While I am very pleased that the issue of income inequality has finally taken a stronghold in the American political dialogue, I have noticed that the rhetoric has fallen short, even from my beloved Bernie.
Sanders has brought to the media something that the rest of us have already known for years, the growing wealth in our country is not going to the people doing the work and the Wallstreet banks are too large and need to be broken up.
Several candidates and even the current president have recently started to comment adamently on this issue but there is something that they are all forgetting, or at least not talking about enough, the banks are not the only things that need to be broken up.
Recent statistics show that the media is the most consistantly untrusted institution in America across demographics, even lower than religion or government. Well, the list of reasons is most likely endless, I think many people don’t like the fact that a majority of media companies today are owned by a very select few. Rupert Murdoch, Sumner Redstone, and Ted Turner are just a few whose corporations come to mind who are practically responsible for distributing all the movies, all the televison shows, and worst of all, all of the books. The uneven distribution of wealth is caused in part by the excessive size of underregulated banks, AND the current cultural crisis is a result of underregulated corporate trade as a whole.
The less diversity of ownership of distribution there is in any artistic or media market, be it literature, film, teleivision, or news & information, the more jaded we will become to the arts and the more people like Trump and his followers will feel legitimized to willfuly ignore facts and therefore will continue to embarass our nation, because there aren’t enough news sources saying, “ENOUGH! We will not exploit hatred for ratings!”
People are only as good as the information that they have, and just like who to few people control the wealth, too few people control the information as well. Break up the banks, and don’t forget to break up the channels and publishers as well.
James J Jackson 