Elephants having a conversation – Photo flickr wwarby
The usual statement of foolish blindness to an obvious problem is, “No one is noticing the elephant in the room.” The watchdogs of the world are failing us because they are refusing to respond to or even acknowledge the numerous elephants wandering around the world today and even conspiring with each other in a synergistic way . The biggest but rarely discussed publicly problems are the ongoing population explosion, the 30,000 unexploded H-bombs and the probable fact that we will run out of one time usage minerals within the lifetimes of young people.
We assume that the free press is watching over our various public events and our public providers and expose excesses wherever they are found. One of the elephants in our room is that the watchdogs are in cahoots with with the bulldogs they are supposedly restraining. Tonight while watching the conclusion of Bill Moyers‘ PBS, former press secretary for President Johnson, interview with John S. Reed, the former chairman of Citibank and former chairman of the New York Stock Exchange and currently of MIT don, it became evident the watchdogs are well fed and in bed with the bulldogs and both are sleeping soundly. The disproportion of Wall Street lobbyists on Capitol Hill was mentioned. These two appeared to agree that there were approximately 25 times as many Wall Street lobbyists as there were their opposition – whoever that might be. Neither Bill or John contested this figure nor expressed even more than mild interest in that tremendous imbalance of political and monetary force being placed on our Congressmen.
Both of these men have been powerful insiders for half a century and are well known “critics” of the media and of the excesses of Wall Street. If these incredibly well connected and powerful men can not exert enough influence on our political world to bring about needed changes, then it would seem that the Occupy Movement will have no power or influence whatsoever. Occupy isn’t connected with the real power brokers, it has no money, and what little contact it has with the media has a reverse effect. The only time the Occupy Movement gets even minimal media coverage is when someone does something illegal and violent. The majority of people watching the media will see Occupy only in a negative way as destructive malcontents. The more powerful the Occupy Movement becomes, the more threatened the media and their controllers will feel and the more they and their media will portray Occupy as unwashed rabble-rousers. The Occupy message is very diffuse to begin with and there is practically no media coverage of what these people want, so the only coverage is the ugly part. Until Occupy has an articulate spokesperson with clear demands they can be totally ignored. It is in fact counterproductive to their own ends because it distracts these people from exerting their energy influencing the coming elections.
I began to write this article to illustrate the numerous shortcomings of the media and the lack of effective controls it pretends to be exerting and enforcing on the public institutions and the government. But, as this idea developed it becomes obvious that the supposed watchdogs are themselves ultimate insiders. This is another example of the watchdogs watching their own best buddies, just like my previous article The Occupy Movement verses the real American elite, on how the Supreme Court, which is supposedly set up to offer checks and balances to the Congress and Executive, is in fact selected from the very same very tiny pool of personal friends who occupy those positions of power. Now it becomes obvious that the same insider watchdog relationship goes on with the Wall Street insiders and the mass media insiders. That is a very bad thing for America because it means the controls on these powerful people are very weak and that leads to ongoing corruption and excesses.
The best way to affect America is political action from within the structure.
