Limiting Free Speech and the Internet: When the Oligarchy Loses Control
Posted in H.L. News, Main Blog (All Posts) on December 11th, 2006 7:25 pm by HL
Limiting Free Speech and the Internet: When the Oligarchy Loses Control
Progressive Daily Beacon
Excerpt:
The realization that they are losing control and are no longer able to dominate the debate has led Newt Gingrich, Donald Rumsfeld, and even George W. Bush to begin discussing the need to limit free speech — usually linking it to nefarious and nonexistent “threats” — and limiting access to the internet. Corporations are threatened by this new medium because it allows common people to counter moneyed influence and too, levels the information playing field. It is no longer a game of who has more money to spend on public relations, spin, and outright lies; with the internet it is simply a matter of who has the information. These powerful interests are beginning to realize that the internet amplifies the voices — specifically Progressive voices — that they had always been able to suppress through corporate media control.
The thing that scares today’s corporations and their pocketed politicians is the fact that Progressive ideas, now that they have finally been made available to the general population, are being embraced by a majority of the people. The dissemination of Progressive ideas via the internet has begun to completely undo forty years of the Oligarchic-wing of the GOP and their cynical employment of religion in what they branded a “culture war.”
The so-called culture war has been a carefully constructed scheme in which the Oligarchy-controlled Republican Party employed religious-based political wedge issues in a manner that actually convinced working people, especially the working poor, to vote Republican. What the Oligarchs were doing, having found a way to con working people into voting Republican, was swindling the average citizen into supporting corporate policies that almost always undermined the peoples’ own best interest. By the end of the Republicans’ “culture war,” they had refined their use of pseudo-religious wedge issues to the point that they could sell wars based on trumped up intelligence. Incredibly, through the use of these pseudo-religious wedge issues, Republicans had even managed to convince their supporters to sacrifice their kids to the Gods of War; all for nothing more than securing profits for big oil and war-based business interests like Halliburton, KBR, and others.
The people, of course, were led to believe that they were sacrificing their children in the name of something akin to a new holy war.
In a very real sense the “culture war” was diabolically genius. The Republican Party was never going to alter their philosophy and do something that benefited the working class or the working poor. The Republicans were always and will forever be prostitutes for their corporate masters. Manipulating the peoples’ most cherished religious beliefs allowed Oligarchy-supporting Republicans to override everything, including a person’s hunger and the welfare of their children.
H.L.s Take:
This is a great article, make sure you click through and read the whole thing.