Saying that “the system has failed” is something that the political left has done for decades, and continue to do to this day, but is it now time to accept that the system has truly failed?

My friends,

The American media frequently likes to point to foreign nations for examples of failed systems. I came to America from Russia at a young age, and all my life I was told that I came from a failed state. The American media would point to protests and baseless allegations to paint Vladimir Putin as a tyrannical sociopath, with a nation of people fed up, yet powerless to change the system. I heard this narrative my whole life, and I believed it for a while, but now I see it, only not in the place that the media would have you believe it is.

The media uses this exact same narrative in their own country. As leftists have done since the beginning of leftist ideology, they continue to state that the system has failed. I for agree with them, but for all the wrong reasons. See, it is not Donald Trump who is the tyrannical sociopath, but it is the media itself. Americans must come to realize that it is not the government that holds the power in their country, but the media, or, more broadly, the elite. I am aware that it is the elite in its entirety that has the power, but I point specifically to the media since that is their main way of corrupting the system.

The American system of government was created before the media existed. In the days of the founding fathers, there was no media, there was a press, but no media. The press in those days consisted of local news, and nothing more. Bias was widespread, but the problem with the media is not bias, bias is unavoidable, the problem is much deeper. With these localized news sources, the press truly did serve as the voice of the people. This continued for quite some time. In the days where you could settle down and have a drink with your local newspaper editor, you could be confident that your local press was truly in touch with the people, even if their biases were different from yours.

This all ended with the beginning of mass media. Mass media replaced the local press with massive, nationwide news outlets. We have left the founding fathers’ territory now, and have entered something that even they could not have foreseen. See, when the founding fathers were writing the constitution, news outlets were, as I said before, localized, biased, and yet still in touch with the people. The press was given the protections it was given because it could effectively act as the voice of the people. The press, at this time, was essentially a group of people banding together to multiply the sound of their voices, so that their political leaders could hear the noise and act accordingly.

The media of today has perverted the founding fathers’ intentions for a free press. They have turned an institution that once served as the voice of the people into a tool to silence the people. The media today is not localized, their writers and editors do not have to answer to their neighbors anymore, but they have to answer to their gigantic, international media conglomerates and the elites that fund them. You can no longer sit and chat with your local newspaper editor, now you have to rely on them to listen to you, while in the past they had to rely on you to listen to them.

When media figures attempt to “reach out” and “connect with the people”, what they usually mean is that they will let you write them emails that they will most likely ignore, or, if they support their points, feature them in their articles to “prove” that they are in touch with the people. You could see this with many media outlets after the election. Many apologized for being out of touch and promised to listen to the people more, but this ultimately just led to them setting up manufactured scenarios where they would reach out to, listen to, and give voice to the same leftists who they have been reaching out to, listening to, and giving voice to for years.

This creates a dangerous scenario where the media gets to pretend to be the voice of the people, while only giving voice to the people who they want to, leaving everybody out. The major media networks have created an oligopoly on information, leaving anyone who disagrees with their narratives to find small, alternative sources, mainly online. The media then uses its vast power to control narratives to smear these alternative news sources, getting them defunded, delisted, and delegitimized, all for the crime of dissent. Why do we allow them to behave like this? What if, instead of a company, it was a government doing this? What if it was a government launching giant smear campaigns against all dissidents? What if it was a government ignoring large swaths of the population, and yet claiming to represent the people? If it would be unethical for governments, then why is it acceptable for media organizations?

Take, for example, YouTube, home to a thriving community of independent commentators, mostly on the right. The media launched a large campaign against YouTube, accusing it of being a safe space for violent extremism. The advertisers revolted, resulting in YouTube cracking down on this community, depriving it of its cash flow and damning it to an algorithm-based hell where their videos would almost certainly never be found unless explicitly searched for. Would you tolerate a government cutting off cash flow from and openly suppressing dissent?

What about Andrew Kaczynski, the unapologetic criminal who stalked, harassed, and threatened a teenager over an Internet meme? The same Andrew Kaczynski who was met with praise from the rest of the media mafia for his “good journalism”? The same Andrew Kaczynski who faced no charges whatsoever for what is clearly a crime? Would you tolerate a government stalking, threatening, and harassing your children for making an anti-governmental joke online? Then why do we tolerate it when the media does it?

Silencing the opposition is just one half of what the media does. Remember, in the old days, the press truly served as the voice of the people, so politicians had to listen. Now? Well, we already know that now the media is only the voice of the elite and the select few members of the population who are fine with their agenda, but the media, being the loudest voice, gets to tell our politicians what to do. The press started as a way for people to amplify their voices, the press as it is today ensures that the voices of the people are kept drowned out. Why do you think the Republican Party is so spineless? They listen to the constant, nonstop, outrageous press coverage of absolutely everything Donald Trump does. They do not hear what their base has to say, they hear what the media has to say. They hear the media, and they believe that the media acts as the voice of the people, so they listen. They hear the media, and they believe all of the over-sampled polls that they use as another method of controlling the national narrative, so they listen.

It is time for us to have a real discussion on limiting the power of the media. You can be as libertarian as you want, but at some point you have to see that the media has gotten so large, so powerful, that it almost acts as its own government, and a tyrannical one, at that. Reforms must be made to ensure that the press works as intended, as a way for the people to band together to multiply the strength of their voices so that their government representatives can hear them. The system has failed. Not the Putin government, not the Trump government, but the shadow government of the elite media, and our constitution has failed to protect us from their power. If we are serious about changing this country for the better, we must start by amending the constitution, breaking up the media conglomerates, and giving the power of the press back to the people who it was intended for.

Yours,

Mikhail