Bye-bye Miss American Pie?
Parikia, Paros Island, Greece, January 25th, 2017
Salaroche


The path towards a China-like country-wide censorship by way of a Russia-like suppression of freedom of information has already started in the United States. The neo-Duce Donnito Muso-Trump keeps ordering US Government agencies to refrain from publishing any updates or new information on Social Media or providing it to the press in any shape or form.  

The latest agency to receive such gag order is the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) which is on its way to vanishing into total irrelevance as Trump gears up to inflicting a slow death on it by bleeding it out of funds.

This follows in the steps of the gag order imposed on the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) whose scientists and staff were ordered to keep any new scientific findings or information to themselves, basically isolating the agency from the American public.

This is just the beginning folks. A couple of years down the line the US may as well be included in the list of countries like Turkey, Ukraine and Morocco, where freedom of information is in clear decline, or perhaps even included in the list of countries like Angola and Algeria where the citizenry is kept totally or largely in the dark.

But you have to hand it to the Trump coterie. Those gag orders are quite a cunning move from the part of Trump’s neo-fascist gang, even as its provenance is not difficult to trace. The acrid smell of it has the familiar stench of intellectual rot that usually billows out of that foul well of American antidemocratic thinking which is the Petri dish for creatures of the Steve Bannon type.

Since total suppression of US Press publications at this early stages of the administration could not be implemented, quashing any interaction between US Government agencies and the US Press is the second-best option, although for all practical purposes the dire consequences of the one or the other are equally ominous for American Democracy.

Such move, however, does not hide the fact that journalist intimidation is already on its way to some sort of nationwide censorship sometime in the future. During the anti-Trump demonstrations staged on inauguration day, four journalists were arrested simply for witnessing the riots, even as they showed their Press credentials to the police officers. Now those journalists have been handed felony charges that if convicted carry 10-year sentences and tens of thousands of dollars in fines.

Is that journalist intimidation or what?

There may soon come a time when American journalists simply refuse to report on anything that goes against the administration’s official stance for fear of any government retaliation. Do you remember that shameful chapter in the history of American journalism when hardly any national news outlet dared to question the Bush administration’s bogus reasons to invade Iraq?

Well, brace for the next similar or worse such chapter coming your way, except that this time the dire consequences will not only be seriously detrimental to the country’s foreign policies, but will also turn domestic policies dangerously upside down.

What will it take for America to wake up and smell the coffee? Particularly when the political concoction presently brewing already smells so bad?  Is anyone still contemplating the times ahead as rosy-colored for the US and the world at large? Are you NOT reading the clear writings on the wall?

Across time, America has been often likened to a pie of opportunities for personal betterment where everyone had the chance to help themselves to a slice of it. American Democracy has largely been at the heart of the great American Pie. Don’t let the next four years be likened to the day the music of American democracy died. Don’t let the world end up singing “Bye-bye Miss American Pie”.

Salaroche