Sanders And Bezos’s Shared, Debilitating, Basic Premise

Front page of The Washington Post, June 8, 2016, with the headline story reporting on the end of the Democratic Party presidential primaries

There have been a number of articles recently which have highlighted liberal displeasure over the ways in which major mainstream corporate media outlets are portraying the presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders in a negative manner. More of these articles have appeared after Sanders tamely speculated about the possibility that the Washington Post’s owner, Jeff Bezos, with his Amazonian corporate freedom from taxation (and this would implicate the various other private corporate owners of media outlets) might perhaps use his power to lessen the freedom of the press. The fact that Bezos has used his money to support republicans and democrats almost equally is a very important aspect of his opportunism and the opportunism of the parties. Bezos has shown a strong preference for helping elect democrat or republican candidates with military experience.

The idea that private owners of media conglomerates might use their outlets for spreading personally profitable propaganda is hardly anything new. There is another problem which is integrally connected to this issue which does not seem to be perceived by prominent liberals as being of much concern to them. This problem is that the liberal complaints about the corporate-controlled media’s portrayals of the Sanders campaign seem to be coming from the same basic religiosity as are the numerous negative articles about Sanders.

That basic belief is that the only possible way to have anything even remotely resembling influence is to be a republican or a democrat. This belief seems central to both the Sanders campaign and the antagonistic corporate media. It is certainly supported by the contributions by Bezos.

Sanders says he is an independent, but when he wants more power he is a democrat. The Washington Post, The New York Times, MSNBC, … (the plethora of fronts are too numerous and prominent to bother listing more of them) are not capable of seeing beyond the two political agencies of privatizing corporatism and they clearly do not want to bother with a campaign which is presenting itself as being opposed to the corruption of the corporate agency it insists on staying within. The fact that the Sanders’ democrat campaign is again under attack from prominent members of its own chosen party’s supporters does add an air of credibility to Sanders, but that too will very likely again become advantageous for the corporate controllers as it did in 2016. The plethora of democrat candidates for president is almost a guarantee that the final choice will be a person who is corporately approved.

From this basic dismissal of any attempts to create a party which is oppositional to the privatizing corporatism which controls the democrats and the republicans, a cynical rejection of attempts to organize outside of the bipartisan corporate control system is reinforced by liberals under the guise that they are pragmatists.

So, here we have liberalized “progressives” complaining about how their insisted-upon, deceiving, third way deviance of a party and the privately controlled corporate media (which is central to their beloved deviance and its deviant colleagues known as the republicans) are not being fair.

Sanders’ chosen party membership is not questioned by his supporters. It is assumed to be another pragmatic endeavor. His insider-outsider-ness has supported, on numerous occasions, messages underlying the same corporate domination which he and his supporters claim they oppose. They will not seriously challenge

his unprotesting surrender to and the subsequent impassioned (by fear) promotion of Clintonian conniving and abusiveness in 2016,

his support of the energy-draining, democrat-created, grossly over-rated claims of Russian electoral meddling (as if any other nation tries to manipulate other nations as much as does the so-called USA),

his characterization of Venezuela’s elected president Maduro as the source of Venezuela’s problems – as if Venezuela’s problems were not connected to the sabotaging manipulations and sanctions which have been deviously implemented over the years by the democrats and the republicans,

and his lack of support for the BDS movement. Privatizing, predatory corporate control is strongly behind each of these positions/interpretations which have been expressed by Sanders. Despite his compliance with their propaganda, it is becoming more and more clear (again) that the democrat’s hierarchy do not believe that Sanders can be trusted to be as big a fraud as his chosen party consistently celebrates and empowers, just like their republican counterparts.

What is lacking in the portrayal of the corporate media as being unfair in its propaganda is that slanting and misrepresentation is, and has been for decades, central to both the republicans and to the democrats. That liberal pundits portray themselves as “progressive” while they whine about how unfairly the now overwhelmingly privatizing corporatism – to which they are attendants – is treating them seems to be simply one more squeaking distraction which is indicative of the straining pressures inherent within their poorly built, toxin-leaking, extremely costly, machinery of social and environmental disintegration.

There seems to be scant doubt about their own integrity among the liberally named “progressive democrats.” It appears that they are, again, most likely going to languish in desperation and ineffectuality (no matter who wins in 2020) while they seem to be incapable of grasping the importance of a clear repudiation of the devious, corporately controlled, militarized capitalist religion of both the democrats and the republicans. Repudiation of their corporatized democrat machinery is not an option they or the antagonistic privately controlled media (who they appear to find offensive) can comprehend. The bulldozing corporatists are indicating their irritability at Sanders again and Sanders and his supporters cannot seem to even consider getting off of one of the privatizing bulldozers.

The corporate media is sending a message and it is a message which has been rather quietly accepted by the majority of democrats and republicans – If you want to be on one of their two approved machines, you will be forced to abandon any notions about integrity (equally unbiased integration of all of society’s component parts). Winning a dominant position in the established system is of higher importance than what any words might appear to mean to democrats and republicans. To again quote the privatizing corporatist Pelosi, “That’s just the way it is” in a capitalist party.

Progress has a price and, misguidedly, the majority of democrats and republicans clearly believe the costs should/will be best determined through the impunity of private agents of Wall Street. The slanted portrayals presented by the corporate media need to be seen as being supported by the majority of democrats and republicans – because they are (and vice versa). If positive, egalitarian, environmentally beneficial progress is what you are supposedly seeking, then your priorities must include repudiation of the fickle, toxic, predatory machinations of capitalist corporatism and both of their privatized political machines. By seeking to work within the democrat-republican machinery, the Sanders campaign is seemingly trying to attach solar panels to a bulldozer which operates by means of a largely privately funded internal combustion engine. The bipartisan enabling owners of the bulldozers are only tolerating Sanders’ attempts while their machinery is sputtering its strained sense of irritation.

Ignoring your own lack of integrity while voicing expressions of concern for “freedom of the press” is simply another way of being a democrat and/or a republican. It is increasingly obvious how both parties have helped make irresponsible, manipulative, toxic, militarizing, corporate schemes more financially advantageous to themselves than anything else. The republicans and the democrats continue to help insure that media versions of reality can be made to be whatever pleases the monetarily powerful and their agents. To complain about this corruption while clinging to one of its privately-run, bulldozing agencies seems embarrassingly misguided.