By OcJim

Last night I listened with interest about a Greyhound bus driver who arbitrarily dumped 13 Occupiers at Amarillo, TX during a trip from San Diego to Washington DC. The parent company, Greyhound, apparently approved of his action. No official statement was heard. From descriptions of his behavior when Occupiers entered the bus, the driver was immediately rude and dismissive toward only Occupy representatives. His actions demonstrate an ill will that has been fed by right-wing media purveyors and tacitly encouraged by American mainstream media.

If you think about it, unreasonable malice against anything progressive is endemic among most right-wing friends and acquaintances you might have. It is not an attitude that came about overnight. It has been built for decades and came to a peak with the Bush administration after 9/11 (Rove nurtured the partisan and embraced polarization) and is continually reinforced with ever-streaming anti-progressive vitriol on media conglomerates like Fox and Clear Channel.

It still dominates politics and keeps Democrats on the defensive, rendering them almost rightward leaning, although money in politics contributes mightily to this as well, for Citizens United was the classic Supreme Court uppercut to democracy.

Equally important are major networks which pass on outright lies and half-truths coming from conservative sources as though such distortions were a valid point on the conservative side. One small example is Romney’s claim that Obama is raising taxes and increasing government size, an utter lie, but which is never contested by mainstream media.

One would guess that people like the bus driver hear and see nothing but conservative rants.

In case you haven’t noticed, conservatives are still winning the propaganda war. Evidence of this is all around you, but their tainting of human minds is almost hidden from view, due to a monopoly of most media markets.

For example, why did mainstream media — at least tacitly — affirm the consensus that the deficit problem overrode the need for stimulus, at least until Occupiers gained some traction. Why have Republicans been able to control the message with austerity, tax cuts for the rich, small government and the “big-spender Democrat” rants? Polls consistently show that issues the majority opposes nevertheless rule. How do you explain it?

Media markets have increasingly been dominated by giant corporate conglomerates for nearly thirty years now, coinciding with the relentless quest to rid our national government of all media regulations, from content fairness, erased by Reagan, to restrictions on monopolistic ownership.

Formed with Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital, Clear Channel, so-named because it has exclusive rights to its radio frequencies throughout most of the continent at night, is a prime example of private conservative interests controlling and dictating content for American radio listeners, rather than any democratically elected body that represents rights and freedoms of Constitutional law.

First of all, it headlines the top right-wing American vitriol kings: Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck and almost all local right-wing acrimony. Next it controls its right-wing content. Even music that it determines unacceptable is censored: after 9/11, a list of over 150 censored songs were circulated to all stations, including Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World.” It sets its own decency standards, provides a centrally controlled format, not allowing local programming, censors political opinions, against Bush critics and the Dixie Chicks, for instance.

Of course, big government voted in by the majority of Americans is not fit to set standards, but ultra-conservative owners with an agenda can dictate what listeners get in content.

And that is representative of the only content that millions of Americans get.

Some day in the future, we may be able to warp space.

Our right-wing propagandists already know how to warp minds, at least to the right.