“How many times have you wondered why 44% of the country still supports the president as he directs soldiers to patrol selected cities, orders heavily armed masked men to snatch people off the street, causes prices to rise, gives tax cuts to billionaires, and ends health insurance for millions? That is a complicated question with no short answer, but one of the main reasons is that millions of Americans are hearing lies or don’t know what the president is actually doing … because much of the media has been silenced by or is fearful of Trump.
He knows where his loyal followers get their “news,” and he is making sure those organizations toe the MAGA line.
Trump’s manipulation can be felt from legacy media (see: CBS News and The Washington Post) to local television ownership consolidation to the burgeoning MAGA-mediasphere of podcasts and social media influencers. But it all starts where the press and the president are in each other’s presence on many if not most days.”
Dan Rather, Steady, August 22, 2025
Our “local” Denver 9 News is on the chopping block. Kyle Clark, the host of the best regional newscast I’ve ever encountered, is making clear to his viewers, objectively, that selling out to Fox isn’t a great idea. Television is inherently dangerous, as Jerry Mander points out in his first book, especially from a political point of view, because“it is the one speaking to the many.” His work was terribly historically informed and prescient, and it’s only gotten more so since this 1991 interview in The Sun Magazine.
“The fantasies of utopian existence promoted by proponents of the technological, industrial mode of life for the last one hundred years are now demonstrably false. That’s not what we got. What we got was alienation, disorientation, destruction of the planet, destruction of natural systems, destruction of diversity, homogenization of cultures and regions, crime, homelessness, disease, environmental breakdown, and tremendous inequality. We have a mess on our hands. This system has not lived up to its advertising; in developing a strategy for telling people what to do next, we first have to make that point. Life really is better when you get off the technological/industrial wheel and conceive of some other way. It makes people happier. It may not make them more money, but getting more money hasn’t worked out. Filling life with commodities doesn’t turn out to be satisfying, and most people know that.”
Jerry Mander, in conversation with Catherine Ingram
It’s gone from bad to worse and we’ve been prey the whole time, utterly caught in the sticky web of technology and now unable to extricate ourselves. I’m as guilty as anyone, but I’m grateful that mindfulness practice is an antidote that helps me keep some attentional autonomy. As Mander says, television “is most efficient at centralized, top-down usage which imposes imagery and programs people accordingly. The imagery remains in them and then they imitate the imagery. It is a powerful brainwashing and homogenizing machine.”… (and now by extension most of what the internet offers)
My voice feels like a cry in the dark. I struggle to nourish hopeful energy because the forecast trajectory is dismal, as laid out in this Bioneers podcast with Thom Hartmann, who “warns of the existential threat of a virulent new oligarchy: the third frontal assault by the ultra-wealthy in American history to use their concentrated economic power to seize maximum political power – and overthrow democracy once and for all.”
Robert Reich names the current president as the culmination of these decades of staggering wealth inequality, explaining that Democrats failed during that time to take actions that could have reined in the power grab. His interpretation adds another nefarious facet to Hartmann’s theory, twisting the script so that the worst of the oligarchs now presents himself as the people’s savior. Reich suggests that it’s not too late, and that if Democrats (and Independents, I might add) would actually unify and undertake specific actions they could regain the reins of the country.
We reap what we sow. Where we place our attention matters. For forty years Big Money have been sowing seeds that ultimately bloomed into Project 2025 and curried this regime to implement it. While most of the rest of us let our attention wander down the insidiously addictive techno-entertainment wormhole, we failed to notice the rug being slowly pulled out from under our relatively stable democracy. The deceit was intentional and highly effective.
My friend John was a passionate student of history. He knew whereof he spoke when he said, “We lived in the best times” — before the third wave of Oligarchy began to crest. Turns out history is relevant after all. I eschewed its study through all my school years but the more I learn of it now the more this current moment makes sense. When people ask me “How did we get here?” I can now say, “It’s complicated…” instead of throw up my hands in impossible confusion. As my understanding of the history of this country broadens beyond the founding fathers and fourth-grade lessons on Virginia’s conquerors, my despair softens into compassion, and I renew my commitment to mindfulness practice and the skills that continue to strengthen my resilience in this challenging political and social landscape. I’m happy to share.
It’s not all froglets all the time, there are still a few tadpoles left swimming around. But… it’s mostly froglets!
