In these days of 'alternate facts,' and truth being shouted down, of
dollars being considered 'free speech,' and the very strong meme among about half of American that the government is bad, evil, the enemy, we are in very real danger of losing this republic.
I have become convinced over a number of years that we Democrats must add a Fairness Doctrine to our platform. Reagan let the old Fairness Doctrine die in 1987, and that caused the growth of corporate propaganda stations like Fox, Breitbart, numerous websites and hate-talk radio.
Obama said in the interview he did with Letterman earlier this year that our polarization is the result of not everyone operating from the same set of facts.
The cure for this is to get back the Fairness Doctrine and hold news sacrosanct from ratings so that journalists can once again report the facts surrounding events - who, what, when, where and how. When they get into why, then the different sides must be represented. Always.
When we got away from that, we positioned ourselves to enter the realm of 'alternative facts.' Remember that this phenomenon began with the election of Obama - you'd see Republicans go on talk shows and shout down everyone else, reject the facts and keep parroting talking points.
That's the root of this tribalism; the lack of a Fairness Doctrine.
And the root of the 'hardening' of the right-wing 'tribe' is corporate propaganda. The reason we have corporations pouring money into this propaganda and into organizations like ALEC is the way corporate charters are written.
These corporate charters call for the C-level officers of publicly held companies ONLY to increase earnings for shareholders. That is the ONLY job of any CEO of a publicly held company. It is called 'fiduciary responsibility.'
Look around. This fiduciary responsibility is the cause of the pollution that is killing our planet, the climate change denial, the merchants of doubt that are paid to cause us to doubt that things like fracking hurt the environment, the massive transfer of wealth to the few and the horrible corporate corruption created by the Citizens United ruling that dollars are 'free speech.' That is the root cause.
Two policy changes could ameliorate these problems:
1. Reinstate a 21st century Fairness Doctrine that operates like the old Fairness Doctrine did.
2. Force changes to all corporate charters of companies doing business in America to enlarge the scope of fiduciary responsibility to include the workers and their welfare, the consumers and their welfare, the well-being of the communities where the corporation is doing business and the environment.
Do these two things and we won't have 'hardening' tribalism any more, and we can start concentrating on building a government that actually addresses the needs of the people - economic and social justice.
