The corporate news media is our pied piper marching us towards authoritarianism.

Fascism may not always lead to Nazism. But it always comes close enough to it that you can feel the hot breath of genocide nearby.

It is certain Israel has become a fascist state committing genocide and as we are abetting it, we too have become fascistic. Democracy means nothing when the majority of citizens want an end to supplying arms to Israel and governments continue doing it.

I don't see how the West will ever be able to say again with a straight face that our society stands for human rights, democracy, or the rules of law at home or abroad.

Perhaps it is the end stages of the empire we live under. Nothing feels balanced or moving in the right direction since the Covid pandemic began.

There is a feeling I can't shake that the rich have looted everything on the good ship neoliberalism and now have stolen the lifeboats-leaving us on a floundering vessel.

It's a perfidious time to be alive because those in charge have done their best to extinguish hope that the future will be better than this present hellscape called 2024.

It is cowardice to shut our eyes to how Western societies teeter on the edge of total democratic collapse because governments worship wealth. Societies are under the thumb of billionaires, hedge funds, and multinational corporations who dictate our social policy. .

This present age will eliminate much of humanity through war, a perpetual cost of living crisis and the destruction of the environment. This isn't hyperbole but fact.

Dictatorship in some form is the only mechanism neoliberalism has left to manage wealth inequality because comprehensive taxation of its richest citizens is anathema to its economic ideology Besides the political fallout from a Ukraine War that can't be won without a nuclear confrontation with Russia, a genocide in Gaza, a widening Mideast regional war is only be sustainable by the draconian methods of authoritarianism. 

I see no other direction that the west will turn towards.

For forty years, neoliberal societies have been cutting tax rates for the 1% and paying for it through privatising state assets and shrinking the Welfare State.

Citizens in their millions oppressed by poverty who endure horrible working conditions, are reliant on foodbanks and charity to scratch out a meagre existence. It is a Soviet Gulag by a different name that people like them, me and you live in; if we are not among the better waged. .

Slums that blighted 20th-century urban landscapes have begun to return to our cities because homelessness is out of control. Ordinary wage earners can't make ends meet. So, tent encampments are erected, and when their presence offends homeowners, they are cleared with the same fury as if it was an infestation of vermin rather than folk who hit a string of bad luck in a rigged casino.

Governments groom their populations to hate the marginalised through the corporate news media and online influencers who barrage their audiences with bigotry, tropes and bluster.

It detaches people from common sense who are exhausted by the stress of trying to stay alive during a brutal cost-of-living crisis that leaves them as breathless as a gladiator fighting his tenth lion.

Without hope or help; they surrender to those who use rhetoric that cultivates intolerance towards migrants, the trans community, the poor, the homeless, Muslims, racialised communities and the disabled.

When you add a hyper-militarised nationalism that every NATO member country indulges in, along with Israel, Russia, and China, a world war is only a matter of time.

Our era perfected dehumanising its enemies because social media is a 24/7 preoccupation.

Sadly, it's not the rich we loathe because society teaches us to honour wealth as if it were wisdom.

Dehumanising the poor and migrant community is a technique politicians employ to divert from the corruption their policies enable the 1% to perpetuate.

Journalism can't save us from our politics because our news-gathering services are owned by the wealthy, who present a reality to its followers that attempts to maintain the status quo.

Without the corporate news media, the West would never have crossed its Rubicon into normalising genocide by Israel against Palestinians. This whole fucking horror, upon horror, taints anyone who doesn't denounce it. It's a moral stain that damns what's left of our democracy to an ignoble end; the way Macbeth's hands- stained with blood from committing murder doomed him.

The infuriating part about our descent towards an authoritarian state, the corporate news media is our pied piper, and journalists should know better than to be part of this pathetic denouement of our age.

Your support in keeping my dad’s legacy going and me alive is greatly appreciated. I depend on your subscriptions to keep the lights on and me housed. So if you can please subscribe and if you can’t it is all good because we are fellow travellers in penury. But always remember to share these posts far and wide. So many of us lose so much time on the important work that must be done because of the mad scramble to pay the rent and feed oneself during an economic crisis not seen since the 1930.

Your subscriptions are so important to my personal survival because like so many others who struggle to keep afloat, my survival is a precarious daily undertaking. The fight to keep going was made worse- thanks to getting cancer along with lung disease and other co- morbidities which makes life more difficult to combat in these times. October rent is approaching and I need 6 yearly subscribers to make it. Take care, John