At 82 years of age, I am opening my eyes for the first time.
While describing my personal relations with Jim Jones to close friends, I realized that the media drove him out of the U.S. I arranged for some of his most influential friends to explain to him how important it is to not fight with or respond to the media. He had been viciously and falsely attacked by San Francisco Magazine. He ignored that advice and soon left the country.
Thinking about this overnight, I realized that I personally knew Richard Nixon, Huey Newton (a brilliant and wonderful man), Margo St. James (who was driven out of the country) and many others who were hated by the press. I personally worked with Synanon, the anti-anti-Whaling movement, Governor Brown's cabinet, many people in the Reagan administration, the Japanese government in the 1980s, and other organizations that were attacked or destroyed by the media.
This morning I started making a list in my mind of the people the media hated: Hamilton, Andrew Jackson, Abe Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, Harry Truman. Joe McCarthy, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and most ferociously Donald Trump starting when he ran for president.
The media hated the Vietnam War and falsely reported the U.S. victory in the Tet Offensive as an American loss, they hated hippies and have had a severe case of Jew and Israel hatred for decades.
Then I thought about the Declaration of Independence that reads like a media indictment of King George. Canada and Australia became independent of England without a war. The Civil War was fought over slavery which had already been disappearing in the Caribbean and Brazil for decades and was uneconomic in the U.S. with new machinery.
So what role has the media played today and for centuries in generating hate and dissent in the U.S. and elsewhere? How does the new Internet media play into that history?
I'm thinking about it.