The Satanic Meme

What happened to the Byline?

News to a large degree has never told “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth,” but that became even more challenging with the takeover of newspapers to form giant, global news corporations. It’s been hard to keep up with who owns who and the fight for journalists to retain their autonomy against their corporate owners, with their political affiliations, is all but over. Investigative journalism is a rare bird these days and the byline has all but gone the way of the DoDo.

News started to blend with opinion and the old practice of having three confirmed sources to verify a story before it could be run, also seems to have been left on the side of the road, except for the very few old school editors who are, sadly, a dying breed. Opinion is now apparently news, but that’s hardly surprising because when you watch some of these news channels they present their opinion programs in much the same way as the news programs themselves. They are formatted to look and sound identical. It’s a sleight of hand, and eventually we were all lulled into a zombie-like state and begin to believe that what we are hearing is news, and not just opinion.

I believe part of the problem is news began to be perceived as dull. Certainly the news in the UK I grew up with, which was far more informative back then, than it is now, would be considered as dull as ditch water in the way that it was presented. Over the years, news became glitzier, stories became soundbites and the use of scandalous headlines as carrots to keep you tuned in grew and grew. How many times have you heard the “And coming up in the 9 o’clock hour….” only to discover you have to keep watching or listening for another hour and half before they get to that piece of useless gossip.

Then opinion-formers were being invited to comment on factual news stories and before you could blink opinion became news and news became entertainment. And let’s face it, to the vast majority of people, opinion is far more entertaining than factual news. And if you can convince them that what they are watching or hearing is fact then you’ve got them by the nose.

Then the internet - yes, it actually gets worse - came along and disrupted the news industry even further. The broadsheets, even those owned by large corporations are struggling to make ends meet in the face of the so-called ‘free’ internet. Social media corporations such as Facebook and X are now the most dominant dispensers of ‘news’ fodder worldwide. Then the algorithms kicked in and the masses were being fed what they wanted or thought they wanted to hear. News, just like the justice system in the US is so politically-biased it isn’t any wonder why we’re living in such a divided society. We cannot see the wood for the trees, because the ramparts of information have been intentionally built up around us so that we cannot see over them, except to hear the war cries of the ‘enemy’ on the other side. I will concede that there are still some news programs, podcasts and journalists who are still putting out largely unbiased information. I use the word ‘largely,’ because I’ve listened to podcasts by individuals who I think are trying their best, but even they are biased on specific issues because of their own cultural, religious and geo-political backgrounds.

But, the vast majority of the population isn’t reading news, even if it were legitimate. At best they are reading opinion, but at worst they are reading memes, which are being pumped out by the millions on a daily basis. There are actually morons who do nothing with their lives except generate thousands of memes a day to see if one will stick and go viral. Going viral means money, success and surprise, surprise getting hired by political campaigns to generate more memes on their behalf. It’s hard to get my head around how far we have managed to go down the political toilet, when elections are won and lost, not on policy, not on governance, but on memes.

Memes (and ‘news’ tweets without substance) are viruses, which easily infect the split mind and in the political arena they are designed to deceive and manipulate. Would you accept the kind of lies, duplicity, and rhetoric which is acceptable from our politicians, law enforcement agencies and a bent politicized judiciary, in your personal relationships? We seem to shrug off political hypocrisy and rhetoric as if it’s just the cost of doing business with these people. We allow law enforcement officers, under the law of the land, to lie to suspects in order to coerce them into false confession and a judiciary which interprets the law through the lens of the politicians who appointed them. Has this behavior become worse over the decades? No, but it now exists in plain sight. It has become acceptable as long as the side we’re rooting for wins. If the other side does it and wins, then that’s corruption, then it’s unfair, then you have a right to get all bent out of shape. The war cry of “It’s fake news,” is wearing thin, but it’s an easy war cry when legitimate, investigative news has been replaced by politicized news as opinion, and of course the satanic meme. We are now supporting political parties in the US, like British football (that’s soccer if you’re American) hooligans in the 1980’s. If your 10-year child behaved as badly as some of our political leaders you’d probably give them a timeout. Instead we put them on pedestal and elect them to the highest offices in the land. But, the worse part is we are all being manipulated and deputized to turn against each other, by these self-interested fuckwits.

We are in the midst of a perfect storm, where politics, culture, religion and technology are controlling and being controlled by the media. Yes, you read that right. “Controlling and being controlled” sounds like a paradox, because it is. And worse than that, we now have politicians, political aides and their appointees who own social media platforms feeding us ‘news’ from these platforms. Hmmm? And those who own the other platforms, who weren't appointed, are seeking a slice of the action by way of massive and lucrative government contracts. These people would sell their own grandmothers for God’s sake and they’re running the joint. Someone please bring back SPITTING IMAGE. We need more satire to survive this bullshit!

And it gets even worse! Now enter, stage left, AI - artificial intelligence. The speed at which all the above will progress is going to be frightening. And this my friends is a pivotal moment. Watch this space.

All governments are corrupt one way or another. In the US, the left is as bad as the right and there are those who believe the new president-elect is here to change all that, to shake things up, so to speak. I’ve even read that some people in the New Age movement believe he is a Lightworker. At the negative end of the polarity there might be a nugget of truth to this, but that does not mean he is an anointed leader as some believe, but that is getting into some very complex esoteric teachings of how the Hierarchy operates.

Magicians fleece an unsuspecting public by means of distraction. In the same way, black magicians manipulate magnetic light to appear as enlightened masters, and politicians create hot button issues or an enemy within or outwith to distract from the real issues which they actually support.

In my article on LEADERSHIP under the heading of INTEGRITY I wrote:

The adage “as above, so below,” also applies to “as within, so outwith.” In other words, the inner motivation and the outer action must match. They must be seamless or at least be striving to find the balance where they mirror each other. When they oppose each other it is called hypocrisy.

So, if you think any of these people are your political saviors, the saviors of your country, or the planet, you are dead wrong - in my non-newsroom opinion!

There is no doubt we need a shake up of the old guard. But, I believe the new guard about to take office, has one aim and that it is accelerate the use of AI and the only way of doing that is a coup d’état (of sorts) of the government by the private sector i.e. by Big Tech. And it may well be what the old guard wants as well. It’s just another way they hold onto power by appearing to lose it to an ‘outsider.’ I do not believe that behind closed doors the British Royal Family is much less powerful than they were when they still had control of the military through their own purse. The balance of power appears to have shifted to a democratically elected government, but I’m not so sure we have the whole story on this yet. And that’s not to say that they all bad, either.

Illegal immigration* and competition with China is there, in my opinion, to distract from the real issues and to deregulate and gut many government agencies. Deregulation will also allow many of these same people to line their own pockets and consolidate a vast amount of power now and even more so in the future. In my article MOVE FAST AND BREAK THINGS, I discussed Big Tech’s “move fast and break things” motto as a desperate need to pip China to the post. In order to do this it will insist that deregulation is the only option and along with that will also come the demand that AI and crypto cannot have any guardrails because it will inhibit innovation and slow progress. As an aside, Trump’s change of heart on crypto, other than personal gain, may well be a fuck you to the Federal Reserve, too, which he has little control over. His initial thought that crypto was a scam has proven largely true so far. But, as always, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. The net result of winning at all costs will inevitably mean that we lose even more privacy and the right to not have our information monetized by Big Tech. Corporations developing AI, as I’ve already discussed in previous articles, are making themselves indispensable to the future of the defense industry. Even OpenAI who swore off military involvement using their technology has just backtracked and done a deal with Anduril - there’s a surprise! All the so-called liberal tech giants are showing their true colors - not blue, but yellow and green. There is one thing for sure, most government agencies which get in the way of these plans will go bye-bye along with most of those which don’t benefit members of the Big Tech club - the rest of us will be joining the Zippy and Bungle Club. They will, of course, not gut them all. They have to show a little care, because the masses wouldn't back them if they didn’t pay some lip-service to the groveling masses, even if they don’t really mean it.

* I am not suggesting that illegal immigration is a non-issue, although they only account for approximately 3.2% of the total US population. However, what I am suggesting is it is being used as a distraction from more serious issues relating to the ruthless profiteering by Corporate America/Wall Street and the consequences that that has had on the wider economics for the vast majority of Americans. And if it were an issue why aren’t they going after the employers of illegal immigrants and fining them? Here is my prediction: the Trump administration will make a big hullabaloo in the first 100-days, rounding up illegals and corralling them into camps, then they will quietly drop it, while still running the videos on replay, giving the impression that its still coming down hard on illegal immigration. The problem Trump faces, is the corporate CEO’s and farmers want to use them to make bigger profits. They are some of the hardest workers there are, often holding down three jobs at a time. As a result of the initial round ups, food prices will spike, and they won’t come back down again.

And here’s the pay off, finally:

It was inevitable that Big Money was never going to be satisfied with political influence alone. The rapid pace of technological innovation gave them the means to make themselves indispensable to the point where they could step into government positions under the guise of saving trillions with AI, and deregulation for their pet projects and toy businesses. Eventually they will run the government - Big Tech will be the government of the future and AI will be its tool. There are other issues, around the topic of religion which I am not going to go into in this article. But, they are equally as disturbing as everything I’ve written here.

I understand the need for identity and political identity and even supporting a sport’s team are powerful forms of identity structures. On a lower personality level we all have that to some degree or another. Until Betty (Queen Elizabeth II) popped her clogs I was much more of an anti-royalist than I am now. However, upon her passing, I realized just how many people need the Royal Family. It is what anchors them into their British identity.

My advice to anyone reading this is step away from these identities. News, particularly news-as-opinion will never give you anything close to the truth. Cultivate the garden of your own intuitive faculties and get the answers for yourself, by keeping you own counsel. Do not allow the weeds to grow, especially not the weeds planted in your consciousness by someone else who cares little to nothing about you. And for fuck’s sake do NOT read memes!

Gavin J. Chalcraft is an artist and CEO/Executive Producer at Golden Ratio Media Group, a film, television, and theatre production company. Prior to working in the arts, he owned and ran Isosceles Consulting, a global brand development and management consulting firm.

*** Gavin Chalcraft and Golden Ratio Media Group, Inc. strictly prohibits the use of any generative AI software to upload and analyze any material attached to or contained in these Substack posts. ***