Alternative Media Is Rising Because It Actually Seeks To Inform

Comedy Central has a new show called The Opposition with Jordan Klepper, whose purpose is essentially to marginalize alternative media. In it Klepper plays an Alex Jones-like character who quotes Trump while lambasting “fake news” (wink wink, he’s joking!) outlets like New York Times and the Washington Post. Isn’t it funny how Alex Jones says crazy things, like everyone else that doesn’t like the “facts” the media reports? Isn’t it funny how Trump calls the media “fake news?” See, it’s is all very amusing.

Of course Jones, Trump and the rest of their kind should be pilloried. They’ve taken the misery that people are feeling amid decades of elite-manufactured decline and turned it toward creating a broken psyche of hatred and fear. I’d say this pyche has emerged because of establishment condescension like that of The Opposition, but comedians aren’t what’s driven the underclass to this state. It’s been the hundred people that are now dying each day from the opioids they’ve turned to to escape their new reality of poverty. It’s been the tens of thousands of Americans that have died in the endless counterinsurgency wars of the last few decades, with the scarred surviving veterans mainly being left to live in poverty or commit suicide. These things, despite the smug denial of the types of elites behind Comedy Central, have been the experience of quite a lot of Trump supporters.

The role the corporate pundits and comedians have in this is one of almost subliminally feeding the resentment of the masses. Added to how these media figures promote power-serving narratives, I notice there’s a corporatized and even forced aura to how their material is presented. The buzzwords and bland content that often appear in corporate state-run media gives it a sense of being constrained, a platform where ideas and creativity are tightly guided by unseen forces above. So when Klepper and the other Celebrity Clowns try to attack the fascists, they give off an air of phoniness and elitism and that lets the fascists continue to rise.

Hope comes in the inverse effect that this all has had, which is the enormous humanity and creativity from those on the better side of the effort to end the establishment. These are the ones who’ve been working in local revolutionary groups, participating in the rise of the Bernie Sanders movement, and building the infrastructure for a new major media through all of this. They’ve become more successful in recent years, with viewership of corporate outlets going steadily downwhile alternative media viewership has in some cases started to surpass those outlets. But they’re motivated by something unaffected by how well the revolt actually goes, which is the urge to keep a narrative of compassion and virtue alive.

These types present their media completely the opposite of how the corporate state does, as they put real efforts into informing and amusing. Their content isn’t made for getting ratings while helping a despotic agenda. It’s instead independent and, because of that, often brilliant journalism. This journalism can be found on sites like Counterpunch, Consortiumnews, Truthout, Truthdig, RT, and in the work of Caitlin Johnstone, Glenn Greenwald, and so many similar heroes. I urge people to subscribe to these sources and tell others about them, because they’re needed right now more than ever.

The defenders of “facts” are trying to lie us into a series of wars that could end the planet as we know it. North Korea, which has offered a peace negotiation to Washington’s consistent rejection, is being threatened with nuclear annihilation by President Trump, neocons like John McCain, and the MSNBC panelists who’ve praised these threats. Russia, which has been proven not to have hacked the DNC and was recently proven not to have hacked into U.S. voting systems, has been surrounded by American nuclear bases and NATO troops. And while the regime change mission for Syria is in retreat, the government has this year started spreading lies about Iran and Venezuela while greatly increasing the military budget. 

We’re being conditioned for this war in everyday society, as Trump has lifted the ban on military equipment for local police and the security state has been expanded amid the recent climate change hurricanes. And it’s only until the next major terrorist attack that the war will be able to start, as the government no doubt tries to blame a regime change country for that attack. 

This war can be stopped, but only if we go into a frenzy of exposing the mentioned corporate state deceptions. Then the American people won’t be supportive enough of the war for it to be started, and a new, better world will be able to emerge in the old belief systems’ absence.