Biden 'restores faith' in the new socialism, while corpocracy replaces democracy, & filters abound

By Gary Abernathy

Biden “restores faith” in our new socialism…

A recent Associated Press story focused on President Joe Biden’s efforts to “restore faith in government.” The analysis presented the sort of glowing, uncritical profile that most of the legacy media outlets are falling over themselves to produce at record pace.

Sample: “Biden inherited a series of crises from his polarizing predecessor, Donald Trump, including a nation’s renewed reckoning on race and equality and a pandemic that has killed more than 550,000 Americans and shaken the economy. Biden has told advisers that the moment is more than a test for the nation but for democracy itself.”

President Biden

The story falls into the fawning pattern of so many others these days, painting a portrait of a nation in crisis akin to the Great Depression, or maybe the Civil War, with Biden “the right man at the right time.” In fact, we’re nowhere in the territory of the great catastrophes of history. Aside from a new virus that unexpectedly popped up (as they do every few years) and naturally disrupted things (more than it should have been allowed to by many of our politicians), things are pretty good. The economy, which was artificially knocked back by the overreaction to covid, is rebounding on its own. Issues of race are real and often troubling, but they will always represent challenges we must take seriously and address to the best of our abilities. They are also directly correlated to how politicized people choose to make them at any given time. Under Donald Trump, that politicization was weaponized to maximum electoral benefit. Biden gets to play the role of savior on that, too.  

While the AP and other media giants work on chiseling Biden’s image in granite, the bigger question posed is: Can Biden restore faith in government?

First, we should all have little faith in government, because ideally we should have as little government as possible. We have faith in God, faith in family, faith in people we trust, faith in churches and other community service organizations, but we should never have any faith in government. Government should never be dominant enough for anyone to believe in it. Part of our national dilemma is that there are too many people trained to look toward Washington D.C. to solve our problems, and even comfort us, which it cannot do beyond temporary and superficial means.

But as we finalize this historic transition from capitalism to socialism which took root in earnest as part of the politicized response to covid-19, a natural result is a population encouraged to place its faith in government, since it is government that is positioned to take care of everyone’s needs, from money sent to us periodically out of the blue to food given to us “for free” to transportation to health care – and just about everything in between.

Can Biden restore faith in government? Of course he can, as long as he is permitted to expand it to encompass every aspect of our lives, which he is.

…while democracy morphs into corpocracy…

The decision by Major League Baseball to move its All Star game from Atlanta in response to Georgia’s revised election laws was just about the most unsurprising news of last week. If capitalism is being traded for socialism, which it is, our democracy is becoming a corpocracy, with corporate America – caving to pressure from progressives – exerting its power like never before to intimidate lawmakers into changing legislation – not just in regard to taxation or other economic items that might impact their business, but on social issues as well.

…and private companies filter even the president

Clarence Thomas, often the quietest justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, is worth listening to when he does make a comment.

As USA Today reports, the high court has just dismissed a case that claimed Donald Trump should not have been allowed to block users from his Twitter account because it violated their First Amendment rights. The case has been dismissed as moot since Trump is no longer president.

But Thomas weighed in with this written opinion: "Applying old doctrines to new digital platforms is rarely straightforward. Respondents have a point, for example, that some aspects of Mr. Trump’s account resemble a constitutionally protected public forum. But it seems rather odd to say that something is a government forum when a private company has unrestricted authority to do away with it."

Brilliant. And, a reminder of how frighteningly powerful certain social media giants have become, when they can control whether our elected officials can reach us – or not --  through the most effective communication tools available.

Sign up and share this newsletter

Please sign up to receive this newsletter directly into your inbox Monday through Friday (except holidays or other occasional interruptions) or, if you are already a subscriber and reading this by email, share with a friend using the convenient button below. Thank you!