Social or Anti-Social Media?

Social or Anti-Social Media?

By Frank Scott
Dissident Voice.org
March 20th, 2012

"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 it’s 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 tax payer 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 tax payer 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.


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

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