What Went Wrong

When Linda Lingle won the Hawaii governorship, the thing I suggested government should do, is provide an electronic bulletin board, so that the citizens and elected representatives, could communicate with each other directly -- rather than have to be edited/censored through the private mass media masquerading as a quasi-government agency. In those days, "the press" still fostered the notion that they were the "unofficial" fourth branch of government, with ultimate authority over all the others -- by virtue of the claim that they were the "voice of the people" -- instead of merely using the people, to say what they wanted them to say.

That's why the selections of the "letters to the editor," are so prejudicial and biased -- while claiming that is what the people are saying, instead of what they are made to say. Most of the writers here, have experienced that same malicious interference and editorial manipulation -- to what the editors want him to say, rather than what the author themselves want to say, and how they meant to say it. Their cover was that it was "edited for clarity and brevity" -- when it was done for malicious, deceptive and manipulative intent.

Often, it would turn out that the person in charge of this "editing," would be the newspaper union's own shop steward expressing their solidarity with their union/Democrat/gay brotherhood, or some aspiring would-be novelist/poet who was not there to make everybody else "rich, famous and influential," but to make only themselves so, and realizing they didn't have the talent to achieve that, was going to make sure that nobody else could "get ahead" of themselves.

Thus, nothing could be said or expressed beyond what they wanted to be said -- in the way they wanted to say it. And so those who were chosen most frequently for publication, were the many "useful idiots" (as Lenin would call them), who merely repeated what the editor/publishers wanted them to say -- which repeated often enough, becomes the "truth," or at least has the ring of familiarity and credibility.

And now, after another election in which the people are realizing how much they were once again manipulated and deceived (while the media raked in millions while denying their role in negative advertising), they now get on the comment boards insisting we have to go through them again -- as the only legitimate means of expression.

My original proposal for the community (government) electronic bulletin board, was that people could say what they wanted to say, but had to be registered under their actual names -- which produces responsible expression. It is the old mainstream media, that promotes anonymity under the guise that people have to be protected from their government in order to speak freely -- which is what The Constitution guarantees -- rather than the power given by the press to the people. That is the power the press "takes" from the people -- for only themselves.