Media focus is myopic. Its narrative sees only the visible participants. What is of consequence behind the settings are usually invisible. That prevailing force is corporate.

In a democratic capitalist system, we depend on media sources to disperse unvarnished truth, but the ultimate check on the corporate control is government. That is why corporate agents, Republicans, have demonized government, especially since the 1970s.

For Republicans, government is there to use, to manipulate for their corporate benefactors: tax cuts, deregulation, and subsidies, to make it easier for corporate chieftains to do business. In the right hands, government can be used to provide for investment and service for the people, which the COVID relief and infrastructure bills are currently intended to do.

Unfortunately, the narrative we hear is spun by storytellers: by cable news, by broadcast news, by social media on the internet, even by printed media. This puts the “news consumer” in a role of filtering the narrative based on the narrative’s source. Nothing is to be believed coming from Fox News, Breitbart, NewsMax, and such. Filters are needed elsewhere.

Each has its own motivation behind spinning the news. Unfortunately, corporate America is the controlling force. It built the cultural infrastructure to meet its own needs, an infrastructure carefully and deliberately fashioned to make corporations kings.

Their courts now permit “dark money” which is a form of hidden payments for Republican campaigns and to promote corporate interests like the SCOTUS appointments that got them court rulings permitting dark money. It is money filtered through right-wing organizations like the Federalist Society to write legislation for Republican states to restrict voting and choose friendly justices.

It’s like protection money, protecting the interests of the overlords whose demands are heard by their Republican agents.

For example, corporate chieftains demanded passage of their agenda items by the Republican Party as a reward for richly financing Republican campaigns. The huge tax cut for corporations and the richest taxpayers in 2017 brought them a booty of trillions of dollars.

To satisfy deep-pocket corporate benefactors expecting quick tax savings, Republicans fashioned a tax cut bill written and rushed through Congress in a chaotic manner, leaving the Treasury Department extra latitude to interpret a law that was sloppily written. Corporate lobbyists, therefore, reaped billions more in bounty for the privileged.

Accordingly, in 2018, corporate lobbyists swarmed senior Trump officials in the Treasury Department. The blitz was led by the world’s largest companies, including Anheuser-Busch, Credit Suisse, General Electric, United Technologies, Barclays, Coca-Cola, Bank of America, UBS, IBM, Kraft Heinz, Kimberly-Clark, News Corporation, Chubb, ConocoPhillips, HSBC and American International Group.

Can anyone not wonder about the love affair between corporate chieftains and Donald J. Trump in spite of his lawlessness, impeachable offenses, and a final effort to overthrow the newly elected Biden government.

The web of corporate power is proved to be wide, though tending to be invisible through media eyes. Even while the Biden administration is dealing with the ruins left by Trump, we are seeing Trump ally, Thomas J. Barrack Jr. belatedly indicted by the Biden Justice Department.

He is charged with violating a law requiring agents of foreign governments — in this case, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) — to register with the Justice Department, and he is charged with lying to the FBI about his business arrangements. With extremely deep pockets, he was released from custody on a $250 million bail.

During the Trump administration, his interviews could have exposed his crimes, but media focus failed to do this.

He promoted the UAE, himself, and Trump through a series of 2016 and 2017 nationally televised interviews with Bloomberg TV and Charlies Rose. None of the interviewers were prepared to gather much revealing information, only cosmetically popular, and certainly not Barrack’s self-serving ties with UAE or other Arab countries.

They let him pitch his friendship with Trump, pumping Trump up as a caring friend. Barrack disseminated pulp about the UAE being “good Islam” vs the terrorist “other.” No one thought to question the role Barrack was playing, treating him with inane deference.

Such is the way of all media, the same vanilla treatment that got us into a bogus war with Iraq.

In the dominating corporate culture, government and the media do no better in dealing with the fossil fuel mess. With a measly $16 billion proposed in Biden’s infrastructure plan, the government intends to plug abandoned oil and gas wells and clean up old mines, most spewing pollutants.

Currently each one of the 3.1 million abandoned wells leaks the equivalent of 2400 pounds of coal each year, adding substantially to greenhouse gases. In addition, there are 500,000 abandoned mines needing attention. Waste from these mines has polluted the surrounding soil, water, or air. Over decades, companies could walk away from mines and oil wells without a thought.

Even today, Nigerian fisherwomen are parking on Chevron property, angry that Chevron has refused to clean up their leaking oil wells, destroying fishing in once-pristine streams they depended on for daily sustenance.

Fossil fuel companies have the same attitude in American communities with many instances of pollution, even wrongful death, by familiar companies like  Koch Industries.  refinery in Port Arthur, Texas and the Midwest whose refineries emit toxic fumes and pollute groundwater. In the long run, measly fines and penalties imposed by the FDA, often failing to be imposed during Republican administrations, do little to mitigate such deadly offenses. Even Democrats often have failed to call such companies to account.

And think about the loyalty of Mitch McConnell for over a decade, obstructing any legislation meant for the people: no corporate regulation, no new funds for health care, no lowering of prescription drug prices, and no minimum wage. He was laser-focused on filling the courts with pro-corporate justices, even while the pandemic raged. Mitch always carried the ball for corporations, side-arming the people.

Government is supposed to represent its constituents. In all cases, Republicans represent corporations and the rich. To keep it that way, they must restrict the non-white vote, even overrule it if necessary.

Without the For the People legislation and with their party control of 30 states, Republicans can do that.