24

Midterms, Media & the Ever-Rolling Carnival of Distraction

Kit Knightly

WARNING: The caption is also just a distraction.

The US mid-terms happened this week – you probably noticed. There were maps everywhere, people talking about a blue-wave or a red tsunami or…something. None of it really made much sense.

And in the end, it doesn’t really matter.

For all the impact it will have on the way the world is run, these elections are as meaningful as voting for who wins Celebrity Big Brother or filling out a customer service feedback form at an off-brand coffee chain.

That’s not nihilism, or cynicism, or defeatism. It’s just the only reasoned response to decades of observational data. The American system can’t be changed from within, because nobody that wants change will ever be allowed inside. It is broken. Cancerous. Corrupt to the point of total atrophy.

Bernie Sanders is the best they have, and even he is an American Imperialist at heart, he just thinks poor people shouldn’t be freezing to death in the streets or drinking toxic water. Such is the face of American radicalism.

Sanders is hardly an extremist, but even then…in the end…the people in charge cheated to keep him away from the White House.

That is documented and admitted and filed away. We all know it happened. we’re just not supposed to talk about it.

There’s plenty of reason to believe both the 2000 and 2004 the Presidential elections were rigged.

So why do we bother talking about American elections anymore? There is no excuse for taking part in this ritual. There is no reason to pretend that it’s honest, or meaningful, or important.

It doesn’t matter whether blue wins or red wins, they’re both preprogrammed NPCs in the same rigged game. It doesn’t matter whether you cheer for Punch or Judy, the puppeteer controls both and he gets paid no matter who wins. It doesn’t matter that there’s more women in congress than ever before, or that a Somali muslim is in the house of representatives now.

None of that matters at all. From a distance any mixture of red and blue will always look purple. From a distance black and white looks like grey.

In the end, it doesn’t really matter.

…and yet it’s all the newspapers and television are talking about.

The Guardian, The Huffington Post, CNN, Fox News…all of them, all over the Angloshphere and beyond…talking about congressional midterms as if they are a battle for survival. Good vs Evil. Why?

Ken Livingstone famously said that if “voting changed anything, they’d abolish it.”

Well, you can apply this model to the news as well – if it really meant something, it wouldn’t be on the news.

The media talk about “Russiagate” as if it means something, they call Trump “Putin’s puppet” and berate him for kowtowing to Moscow…all while the US is pulling out of arms treaties, bombing Syria, conducting huge military drills right on the Russian border, expelling Russian diplomats and killing Russian servicemen.

For the first time in 30 years, there’s a very real danger of a nuclear war. The media won’t discuss it. These elections won’t change it.

The media talk about the “rise of antisemitism” and the dangers of the “alt-right”….while every mainstream outlet and most politicians are happy to sell weapons to Ukraine, where a coup government is using literal fascist militias in a war against people whose only crime is objecting to the removal of their elected president.

For maybe the first time in 70 years, there are men with swastikas on their arms killing civilians in mainland Europe. And they are doing so with tacit approval of Western governments. The media won’t discuss it. These elections won’t change it.

The media talk about Jamal Khashoggi and rebuke Saudi Arabia for their alleged crimes….while real crimes go unreported. Most of NATO still happily sends weapons and trains pilots and enables the slaughter of 10,000s of Yemeni civilians.

The war in Yemen is an extension of US policy all over the Middle East. Fought with our support, and arguably on our behalf, by proxies we train and arm. The media won’t discuss it. These elections won’t change it.

The media talk about a CNN reporter being removed from the approved White House list as an attack on free speech and the free press…while a journalist is unlawfully detained in London for EIGHT YEARS without charge or trial.

Free speech is under real threat, both in the press and especially on the internet. People are deplatformed and victimised and unpersoned. The media won’t discuss it. These elections won’t change it.

The news is nothing but a carousel of convenient fictions, political manipulations, camouflaged agenda, made up statistics and vacuous distractions.

The media will chatter on about which corporate frontman has won which district, what colour Florida is turning, the migrant caravan or China interfering in the vote. We should disregard it.

There is real fascism and real suffering and real corruption and a real risk of nuclear war. These are what we should be discussing, not what colour tie the used-car salesman on TV is wearing.

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