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Since his election, American president Donald Trump has done his utmost to slash, roll back, or eliminate any number of federal rules and regulations that serve to protect Americans from the rapaciousness of modern capitalism. In the most egregious example, he has done what he can to undermine the health insurance plan generally known as Obamacare that the Republican dominated Congress has spectacularly failed to repeal by cutting advertizing funds, reducing enrollment times, and spreading demonstrably false ‘information’ about its inevitable collapse. In the process, he has stripped millions of least-advantaged Americans of affordable health care, inevitably sentencing many to bankruptcy and death.
Most recently, he has supported and promoted an end to another Obama era set of rules designed to guarantee ‘net neutrality,’ the guarantee of indiscriminate access to equal online services by preventing broadband providers from imposing restrictions on websites and broadband speeds though discriminate pricing. In essence, the rules have forced providers to provide equal access to services without favouritism. Naturally, Trump and the Republican Party hate them.
Recently, the Federal Communications Commission announced it was planning a sweeping rollback of net neutrality, allowing corporations to decide what content is available online while pricing most citizens out of equal access to information, creating for most citizens a Chinese-like internet that leaves customers dependent on the whims of corporations (and government.) It is yet another way Trump and his billionaire allies are trying to undercut American democracy in favour of corporate oligarchy.
As media commentator Sarah Kendzior has written in The Globe and Mail recently, “The threat to net neutrality highlights the reliance on social media and an independent press for political organizing in the digital age. Should net neutrality be eliminated, those avenues will likely become curtailed for much of the public or driven out of business due to loss of revenue. Without the means to freely communicate online, citizens will be far less able to challenge the administration. It doesn't matter what cause someone prioritizes: The elimination of net neutrality will impede the ability to understand the cause, discuss it and organize around it.”
It is easy to see why the President fears net neutrality, as it makes it that much easier to debunk the bold-faced lies the man loves to spew By discouraging open discussion of issues that occupy his attention, and propagating that which supports whatever dubious claim he might happen to be spreading at any given moment, Trump is hoping to eliminate one of the hallmarks of any successful democratic society by eliminating competing views and paving the way to the dominance of the ‘alternate facts’ he is so fond of, Trump is hoping to eliminate the ‘fake news’ that threatens his bombast with facts and informed opinion. In true autocratic fashion, the Trumpster hopes to be able to spout whatever self-serving nonsense he wishes without fear of being shown to be the dangerous buffoon he is. Given the proven gullibility of his ‘base,’ this would allow him to pose as the source of wisdom and guidance he is fundamentally incapable of performing but which he passionately hopes to assume.
Naturally, the proponents of eliminating net neutrality insist that, like the catastrophic ‘Trumpcare’ proposals and the impending ‘tax reform’ that is about to protect the unearned wealth of like-minded billionaires, the intention of abandoning net neutrality is to protect fairness and the consumer by eliminating the only protections they currently have. Obviously, the ‘little guy’ will be protected by making the costs of private jet ownership tax deductable while denying that ‘privilege’ to underpaid schoolteachers who purchase school supplies out of their own pockets. In a country where nearly 50 per cent of the population believes that education is ‘bad for the country,’ this is an oxymoron that can gain substantial ground.
In the modern age, when traditional news outlets are struggling to survive in the face of digital ubiquity, access to the internet is becoming less of a luxury and more of a social necessity, the ability to control who has free access is crucial. In the hands of an authoritarian government driven and paid for by corporate largesse, such power virtually guarantees that ‘an informed public’ is virtually impossible. Already, these entities are capable of controlling the conversation and ensuring that whatever ‘spin’ they want to dispense becomes the dominant – if not the only - viewpoint available. As Kendzior continues, “The erosion of freedom of speech and assembly has always been a hallmark of dictatorship, one traditionally associated with formal decrees of censorship or dramatic acts like book burning. In Mr. Trump's corporatized administration, overt state censorship is unnecessary and undesirable: Instead, technology can be manipulated while excessive litigation can force the media into self-censorship. The subtler gesture of removing the neutrality of the internet allows constitutional rights to remain intact on paper but demolished in practice.”
To emphasize the clear unsuitability of the current president to do his job has by now completely unnecessary as its obviousness is clear to the all but the thoroughly brainwashed. Nevertheless, the corresponding assumption that the fraudulent and traitorous former real estate promoter is an idiot is extremely dangerous. Trump has already almost crippled the mainstream media through the distraction of his ineptitude and his promotion of the scurrilous propaganda of Fox News, Breitbart, and Infowars. By putting an end to net neutrality, he can easily see its ultimate destruction as a major player in the political process. By entrenching the power of money as the driving force of political action and the disempowerment of any source of opposition, Trump will complete his task of ‘making America great again,’ by putting an end to any of the characterization of that society that allowed it to be great in the first place.
Trump has done his utmost to undermine the authority of the courts, to minimize the participation of elected representatives, to stack crucial government agencies with thoroughly unqualified but obedient sycophants, and now, to restrict the free flow of information, he is hoping to emulate the dictators and thugs – like Vladimir Putin – he so shamelessly admires. Not to worry, though; trust him. I’ll be great.