The Danger of a Potential Trillionaire Occupying a Position of Significant State Power
Although I will be happy to see many of the most nefarious, blood-thirsty, anti-democratic neocon establishment war hawks jettisoned from power next week, I am highly skeptical of people like Elon Musk. On one hand, his saving Twitter (now X) from the jaws of a near complete elimination of free speech was, in my opinion, an extremely fortunate occurrence. On the other hand, I think and feel that allowing the wealthiest man in human history, a man who has never known a day of finance related hardship (as the majority of this planet’s population certainly have and still do) is quite a dangerous proposition. It’s a proposition that could usher in a new era of Robber Barons 2.0. Yet when Americans criticize Musk their critiques very rarely touch on the aforementioned problem. Alas, the cult of money and deregulated quasi-capitalism still reigns ideologically supreme here in the US.
5) The Fact That a Vast Majority of Americans Know Little to Nothing About BRICS
A series of events took place in 2023 and 2024 that, in their level of global importance and future impact, trumped the recent election of Donald Trump. A global shift of state allegiances took place among many of the world’s wealthiest and most influential nations. This shift has reshaped the global order. In short, the world has already changed markedly and most people in the US aren’t aware of what has happened yet.
This newly invigorated economic and military coalition includes China, Russia, India, Brazil and South Africa and ten other countries so far. Add to this that there are now about 30 new countries applying to enter BRICS, which just added Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to its charter.(13) This cooperative of like-minded nations already makes up nearly half of the world’s GDP and over half of the world’s population.
BRICS is in the process of developing its own currency, which will be a serious challenge to the dollar in a few years. Stunningly, US news sources have kept this phenomenon out of the main headlines. The US is no longer the lone head honcho, it’s no longer the world’s biggest superpower. This is the kind of news that should be on the front page of every paper. But alas, it wasn’t even mentioned once in the recent presidential debates this past September.
Ignorant but Not Stupid
Despite this article’s somewhat provocative title and the fact that Americans are notably misinformed by their “mainstream” news media, I personally do not think that we, on average, are less intelligent than any other nation’s people. In fact, there’s a basic decency and a desire for justice in Americans that, when it’s both activated and well informed, is as palpable and vivacious as any culture’s, in my opinion.
I’m meeting more and more people, progressives, MAGA people, people from different religions, atheists, etc., who are seeing through a lot of the neocon bullsh_t we’ve been fed over the course of the last 25 to 30 years. And although I feel we’re in for a bumpy ride over the course of what remains of this decade, I do think there’s been a slight course correction of late. People are, despite the corporate-military-tech-industrial complex’s attempt to keep us divided, beginning to come together. We’re beginning to communicate in ways we haven’t before. We’re beginning to shed our ignorance.
If the disillusioned “left” and “right” continue to question the current status quo, which is clearly the reflection of a massive and still steadily growing wealth and power division, then some interesting things are going to begin to happen here in the US. If we continue to converge around our desire for real democracy and some semblance of income equality, despite our diversity (which is a wonderful thing) as individuals, nothing can stop us. We will be, as a wise sage once said, “Llke a force of nature that finds no resistance in its path.” (14)
CITATIONS:
https://chomsky.info/consent01/
https://www.entrepreneur.com/growing-a-business/why-subscription-models-will-be-the-new-normal-for-social/463963
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/citizens-united-explained-what-every-american-needs-to-know/ar-AA1vlIBj
https://www.pressenza.com/2024/08/the-us-calculated-sacrifice-of-the-ukrainian-population/
https://www.pressenza.com/2023/05/putins-war-in-ukraine-is-headed-toward-a-conclusion-while-bidens-war-in-ukraine-is-just-beginning-to-heat-up/
https://www.pressenza.com/2022/06/ukraine-is-losing-badly-and-things-are-about-to-get-much-worse-for-them-unless/ 6A)https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR3063.html
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/12/amnesty-international-concludes-israel-is-committing-genocide-against-palestinians-in-gaza/
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/7/8/gaza-toll-could-exceed-186000-lancet-study-says
https://www.pressenza.com/2024/08/blood-on-the-leaves-blood-at-the-root-einsteins-nightmare/
https://www.pressenza.com/2024/03/israels-condition-of-origin-and-our-willful-ignorance/
https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/was-bidens-decision-to-withdraw-heroic
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/9/23/what-we-know-about-the-nord-stream-sabotage-one-year-on
https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/07/04/brics-southeast-asia-thailand-malaysia-russia-china/
Silo, “Humanize The Earth” http://www.silo.net/en/collected_works/humanize_the_earth
