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Donald Trump’s First One Hundred Days in office and the White House Correspondents’ Dinner exemplify how obsessed professional news outlets have become with inconsequential events that they want to feature. With President Trump refusing to attend the Correspondents' Dinner, the self-deprecating members of the Press core have been unleashed to saturate coverage of the glamorous over-indulgent affair with so much negative propaganda that the significance of the President’s absence will not scar the battered credibility of the Press. As “the Oscars” of celebrity journalists, the Correspondents' Dinner highlights the reality that the processional media outlets is largely an arm of the political industry and dominated by American’s wealthy class, which enriches pundits based on their ability to promote agendas instead of talent and actual contributions to society.
The Correspondents’ Dinner also shows why the Media has increasingly failed to provide the American People the public service it is supposed to provide. When the Media reports on the Oscars and all the A-list celebrities invited to the various celebrations surrounding the affair, it is called “entertainment news,” which is a sanitized way of saying celebrity gossip. When a celebrity is quoted, it peaks the interests of fans and tabloid subscribers, yet it is not considered newsworthy nor is it the work of serious journalists. In fact, the more disreputable publishers of celebrity gossip are called “rags.” When it comes to events like the Correspondents’ Dinner, this same type of coverage is called news. In reality, it is little more than political gossip. Beyond the Correspondents’ Dinner and the President’s First One Hundred Days, professional media outlets are becoming “rags” featuring political gossip and celebrity journalists instead of useful sources of valuable news.
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Donald Trump’s proposed US-Mexican Border Wall has generated a great number of heated exchanges between anti-wall and pro-wall factions while producing a plethora of varying reaction across the political spectrum. Although the ability of “the Wall” to keep criminal elements and illegal immigrates at bay is questionable, paying for Trump’s Wall, however, appears to be the most contentious aspect. The Trump Administration’s attempt to hijack a standard funding bill to fund his Wall had even threatened to shut the federal government down. In the scope of a nearly 4 trillion dollar budget, the Wall is a small line item, but the effort to circumvent public debate and short-circuit the legislative process has serious implications.
Given the Trump Administration is also trying to press forward with major health and tax reforms, how it handles a Trump priority like the Wall says a great deal. It appears the President may be more interested in his objectives instead of developing public policy solutions that address the collective interests of the America People. Too often, elected officials impose public policy prescriptions, which are derived from their political rhetoric and the influence of special interests, onto the nation instead of engineering public policy solutions based on the input of those affected by the desired policy shifts. Draining the swamp was Trump’s priority during the 2016 President Election, yet his push to find viable political strategies to reach his goals, e.g. the Wall and tax reforms, do not seem to even honor the right of the majority to be heard. War with North Korea has been a possibility since the 1953 Korean Armistice Agreement paused the Korean War. Thanks to the end of the Cold War and the Kim regime’s pursuit of nuclear arms, the threat of armed conflict with the North has seasonably resurfaced then died away once world leaders and the global press find something else to hyperventilate about. When the North torpedoed the South Korean warship Cheonan in March, 2010 and Pyongyang nullified the Armistice in March, 2013, the likelihood of war temporarily increased. Nuclear tests have, of course, always tended to peak interest. Until armed conflict starts with North Korea, it is always a possibility. As time goes on and Pyongyang realizes advancements in its nuclear program, the threat of war grows ever more severe, but the likelihood of war remains the same until the threat is realized or disarmed.
The analysis of the Korean threat has changed little over the years, but North Korea does offer the world a glimpse into a dsytopian society where the dream of concentrating power and wealth into the hands of a power elite has been fully realized. A nightmare scenario for Americanized Peoples, who prefer opportunity over total socioeconomic security, North Korea is a place where the affluent control all aspects of life and government officials are worshiped as gods. Like the perpetual threat of globalized terrorism, and previously Communism, Pyongyang has been forced by the threat of war to dominant its territory. Wealth has been concentrated into the hands of the power elite who enjoy the privilege of that wealth. These wealthy elites have every intention of allowing just enough wealth to trickle down to sustain the hungry masses, but hard and scary times demand sacrifice by the majority. Paris has experienced yet another terrorist attack. Although terrorist attacks are regular occurrences in other corners of the world, where oppressive governments also tend to reign supreme with iron fists, the West is far more comfortable with gang shootings, murders of passion, and madman massacres. If the victims of the Champs-Élysées shootings had simply been casualties of a criminal seeking revenge on the police and the collateral damage of a shootout, the tragedy would have provided the French media an interesting story for a couple of days. Because the suspect was an ex-convict, who happened to be a terrorist suspect and likely supported the Islamic State, the media outlets and political figures of the West feel compelled to lead the world in a global panic and security crackdown.
Violent crime, in general, plagues all communities of the world to varying degrees. Terrorism is a particularly scary form of violent crime, because terrorists use seemingly random violence and the indiscriminate murder of innocent civilians to force their will onto society as a whole. In modern society, violence is seen as a disruptive force that undermines the very fabric of communities and destroys the accomplishments of the human race. The developed world has managed to suppress the violent side of human nature so well that events involving brutal and widespread destruction spark massive outrage and grievance throughout the International Community. This is why Westerners struggle so much to understand why people are attracted to terrorism and the motivations behind acts of violence. China has long been considered a great prize in the eyes of Westerners seeking to capitalize on the wealth of Asia. Like the Americas, the colonial powers of Europe seized the land of the once-great and expansive Chinese Empire to feed their ever growing economies with a “free trade” style model. Ultimately, the reliance on forced, exploitative trade over internal development of domestic industry proved to be a near fatal practice that almost meant the near collapse of France and Britain in the wake of the first World War. Today, the wealthy capitalist investors and industrialists of the West look to China’s nearly 1.5 billion citizens for cheap labor and a new source of consumption. In modern times, the nation of China, or at least the government of China, reaps major benefits from access to the global markets , which Beijing hopes to expand upon.
In an attempt to discourage the United States from raising tariffs to rebalance a massive and persistent trade deficit, for example, China has offered to lift a ban on US beef and allow foreign investors to own majority stakes in Chinese securities and insurance firms. The growing wealth of the Chinese Peoples has made beef and pork more of staple than a luxury in the modern Chinese diet. Sourcing these products from as many countries as possible helps satiate and secure Chinese demand for beef, even though the added global demand means higher prices for Americans. Opening China’s financial sector to greater foreign investment will, however, do far more to enrich and empower Chinese investors as well as the government. For foreign investors and the world’s population, there are many downsides to doing business with a Communist government that must be considered. |
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December 2018
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