Street writes: "Fear of terrorism has Trumped (pun intended) economic
inequality and insecurity as the electorate's primary concern, potentially
helping the rightmost wing of the nation's corporate and imperial two party
system."
Donald Trump. (photo: Gage Skidmore/Flickr)
Terror Fear Trumps Populist Anger: A Corporate Media Triumph
By Paul Street, teleSUR
28 December 15
Good news for Trump and Hillary, bad news for Bernie.
A recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll notes a recent development in the
opinion and focus of the United States electorate.
"Heightened fear of terrorism is rippling through the electorate, thrusting
national-security issues to the center of the 2016 presidential campaign.,
Some 40% of those polled say national security and terrorism should be the
government's top priority, and more than 60% put it in the top two, up from
just 39% eight months ago. More than one quarter worry they or their family
will be a victim of a terror attack. The most prominent news event of 2015,
in the public's mind, was the terrorist attack in Paris.'For most of 2015,
our country's mood and thus the presidential election was defined by anger
and the unevenness of the economic recovery, and now that has abruptly
changed to fear,' said Fred Yang, a Democratic pollster who conducted the
survey...That undercurrent of anxiety.has the potential to reshape the 2016
policy landscape, shifting attention to national-security issues that
traditionally are Republicans' strong suit and away from the economic issues
that Democrats prefer to spotlight."
A recent New York Times/CBS poll found the same thing, leading CNN to issue
the following "Breaking News" flash two Fridays ago: "Terrorism has eclipsed
the economy as voters' top pick for the biggest issue facing America."
Fear of terrorism has Trumped (pun intended) economic inequality and
insecurity as the electorate's primary concern, potentially helping the
rightmost wing of the nation's corporate and imperial two party system. Good
news for the leading Republican presidential candidates Donald Trump
(advocate of a ban on Muslim immigration) and Ted Cruz, bad news for Bernie
Sanders. It's good news also for Sanders' Democratic primary opponent
Hillary Clinton. As New York Times political correspondent Patrick Healy
notes:
"Mr. Sanders'.progressive political message, so popular with liberals for
much of 2015, now seems lost in a fog of fear. Americans are more anxious
about terrorism than income inequality. They want the government to target
the Islamic State more than Wall Street executives and health insurers. All
of this plays to Mrs. Clinton's strengths - not only as a hawkish former
secretary of state but also as a savvy politician who follows the public
mood. After months of pivoting to the left on domestic issues to compete
with Mr. Sanders for her party's base, she is now talking about security and
safety far more than Mr. Sanders - and solidifying her lead in opinion
polls."
Never mind that everyday Americans are more likely to be killed by an
asteroid than by a terror attack. Or that those Americans are at much
greater risk to mortality from the nation's current savage "New Gilded Age"
levels of economic inequality - a leading factor behind the recent striking
rise in white middle aged and working class mortality in the U.S. (Or that
insofar as Americans are right to be afraid of terror attacks, the threat
traces largely to "their" nation's criminal and petro-imperialist wars in
the Middle East.)
The polls are ironically juxtaposed with a recent Pew Research report on the
economic disparity that ends and ruins far more American lives than Islamic
terrorism. Middle class Americans now comprise less than half, or 49.9%, of
the nation's population, down from 62% in 1970, Pew finds. For Pew, middle
class Americans live in households earning between two-thirds to two times
the nation's median income ($41,900 to $125,600 for a three-person
household). For decades, the middle class thus defined had been the majority
of the country. No longer. Since 1970, Pew solemnly informs us, "the
nation's aggregate household income has substantially shifted from
middle-income to upper-income households, driven by the growing size of the
upper-income tier and more rapid gains in income at the top."
Pew deleted a couple of relevant things from its report. First, as the
French economist Thomas Piketty recently reminded us, this is capitalism
returning to its longstanding inegalitarian norm after an anomalous thirty
or so years of socioeconomic levelling inside the world's rich nations
following World War II. Second, reversing the ongoing decline of the U.S.
middle class and reducing inequality is the central and recurrent theme of a
major party presidential candidate who has been surprising the media by
drawing large crowds and record small campaign contributions while calling
himself a democratic socialist. I am referring, of course, to Sanders
(imagine a study of rising white xenophobia that made no reference to Donald
Trump.)
Speaking of things left out, there's something missing from the recent media
reports on how fears of terrorism have trumped anger over economic
inequality in the U.S. These reports ought to include statements of
self-congratulation. The outcome they describe is a central part of
amehttps://zcomm.org/znetarticle/the-nature-and-mission-of-u-s-corporate-mas
s-media/ricide.docx, after all. Apparently, that media is successfully doing
its ruling class owners' bidding by saturating airwaves, Internet, and
newsprint with sensational, blood-soaked fear-mongering news content on real
and alleged terrorist threats (rendered absurdly mysterious given the
reigning media's refusal to honestly cover U.S. epic and ongoing imperial
crimes in the Muslim world) while marginalizing discussion of the outrageous
inequalities that do far more to kill, maim, and cripple Americans than the
Islamic State or "radicalized" Muslims residing in "the homeland." One among
many symptoms of this biased content is the contrast between the outsized
attention that media gives to every outrageous statement of the white
nationalist Trump and the minimal attention it gives to Sanders' populist
campaign.
It's nothing new. As Sheldon Richman recently explained on Counterpunch:
"We've been through this before. In the 1980s a group of right-wing
'experts,' aided by the media, tried to scare Americans into believing that
Soviet-trained terrorists were among us. If so, they preferred living here
peacefully to creating mayhem..Why do the government, the media
establishment, and an assortment of consultants traffic in fear? It's not a
hard question. Many people profit from fear-mongering about terrorism.
Politicians and bureaucrats gain more power. They also gain access to more
money. .ends up in the terrorism industry, a constellation of firms that
sell the government endless quantities of goods and services."
The fear-mongering adds to the economic inequality from which it diverts
citizen attention and concern by increasing profits for the owners and
managers of the high-tech permanent war-and security-industrial complex.
It's not all that unlike the chilling nightmare portrayed in George Orwell's
dystopian novel 1984, wherein a totalitarian government kept the masses poor
and quiescent with regular hate- and fear-mongering war and terror
propaganda. Orwell's warning was relevant not only to the tyrannical
"socialist" governments of the Soviet Union, Mao's China, and
"Marxist-Lenninist" North Korea. It applied as well to the "democratic"
capitalist West and indeed to world history's greatest military empire the
United States, where history's richest war masters collude with
state-capitalist media giants and dollar-drenched politicians to keep the
citizenry cowering in dread of Muslim terrorism while the top U.S. 1% owns
more than 90% of U.S. wealth (along with probably at least half the nation's
"democratically elected" officials) and as more than 16 million children -
22 percent of all US children - live below the federal government's
notoriously inadequate poverty level. The billionaires and millionaires -
including the top owners of leading terrorist "defense" and "security" firms
like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, and Northrup Grumman - are
cowering and clucking all the way to the bank.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Donald Trump. (photo: Gage Skidmore/Flickr)
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/Terror-Fear-Trumps-Populist-Anger-a
-Corporate-Media-Triumph-20151226-0005.htmlhttp://www.telesurtv.net/english/
opinion/Terror-Fear-Trumps-Populist-Anger-a-Corporate-Media-Triumph-20151226
-0005.html
Terror Fear Trumps Populist Anger: A Corporate Media Triumph
By Paul Street, teleSUR
28 December 15
Good news for Trump and Hillary, bad news for Bernie.
recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll notes a recent development in the
opinion and focus of the United States electorate.
"Heightened fear of terrorism is rippling through the electorate, thrusting
national-security issues to the center of the 2016 presidential campaign.,
Some 40% of those polled say national security and terrorism should be the
government's top priority, and more than 60% put it in the top two, up from
just 39% eight months ago. More than one quarter worry they or their family
will be a victim of a terror attack. The most prominent news event of 2015,
in the public's mind, was the terrorist attack in Paris.'For most of 2015,
our country's mood and thus the presidential election was defined by anger
and the unevenness of the economic recovery, and now that has abruptly
changed to fear,' said Fred Yang, a Democratic pollster who conducted the
survey...That undercurrent of anxiety.has the potential to reshape the 2016
policy landscape, shifting attention to national-security issues that
traditionally are Republicans' strong suit and away from the economic issues
that Democrats prefer to spotlight."
A recent New York Times/CBS poll found the same thing, leading CNN to issue
the following "Breaking News" flash two Fridays ago: "Terrorism has eclipsed
the economy as voters' top pick for the biggest issue facing America."
Fear of terrorism has Trumped (pun intended) economic inequality and
insecurity as the electorate's primary concern, potentially helping the
rightmost wing of the nation's corporate and imperial two party system. Good
news for the leading Republican presidential candidates Donald Trump
(advocate of a ban on Muslim immigration) and Ted Cruz, bad news for Bernie
Sanders. It's good news also for Sanders' Democratic primary opponent
Hillary Clinton. As New York Times political correspondent Patrick Healy
notes:
"Mr. Sanders'.progressive political message, so popular with liberals for
much of 2015, now seems lost in a fog of fear. Americans are more anxious
about terrorism than income inequality. They want the government to target
the Islamic State more than Wall Street executives and health insurers. All
of this plays to Mrs. Clinton's strengths - not only as a hawkish former
secretary of state but also as a savvy politician who follows the public
mood. After months of pivoting to the left on domestic issues to compete
with Mr. Sanders for her party's base, she is now talking about security and
safety far more than Mr. Sanders - and solidifying her lead in opinion
polls."
Never mind that everyday Americans are more likely to be killed by an
asteroid than by a terror attack. Or that those Americans are at much
greater risk to mortality from the nation's current savage "New Gilded Age"
levels of economic inequality - a leading factor behind the recent striking
rise in white middle aged and working class mortality in the U.S. (Or that
insofar as Americans are right to be afraid of terror attacks, the threat
traces largely to "their" nation's criminal and petro-imperialist wars in
the Middle East.)
The polls are ironically juxtaposed with a recent Pew Research report on the
economic disparity that ends and ruins far more American lives than Islamic
terrorism. Middle class Americans now comprise less than half, or 49.9%, of
the nation's population, down from 62% in 1970, Pew finds. For Pew, middle
class Americans live in households earning between two-thirds to two times
the nation's median income ($41,900 to $125,600 for a three-person
household). For decades, the middle class thus defined had been the majority
of the country. No longer. Since 1970, Pew solemnly informs us, "the
nation's aggregate household income has substantially shifted from
middle-income to upper-income households, driven by the growing size of the
upper-income tier and more rapid gains in income at the top."
Pew deleted a couple of relevant things from its report. First, as the
French economist Thomas Piketty recently reminded us, this is capitalism
returning to its longstanding inegalitarian norm after an anomalous thirty
or so years of socioeconomic levelling inside the world's rich nations
following World War II. Second, reversing the ongoing decline of the U.S.
middle class and reducing inequality is the central and recurrent theme of a
major party presidential candidate who has been surprising the media by
drawing large crowds and record small campaign contributions while calling
himself a democratic socialist. I am referring, of course, to Sanders
(imagine a study of rising white xenophobia that made no reference to Donald
Trump.)
Speaking of things left out, there's something missing from the recent media
reports on how fears of terrorism have trumped anger over economic
inequality in the U.S. These reports ought to include statements of
self-congratulation. The outcome they describe is a central part of
amehttps://zcomm.org/znetarticle/the-nature-and-mission-of-u-s-corporate-mas
s-media/ricide.docx, after all. Apparently, that media is successfully doing
its ruling class owners' bidding by saturating airwaves, Internet, and
newsprint with sensational, blood-soaked fear-mongering news content on real
and alleged terrorist threats (rendered absurdly mysterious given the
reigning media's refusal to honestly cover U.S. epic and ongoing imperial
crimes in the Muslim world) while marginalizing discussion of the outrageous
inequalities that do far more to kill, maim, and cripple Americans than the
Islamic State or "radicalized" Muslims residing in "the homeland." One among
many symptoms of this biased content is the contrast between the outsized
attention that media gives to every outrageous statement of the white
nationalist Trump and the minimal attention it gives to Sanders' populist
campaign.
It's nothing new. As Sheldon Richman recently explained on Counterpunch:
"We've been through this before. In the 1980s a group of right-wing
'experts,' aided by the media, tried to scare Americans into believing that
Soviet-trained terrorists were among us. If so, they preferred living here
peacefully to creating mayhem..Why do the government, the media
establishment, and an assortment of consultants traffic in fear? It's not a
hard question. Many people profit from fear-mongering about terrorism.
Politicians and bureaucrats gain more power. They also gain access to more
money. .ends up in the terrorism industry, a constellation of firms that
sell the government endless quantities of goods and services."
The fear-mongering adds to the economic inequality from which it diverts
citizen attention and concern by increasing profits for the owners and
managers of the high-tech permanent war-and security-industrial complex.
It's not all that unlike the chilling nightmare portrayed in George Orwell's
dystopian novel 1984, wherein a totalitarian government kept the masses poor
and quiescent with regular hate- and fear-mongering war and terror
propaganda. Orwell's warning was relevant not only to the tyrannical
"socialist" governments of the Soviet Union, Mao's China, and
"Marxist-Lenninist" North Korea. It applied as well to the "democratic"
capitalist West and indeed to world history's greatest military empire the
United States, where history's richest war masters collude with
state-capitalist media giants and dollar-drenched politicians to keep the
citizenry cowering in dread of Muslim terrorism while the top U.S. 1% owns
more than 90% of U.S. wealth (along with probably at least half the nation's
"democratically elected" officials) and as more than 16 million children -
22 percent of all US children - live below the federal government's
notoriously inadequate poverty level. The billionaires and millionaires -
including the top owners of leading terrorist "defense" and "security" firms
like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, and Northrup Grumman - are
cowering and clucking all the way to the bank.
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
