Tik Tok Tic Tok goes the cyber clock
To be or not to be in the land of the free
Belong?
Serve the Commies or the Oilgarchs?
Don’t Belong?
Serve Neither and find Somewhere Else(s)?
Your choice.
Hers’s how I see it:
Bernays was right:
The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.
-Edward Bernays
Fox News contributed greatly to bringing us Trump. Now Tik Tok may be owned by Musk.
Look at Facebook, Amazon, X. as corrals that hold the attention and shape that attention of millions and millions of members who are manipulated to buy this or that, vote for him or her……;tis but a pageant to keep us in false gaze’ as the Bard put it.
Plato held long ago, that the only reason to take the trouble to free the mass of man(sick)kind from believing that the shadows of puppets are real – from being twice or thrice removed from reality – was in order not be ruled by the delusional.
Where to go for the truth about what is going on? Must it be a box the size of X or Tik Tok of could it be a million sources of reason, committed to truth ( web-sites, blogs….), connected and all paying attention and giving a shit.
But how get folks to tune in?
Focus on the youth – schools (especially PUBLIC), music, books, cyber spots that entertain and enlighten. Here are some:
👇 DO SOMETHING 👇
Fans of political cartoons can rejoice at the existence of three websites, curated by cartoonists themselves, that offer cornucopias of cartoons from established and emerging artists. Feast on what the corporate powers are taking from our newsfeeds!
The Nib, a comic site edited by Matt Bors, delivers a selection of cartoons to your email inbox every morning. The daily ‘toons are free but if you sign up as a member (for as little as $4/month), you’ll be helping those cartoonists and editors actually make a living–plus you’ll get more cool stuff. TheNib.com
Our friend, former Lowdown ‘toonmeister Matt Wuerker, edits Politico’s weekly “Cartoon Carousel.” Politico.com/tag/Cartoon-Carousel
Check out the offerings of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists. EditorialCartoonists.com.
‘STOP THEM DAMN PICTURES!’
–Boss William M. Tweed of New York City bellowing to his subordinates in 1871
Boss Tweed was the wholly corrupt tyrant who ran the notorious Tammany Hall political machine that ruled the city’s government, courts, treasury, ballot boxes, and business development. The “pictures” he desperately wanted stopped were editorial cartoons by Thomas Nast, Harper’s Weekly’s wickedly creative caricaturist, generally recognized as the progenitor of US political cartooning. Tweed said he didn’t “care a straw” for anything that reporters and editors wrote about him and his thieving machine, since “My constituents can’t read, but damn it, they can see the pictures!”
When Tweed couldn’t force Nast to stop drawing, he tried to buy him off. An emissary representing a group of wealthy Tweed backers offered $500,000 (the equivalent of $10 million today) for Nast to go off to Europe to study art.
Undeterred, Nast’s skewering of Boss and his Tammany cronies continued full tilt, finally causing many of the machine’s electoral faithful to gag at the greed and join in driving the whole bunch from office. (Some even fled the country–though probably not to study art.) Tweed himself was later convicted on 204 of 220 fraud and money laundering charges and sent to the Ludlow Street Jail, where he died in disgrace … done in by a cartoonist’s pen and ink.