It's bedtime, children. Get on your jammies, scootch under the covers, and I'll tell you a “Perry Tale.”
In this one, Prince Rick is trying to make it to the big White House in Washington. It's a strange quest, because he calls the capital city “a seedy place,” and he tells the commoners in the land that he hates — nay, deeply loathes — the very government that he wants to head.
With his tea party hat carefully positioned atop his bounteous crop of perfectly coifed hair, Prince Rick warns the commoners that big government is bad, bad, bad — because it intrudes into their lives, forcing things like Social Security and Medicare on them.
Strangely, this prancing prince of privilege would not be where he is without the steady “intrusion” of big government into his life. From elementary school through college, his education was paid for by local, state, and federal taxpayers. Also, as cotton farmers, he and his family were supported with thousands of dollars in crop subsidies from the pockets of national taxpayers.
Then, after a brief stint as a government-paid Air Force transport pilot, the perfidious prince hit the mother lode of government largesse: political office, where he's been for 27 years and counting. In addition to drawing more than a quarter-century's worth of monthly paychecks from Texas taxpayers, Prince Rick also receives full health coverage and a generous pension from the state, plus $10,000 a month to rent a luxury home, a flock of personal aides, and even a state-paid subscription to Food & Wine magazine.
So, children, the moral of this Perry Tale is to ignore the prince's hypocritical hype. Instead, look at what he actually does. When he says he intends to make government “as inconsequential as possible,” he means in your life, not his.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
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