The above image was made with stable diffusion using the prompt 'newspaper sword fight.'
We're still a long ways from the 2024 presidential election in the US. At this point, I see only three real contenders for the office: Biden, Trump, and Kennedy. A vote for Biden is a vote for War with Russia, which could go nuclear. A vote for Trump is a vote for war with China, which could include a cyber dimension that paralyzes commerce. Both candidates have already been president and both have already proven that they'll make the country worse in a variety of ways.
The prospect of a Kennedy presidency is more interesting. He might use diplomacy instead of aggression in international relations. He might go after the covid conspiracy's ring leaders. He might even try to rein in the megacorps and the military industrial complex.
I would support these things and more. And yet, if Kennedy tries any one of them, some level of societal chaos would inevitably result. Things are the way they are because powerful special interests want them this way. These interests aren't going to give up any power willingly. They'll fight to keep what they have, using average people as pawns in their conflict.
The media would play a major role in any such conflict. When Hugo Chavez rose to power in Venezuela, the media establishment was against him. Here's a quote from a 2011 paper about it:
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has established his government throughout the years as an enemy of the private media by threatening them, calling them messengers of imperialism, and funding increasing numbers of powerful state-owned media channels used as an ideological tool. The Venezuelan private media have fought back with many of the same techniques used by Chavez, such as biased reporting and constant political commentary by journalists, pairing them closer to an opposition party than an objective observer. ... This media war is resulting in the destruction of objective journalism, of freedom of expression, and, ultimately, of democracy in Venezuela.
Kennedy's policies would pit establishment media and its corporate backers against him. Picture the negative coverage of Trump in 2016 but an order of magnitude worse. If Kennedy responded like Chavez, we could see new government media enterprises proliferate, with establishment media under constant legal attack. This approach didn't produce a free and prosperous Venezuela, and it's not clear that it would produce better results in the US today.
Kennedy's other option for responding to a big business information war would be to inject public funds into alternative media while attempting to use legal means to break up search and social media giants. In the short term, this would produce an online communities where everything is contested. More fake news. More obvious biases in reporting.
Long term, however, this strategy could result in a more diverse media landscape and fewer Tech monopolies. Even in this best case scenario, things would get very weird for a while. And the might start getting weird soon. As soon as Kennedy starts looking like he has a real chance.
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