Partner to Power

How the Fourth Estate Betrayed its Charge and Became a Shill for the Elites

Bill Bonner, reckoning today from Poitou, France...

The COVID struck our family last week, the fully vaxxed and the unvaxxed alike. Joe Biden calls it the “pandemic of the unvaccinated.” Apparently, the virus had not been informed.  

The local doctor was called to the scene.  

“The Covid will have to run its course,” he said. But I’ll give you some amoxicillin and prednisone to help prevent secondary infections.” He charged $50 for the home visit.

Was this a good way to handle it? We don’t know. Some of the family, unvaxxed, took nothing and hardly noticed their infections. Others, vaxxed, took the meds… and were up and about in 24 hours.  

One other, young, unvaxxed, took the meds but still has had lingering fevers, night sweats, sleeplessness and other annoyances. 

A daughter and her husband had already had the disease; they – the veterans – were untouched in the recent assault.

Overall, the virus did its business. We did ours. All ended well. We are all on the mend. Many thanks to Dear Readers for their good wishes… and recommendations.

A Highly Mild Variant

We have no more insight into modern medicine than Joe Biden, but it seems logical that an over-70, vulnerable person might want to get vaccinated. He might have something to gain… and much to lose.  

As for young, healthy people… they have little to fear. And getting vaxxed apparently won’t help their relatives survive either. Just the contrary. We probably got the virus from an already-vaxxed family member. And the omicron version, especially, seems indifferent to vaccines.   

An article in the Wall Street Journal this week tells us that 90 days after you get the shot, you’re more likely to get the Omicron virus than if you have never gotten vaxxed at all. In other words, the vaccines might make it more likely that you’ll kill your grandmother.

Still another article, in the Daily Caller, tells us that the Omicron is actually less of a threat to the over-70 crowd than the regular flu:

Before the Omicron variant, an average vaccinated 75-year-old had about a 0.5% chance of dying from COVID-19 if contracted, according to The New York Times. The typical death rate from influenza for the same age cohort, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reviewed by the NYT, falls in a similar range between 0.6% and 1.3%.

This morning, the CDC is calling for new masks to prevent the spread of the Omicron. But shouldn’t it be encouraging us to unmask completely, so that we can all get the fairly benign Omicron finally be done with it?

You’d think someone would ask.

And remember, the lockdowns cost the global economy trillions of dollars of lost output. For those who live on less than $5 a day, that cutback could be disastrous. Ultimately, (though no one knows for sure) government policies in reaction to the Covid may damage more lives than they improve… especially among the poor.

But today, we save our scorn for the 4th Estate – the newshounds. As we will see, they no longer ask the important questions. Instead, they bark on command.

Conflicting Interests

Sometime in the ‘90s or early 2000s, the mainstream press became the lead propagandist for the whole elite class who control US public policies. It saw its role as no longer to enlighten or to clarify… but like Pravda, to push the party line and discredit anyone who ventured beyond it.

Here’s a trifling example. Reuters (whose chairman is also on the board of Pfizer):

Two officials presenting arguments on Friday to the U.S. Supreme Court seeking to block vaccine mandates ordered by President Joe Biden's administration have tested positive for COVID-19 and will make their cases remotely, their offices said.

What is the connection between challenging mandatory vaccinations at the Supreme Court and coming down with the COVID-19? As far as we know, there is none.

But the media loves to tell us stories about anti-vaxxers who die from covid. They do so as a subtle warning… stepping outside the box of elite opinion can be deadly. 

And now, the media has a two-decade history of not asking questions, but merely telling the public what they want it to believe. Terrorism… recession… market collapse… snowmaggedon… weapons of mass destruction… the Plague – it mongered scare stories, each one bringing more decisions for the deciders to decide… and more money for the elite to spend.

Yes, each scare comes at a price. Each brings a response – a new law… a new regulation… a new program and trillions of dollars of new, ‘printing press’ money’ -- lockups, shutdowns, taxes, interest rate fixes, mandates – and another step further away from the consensual democracy that the mainstream media claims it is so eager to protect.

The elite clearly came out ahead. As owners of America’s stock and bond capital, it saw its wealth increase by more than $30 trillion since 2009. But the average citizen got, relatively, poorer. Wages stagnated while the rate of GDP growth per capita cut in half.  

Shouldn’t the press have asked some questions?

• The ‘stimulus’ measures clearly don’t work; why do we continue with them?  Where is the evidence that government planners can make an economy work better?

• Why does it make sense to start a war with Iraq… to send our soldiers to Afghanistan… to make war against an unknown group of people – terrorists – for unknown reasons… and at unknown costs?

• How come we are still putting people in prison for drug crimes… when there is no evidence that it does any good… and much evidence that it does much harm?

• Why are we using the public’s money to bail out big, rich Wall Street investment firms?

• What, exactly, is the rationale for making a federal case of the Covid 19?  Wouldn’t it be better to treat it as a regular health matter… better addressed by doctor and patient?

• How come killing George Floyd was such a big deal, but not a peep about killing Ashli Babbitt?

The press asked none of these questions. It did not ask Power for Truth… nor speak Truth to Power. Instead, it became a shill… no longer questioning the government, but parroting its claims and assertions, no matter how absurd. It became a partner to power, not the public’s gadfly.

Saw Something… Said Nothing

Reporters sat in the front rows for the ‘weapons of mass destruction’ malarkey… never asking the obvious question: ‘what business is it of ours if Iraq has weapons of mass destruction? Don’t we have WMDs too?’  

Then, for twenty years, the Pentagon was allowed to waste money and lives in Afghanistan. Did any major American publication even question it? Nope; the press went along with the gag… from start to finish… even as the failed generals retired and took their comfy seats at lobbying firms, defense contractors, think tanks and hedge funds.  

The media also sat on its hands as the ‘see something, say something’ terror alarm turned the US into a country of timorous snitches. It cheered spending $6 trillion to protect Wall Street’s bonuses and kept its eyes wide shut  as the entire US economy was corrupted and rigged up for the benefit of the elite. And it fell in line immediately with the Capitol riot as an expression of  “white supremacist terrorism.”

Is it any wonder Donald Trump’s ‘fake news’ charge stuck? Is it any wonder that by the election of 2020, the press had lost credibility… and the public could believe whatever damned fool thing it wanted?

More tomorrow… on one of America’s most disappointing presidents… and the Inauguration Speech That Was Never Given.

Regards,

Bill Bonner