Believe it or not, people admire him, and even look to him as some kind of
hero.
Andy
----- Original Message -----
From: "Carl Jarvis" <carjar82@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, September 29, 2020 3:09 PM
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Tax Revelations and Corporate Media Won't
Defeat Trump
Take a good look at Donald Trump. He is exactly the man we've been
building toward. The "successful" corporate man. The false smirk,
the swagger, the "anything goes" sort of a fellow, taking what he
wants and grabbing the pretty girl
s butts and treating them like private possessions. This man who has
paid almost nothing in taxes, but believes the nation owes him its
support. The almost Mafia behavior, cheating in order to win, and
winning because he plays by his own rules and screw your rules. This
is the man we chose to lead our nation. A man who cheats his hired
help out of their due, while calling them a bunch of losers. A man
who sells his services to anyone with enough money to buy him. And we
behave as if this man is our president? At best he's a con artist.
At worst he is a traitor.
But what is really sad is that people defend him and plan to vote for
him, even as he puts it to them.
If Trump loses it will be tough sledding for Joe Biden, but if Trump
wins it will mean the final nail in democracy's coffin.
Carl Jarvis
On 9/29/20, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Tax Revelations and Corporate Media Won't Defeat Trump
By Norman Solomon, Reader Supported News
29 September 20
The big banner headline across the top of the New York Times home page as
Tuesday got underway - "TRUMP'S TAXES SHOW CHRONIC LOSSES AND YEARS OF TAX
AVOIDANCE" - might give the impression that Donald Trump is finally on the
verge of political downfall. Don't believe it for a moment.
The same kind of mistaken belief has led many to put undeserved trust in a
corporate-media system. But The New York Times isn't going to save us.
Neither is The Washington Post, MSNBC, CNN or any of the other mass-media
outlets, "liberal" or otherwise.
To a large extent, the corporate media - especially the TV networks that
gave Trump billions of dollars' worth of free airtime while raking in
enormous ad revenues - made him president. The
advertising-and-ratings-bedazzled head of the CBS network, Leslie Moonves,
uttered an infamously emblematic comment eight months before the 2016
election, in the midst of a campaign that Trump dominated with TV coverage:
"It may not be good for America, but it's damn good for CBS."
Less well-known are other statements that Moonves also made while speaking
to a Morgan Stanley conference in February 2016. "Man, who would have
expected the ride we're all having right now?" And: "The money's rolling in
and this is fun." And: "I've never seen anything like this, and this is
going to be a very good year for us. Sorry. It's a terrible thing to say.
But, bring it on, Donald. Keep going." And: "Donald's place in this
election
is a good thing."
At the same time, CNN president Jeff Zucker - who presided over the
network's "all-Trump-all-the-time" policy during the 2016 primaries - was
privately offering guidance to candidate Trump. Zucker had helped build the
Trump myth years earlier when he was at NBC presiding over Trump's
"Apprentice" show, which turned out to be financially and politically
crucial for his path to the White House.
Under the ongoing reign of the casino economy, the corporate house is set
up
to always win.
Now, after doing so much to help create a political Frankenstein, most of
the big media organizations are largely disapproving. While the right-wing
zealots at places like Fox News and aligned talk-radio and online entities
are determined to re-elect Trump, the majority of mainstream media outlets
are down on him. Yet the tenor of their coverage, including news of the
latest polls, should not lull anyone into a false sense of security about
Trump's impending demise - a demise they've predicted before.
Trump won in 2016 while the bubble inhabited by elite media was rarified
and
cut off from the everyday experiences, frustrations and anger of everyday
people. As a consummate demagogue, he knew how to stoke and pander to
resentments against elites - resentments that mainstream media seemed
clueless about.
The corporate media are part of a system that thrives on rampant income
inequality, giving more and more power to the rich while doing more and
more
harm to people the less money they have. Media elites are apt to do fine
whether Trump wins or loses the election.
Four years ago, Trump played off the elitism of the establishment to ply
his
toxic political product laced with racism, xenophobia and misogyny. He has
governed the same way he ran in 2016, and he hopes to govern for the next
four years the way he's running in 2020 - using the broadly and vaguely
defined establishment as a foil for his poisonous, pseudo-populist
messaging.
Amid the bombshell coverage of Trump's tax records, it might be tempting to
believe the tide has turned and will drown his election hopes. But that's
wishful thinking.
It would take more than two hands to count the times during the last
several
years when Trump's preposterous and vile statements - or the emergence of
incontrovertibly damning facts - provided ample reasons for his political
fortunes to turn into toast. Instead, he has continued to conduct a
national
master class in demagogy.
Trump would like nothing more than to play his victim card yet again while
media give the impression that he's headed for defeat - a combination that
worked like a charm for him in 2016. It could easily happen again. With
voting now underway, healthy skepticism toward media spin is badly needed.
Four years ago, corporate media overwhelmingly insisted that the likelihood
of a Trump presidency was remote. On Election Day, The New York Times
categorically pegged the chances of a Trump win at less than 10 percent.
Now, those who want to prevent another Trump victory should go all-out to
show they won't be fooled again.
