Social or anti-social media?

“If we want to save life and humanity, we are obliged to end the capitalist system.”—Bolivian President Evo Morales

We hear and read that the economy is rebounding—again—and this during a multi-billion dollar presidential campaign. Gee. Threats of more foreign wars are also unrelated to politics, nor are the signs of mental and physical breakdowns in our military which shouldn’t worry anyone now that the economy is rebounding. Again. Unfortunately, the corporate perspective from which everything is looking so good still rules our consciousness but among many subjects of the system, critical thinking is advancing. Though sometimes very slowly, as when decent people are swept up in emotional tsunamis by a manipulation device called social media.

An online phenomena about Invisible Children recently caused an offline tragedy among Invisible Adult Mentalities. The same social media that help provoke changes among people seeking democracy also offer opportunities for an opposition to maintain an anti-social minority’s control. By using new manipulation devices, they can confuse massive populations in seemingly individual ways that feed into self-obsessed, ego centered consumers of culture. Personal messages for individuals who are urged to share them almost without limits can be even more persuasive than older one-way mass broadcasting media. But even as they help bring people together texting, tweeting or twiddling in ways still not understood by most users of electronic devices, they offer advantages to controllers of this system taking an increasing toll on the planet and all its inhabitants. The time to heed the words of Morales has never been more urgent.

Present campaigns to militarily intervene in Syria and attack Iran are stress signs in a global economy wildly enriching fewer people while reducing greater majorities to indebtedness, warfare and poverty. Popular confusion is not only due to major corporate media but also to weapons of mass disinformation that can be sent directly into our heads by the new social media. And whether in the Middle East or the Middle West, suffering increases for many so that a few can live in luxury.

Palestinians continue to endure an apartheid settler state financed with massive taxpayer aid from the American public, but no tweeted online miracle seems to bring that information into the personal lives of celebrities and millions of other people with no lives of their own but to follow celebrities.

Meanwhile, the supposed rebirth of the auto industry in the USA is entirely due to a taxpayer financed public bailout of a private industry which has hired many new workers, but at half the wages of its old work force. In Tel Aviv, Detroit or Wall Street this is great for minority investors but it’s bad for a global majority. And that is how all alleged foreign threats and supposed recoveries in stock markets should be seen: they profit very few at enormous loss to the great majority and in doing so they increase danger to everyone’s future.

The American election will offer voters their usual choice of lesser evil and thereby guarantee continued evil, but needed social policies to transform reality will not be on the ballot. Calls for public banks, a maximum wage, a tax on wealth, health insurance for all, much more social spending and much less warfare waste, will continue to come from outside what is called mainstream politics but is really two wings of one corporate party representing minority capital. The understandably angry majority divided into a tea party, an occupy movement and mistaken identity groups needs to ultimately find common ground in shaping a democracy that meets the needs of an entire population and not just a cabal of billionaires. That may seem impossible to people schooled in double standards, elitist division and contempt for others but most of them are neither believers in nor can they ever be practitioners of democracy. They support the minority rule of master race/chosen people doctrines with cosmetic language to cover that reality under a cloak of perverted democratic politics and the patriarchal religion of capitalist free markets.

Domination over public thinking is fading, even if not at a fast enough speed to assure a positive outcome. But once people gain control of their lives, their communities and their environment, progress can be achieved far more quickly than the regressive destruction that has taken so long to reveal its cause. What is most important is that democracy seekers not succumb to the terrible negativity of social doctrines that thrive on division, opposition, combat and profit for national minorities only at tremendous loss to the global majority.

This capitalist political economic disease has brought humanity to a point of no return, but one that also offers a road to a better world for all and not just some. That will take real democracy which isn’t something we murder foreigners to achieve but have to create in our own homelands by organizing and uniting with fellow citizens. This calls for more respect than we have been anti-socialized to give one another but once we realize individual freedom is not possible in isolation but only in community it may not be so difficult to achieve.

First, the talk of war must be stopped before it leads to actual war, and the power of minority money over the global system must be countered by the power of majority people. That will not happen as the result of a November election and certainly not by allowing social media to be used for anti-social purposes, but it needs to happen soon.

Copyright © 2012 Frank Scott. All rights reserved.

Frank Scott writes political commentary which appears in print in the Coastal Post and The Independent Monitor and online at the blog Legalienate.