Growing up with Radio and Television as the dominant mediums for politics helped prepare me for the realization that our 2 political parties are one in the same, and that clearly was not their intention. These mediums never had anyone explicitly saying this, in fact they almost always had someone on air claiming the opposite. It took the repeated failures of those political parties every election cycle preceded by media campaigns that filled the airwaves, to show me and many of my fellow citizens why our country isn't truly ours, why this place is so corrupt, and why the fraud of it needs to end.
Having access to cable television and radio in the 90's I was given the choice of so-called alternatives. But no matter what I watched, those programs still leaned towards one side of the political system. It was a given that no matter where I looked for information or for answers that one of the “sides” had a voice or personality there to steer me in that particular direction. I never understood, until many years later why that was and how people got into those positions.
In the 90's I was also introduced to the concept of the anti-hero. Someone that chose means outside of the rules of the culture to beat the bad guys. The days of the white meat babyface in popular TV shows were over. Now we had more dimensions of characters to find what inside of us was being reflected on screen. Television seemed like it was getting real, and then a writer's strike happened.
The reality TV era of culture was perfect for a society being introduced to being in front of a camera. Not anymore did you need the fancy writers to come up with drama, the average schmuck could produce that drama now. But the use of celebrity and the new reality on TV is really what brought me to my original stated conclusion.
The era of Trump on TV is something that will be studied for decades if not centuries. Because it's when America ended for me. The intensity in which media companies dialed up their rhetoric had people at war with one another. All the tribalism of sports plus the emotional and ignorant attachments to what those sides represented destroyed my generations grasp of how government works. Now we are governed by rallies, mass shootings, and threats of war. All thanks to the so-called alternative media.
The internet is the place where political thought and action is these days. There's not a campaign that doesn't use it and I'm not talking about just politicians. The internet is used to sell us all kinds if things, cheaply made disposable garbage yes, but also on new concepts, behaviors, and eventually dependencies. The alt media that was successful mostly came from the right, who were now the bad guys on most TV, but could pass themselves off as anti-heroes, being one of us, the people, and taking it to the man. Until they became part of the man.
I wish that there were some examples of where the alternative right wing media didn't fail this country more. Especially with the amount of it I've consumed. But sadly these people were no anti-heroes to take down the rotten system, they were leading people straight into it again and then Covid happened.
I ran to the alternative media for Covid info every day. Hoping that something new would be revealed that would set us free from lockdown or the other insane tactics used against us during that time. In that space I found only a handful of people that were looking at it from a perspective that the system and our collective efforts were not the way to solve this. Those people were largely ignored.
Then came the 2020 election and then January 6th. The right wing alternative media for the most part cheered on the establishment until realizing the unpopularity of that decision. But they'll still tell you on camera that nothing was a conspiracy surrounding those events.
Finally, it came time for me to enter the media making world. And what side was I most likely going to be placed on by folks?
The right. Now I can get down with some of those folks but apparently most of them can't play in the sand box of ideas and expression that I do. But I would never claim to be one of them. In fact, I am nowhere near a Christian Conservative. I can see how the term and folks that cling to their identity as one though, keeps things in line for the establishment. Because when any group has a set of rules that they are governed by, it allows the bad guys to learn how to exploit them.
I guess it's a good thing I wound up at a place called Anarchy in the Morning. No rules keep me from exploring, asking, and learning here.
The other alternatives, in the words of a true anti hero, can wallow in the muck of avarice.
PATCON AIR TNP LIVE EP105 W/KEN SILVA : Monologue