The long national nightmare of the US may be over - or it may not be.
The leaders of the Democrats have started talking like they are going
to be responsible about the power they have been given by the people.
One of the truly amazing things about a democracy in action is the
ability of the losers to take their licks and accept their losses,
and while some republicans are not doing this very well, most are
being reasonable. Some of the far right in the media are now stating
that they are glad the Right wing lost because they no longer have to
lie to hold up the party line, and many of the most recent lies are
being instantly revealed as such by instant policy reversals. All
fine and good as far as the American people are concerned. But what
about the media?

The US media loves controversy - if it bleeds it leads goes the
saying. But with the Democrats starting to say they will try to be
centrist, the media is starting to push them very hard with claims
that they will not be. And if they get pushed too hard, they may be
unable to withstand their own party members who are radical in their
own way and go too far left just as the Republicans went too far right.

It is the media that makes and breaks these things and for the US
media it is now the time to act responsibly and reward and encourage
centrist behavior in the new ruling party. When Democrats with a
reputation for being left wing talk as centrists, the media should
support that or risk another destructive round of political shoving
and pushing. When they put right wing extremists on the air to claim
the same lies they claimed before the election and the left wing
extremists to claim the rhetoric on the other side, the media creates
the new information war that feeds their own pockets.

Sure - the companies have been stealing the country blind by bribing
the politicians legally and illegally. Sure - the democrats and
republicans have been taking money for favors for years. But when we
have a real chance for a nation at peace with itself and the world -
a short period of possible respite from eternal internal strife - the
media can either amplify it back into conflict - or act to reduce the
inflammation and turn from high intensity destructive information
conflict into low intensity and healthy competition.

Unless the media can learn to stop padding their own pockets at the
cost of national destruction, the short respite we might have had and
parlayed into years of peace and prosperity will be turned into yet
the next war of words that turn into wars costing the lives and
liberty not only of the people in the US directly involved in our
wars, but also the lives of the people dying in Darfur, the people of
North Korea under slavery and oppression, the people of the Middle
East whose lives have been sunk into despair year after year for more
than 50 years now, and the list goes on. Unless and until the US
media comes to a responsible position, and unless they do it quickly,
the nightmare will return sooner than we all think and the fall of
the North American Empire will go faster than Rome ever did. It is
time for the US media to take its responsibility for civil discourse
seriously and to start to learn about and teach about the world we
live in. It is time for the US media to forgo the extra profit
brought to them by eternal internal strife in favor of words of peace
and attention to the real needs of the people of the world to be
informed in their consent to be governed.

At least that's how I see it.

-- This communication is confidential to the parties it is intended
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Fred Cohen & Associates tel/fax: 925-454-0171
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