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Comment by lateforwork | Hacker News Reader

It began with Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. Since then, we’ve been steadily drifting toward an oligarchy. As oligarchs gain control of the media, they shape the narrative and decide what citizens hear, pushing people to rely on foreign outlets for the truth.

Soon, understanding what is truly happening in the United States may require turning to foreign outlets like the BBC.

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Soon is sooner than you think. This week, I had to download a bootleg copy of a banned 60 Minutes segment.

I don't think 60 Minutes has been honest / independent in at least a decade if not longer. As an institution it's been in a long steady decline like media organizations in general. This latest chapter is just continuing that trend imo.

And yet, they're doing reporting on the administration that's too dangerous to air. That tells you where we are — anything but outright Trumpian sycophancy is being actively attacked in the United States.

People say this but the rot goes back to the founding of the US constitution. The founding fathers absolutely hated democracy and the idea of the bill of rights (see the elites that wrote the constitution voted down the idea immediately when raised, it wasn't until multiple states threaten to not ratify was it included (yes if saying elites wrote the constitution is an attack, please tell me how the local baker in New York could have left his job unpaid for 4 months to go to Philadelphia to help advocate for what they believe in?)).

Every single right we have is the result of constant struggle by the people dragging society forward at the defiance of the elites.

I mean look at something like Shay's Rebellion and read what the elites thought of it as the time, people were fighting back against actual tyranny and they were scared of the peasant revolt hurting their profits they had to rewrite a constitution that removed emancipation from over half the population while keeping all the actual control (creating the Presidency, courts, and senate while only giving the people one single house) for themselves.

I'm honestly amazed we have as many rights as we do now. It's a testament to humanity's innate desire toward freedom and this freedom has always expanded beyond what society claims to be capable of.

Your claims oversimplify history: the Founders designed a republic to avoid direct democracy's pitfalls like mob rule, not out of hatred, while the Bill of Rights emerged from Anti-Federalist pressure as a ratification compromise crafted by Madison.

This nation was literally founded upon slavery, if anything you have the simplified version if you can't see the massive disenfranchisement and the opposition faced by the elites for every right that was won for the citizenry.

We have not been “drifting.” People who benefit from the consolidation of power have been pushing the US towards oligarchy.

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