In another century, Karl Marx and friends thought that sports events were the opiate of the masses because of the public focus on them; that they were designed specifically to keep the public mind off the important things in life and society and what governments were doing to them, not for them.
While there can be no argument that social media is now the opiate of choice – even those Masters of the Universe admit that Facebook et al were designed with addiction as the ultimate goal – we submit that in recent months Sex – that ultimate seller – is everywhere and that broadcast and print media are having a renaissance.
Book and magazine publishers have always known that their three bestsellers are sex, food and money and with the advent of #Me Too the golden gates have opened for them for the first time in years. The failure of our public schools to teach reading and writing has certainly helped social media work for millennials and the young. But now to keep up with the latest news people have got to stay tuned…and even read.
Yes porn is on your smartphone but all of that is anonymous stuff. It takes the involvement of top businessmen, media stars and politicians on all levels to bring the joy of sex right into our homes day after day, morning newspapers, nightly news, endlessly streaming cable news…
With Stormy Daniels and now Eric Schneiderman everywhere, the activities of JFK, Gary Hart, Bill Clinton seem a little old fashioned.
Here is candidate Trump’s specific language about how he can treat star-struck young women printed and spoken or abbreviated with *****. Here’s 60 Minutes and Stormy casually telling us about her one-night stand with the Donald “Well I went up to his hotel room and got myself in that situation so I thought well I might as well…” Perfectly natural for a woman who makes ‘sex’ her living.
But because this is all about show business (Weinstein, Brokaw, Charlie Rose and lots of politicians) there is always something new just about to happen. And the news media is right there. Vanity Fair. The New Yorker. Pulitzer Prizes. Sex sells and wins awards.
So sex has become the opiate of choice and by so doing has kept Americans from knowing what government is not doing for them — or to them. And that is trouble.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID
Our national government has not worked for a long, long time.
Daily tweets are not about Government dealing with the major problems and needs of a country.
But for a tax bill openly designed to provide more money for corporations and the rich so as to continue the 50 year old myth that the money will be used to expand businesses and job opportunities, Congress has done nothing about healthcare, education, the environment, the infrastructure…or so it seems. After two years of total control of government, the Presidency and the both houses of Congress, the Administration seems – on the surface – to be doing very little.
But that’s because the Administration at the highest level has realized that there are several ways to get things done by simply by-passing a Senate and House whose members have only one thing in mind: their reelection. And so they have.
While America rolls in the stuff of a sex-fueled opiate addiction, Congress has actually done something about healthcare. As it passed that huge tax cut for the wealthy, it also eliminated the individual mandate written into Obamacare, the requirement that people sign up for insurance even if they are currently healthy.
In order to hold the costs of Obamacare to manageable levels, the mandate spread the purchase of health insurance across the entire economic spectrum. If you refused to sign up for it, you paid a fine.
Unable to kill Obamacare after years of trying, the current Congress has set out to kill it section by section. First the mandate. Healthcare costs are about to skyrocket. The next step will be to allow the health insurance industry to avoid selling insurance to those with pre-existing conditions. Forcing the industry not to segregate out those who needed insurance was a major win for the entire Affordable Care Act. Getting rid of the clause will be a boon to the industry which found it very expensive. Quietly, Congress will do what it could not do to the Act…kill it piece by piece.
There are no major national infrastructure projects currently in force. None. Local Congressional leaders, in office for years, have been trying to get the Administration and a President from New York (even if he spends critical tax avoidance months in Florida), to at least fund the construction of another tunnel in the very busy New York-New Jersey railroad corridor. So far no luck.
In education many of our brave high school students are marching to make their schools safe from predatory killers with weapons of war in their hands. Not a single gun control measure has even appeared in Congress.
Meanwhile teachers in several States have been on strike seeking higher wages and more money for education. They have won raises but no increase in overall education spending. They and their students ought to be marching for better schooling so that two-thirds of college freshmen will not need mental health counseling to deal with college work.
In New York only one-quarter of high school graduates are able to deal with college courses without remedial assistance. Four-year college dropouts have reached unheard of levels. Community college dropouts have reached 60%.
The Environmental Protection Agency is being run by a man openly dedicated to eviscerating and destroying it. None of his decisions and actions regarding getting rid of clear air and water regulations have come under Congressional scrutiny although he has been questioned about his excessively expensive travel accommodations.
There will be no stopping the next news-breaking harassment activities from men in many public fields.
But the power of sex to numb us to what is happening must finally wane if we are to recognize how little government is doing to make this nation work again for all of its citizens. Everything stalls…the way the development of a fair immigration law has stalled.
Time to wake up and let what is critically important make news and get our attention.
“Sex: The Opiate of the Masses”
I think what’s intended here is that sex-based scandals in the media are the opiate of the masses.
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“In New York only one-quarter of high school graduates are able to deal with college courses without remedial assistance. Four-year college dropouts have reached unheard of levels. Community college dropouts have reached 60%.
If this is true, then things have changed drastically since I was a NYC undergraduate.