For decades, I’ve felt inspired by a family brocade embroidered with the biblical phrase “Love bears all things.” But, since it is held up by a teddy bear, when I was small and unaware of meaning of this term as a verb, I questioned the grammar. Did it mean to love everyone, including bears?

I’ve given considerable thought over the years to concepts of both endurance and carnivores, actually, and in the mass media world especially. Why, when we all know it is unnecessary, does everything seem to have to be such a zero-sum game? And why, rather than solving for the culprit behind such appearances, do people look, increasingly, to be turning on – rather than supporting – one another on the basis of such characteristics as race and gender?

Not long ago, I could hardly believe my eyes and ears when the now-Associate Editor of the Washington Post commented on PBS about the harms of “whiteness” and, looking up in apparent expectation of an obviously begged-for rebuke, received none. (Doesn’t everyone know by now that so many of the problems being blamed on enormous groups of citizens based on race are really attributable to a Wall Street almost totally unaccountable to any sort of journalism sector?)

Conflict does seem to senselessly be proliferating everywhere, and it is disheartening; but I believe it’s demonstrable new racism is not the answer. We’re trying everything around, and nothing adds up, the frustrated may remark, today. May as well go along with trying and convicting hundreds of millions people who haven’t even been born yet, the hopeless may reply, even as public dialogue about the merger of the stock market and news sectors is mercilessly suppressed. But won’t anyone even consider looking into the role of big media/big agriculture/big pharma/big weapons investment firms like BlackRock and their role in postponing solutions to so many of the world’s problems?

There’s a great deal of discussion about journalistic narratives these days but almost none about the operations (and, crucially, the funding) of news organizations themselves. While almost any media oligarch, it seems, can have a puff piece written about him/herself in the Washington Post or New York Times or People Magazine at will right now, there continues to seem to be practically nowhere to turn to learn about why actual information is, so often, suppressed. There seems to be an almost endless cycle of corporate co-optation and corporate conglomeration, followed by the purchase of celebrity voices where deemed necessary, that would aim to declare check mate and game over to humanity where corporate machinery is declared to have won. (Given the incentives that guide them, as AI advances, are these really the kind of apparatus at which we really want to throw more “compute?”)

I received an interesting email today anyway. Supposedly, after not having immediately requested a share (which would have, I’m told, amounted to an approximately $100 payment) of a class action lawsuit targeting Verizon administrative fees (for how much of my life have I felt hobbled financially by fees levied by such corporations?), I have lost the right to do so. When I inquired about where such so-called unclaimed portions of the suing parties’ unchanged award would be sent, I received a non-answer. While I realize I may sound like a broken record on the matter, this dialogue felt reminiscent to me of having tried, as part of the women’s movement in corporate journalism, to reach out to the Hollywood women who seemed to have so successfully coopted it. And, though I recognize there are significant distinctions – not the least of which being that the team suing Verizon did at least afford customers a short window within which they could make a claim, even if they did not feel comfortable with the timing or terms of the lawsuit itself, where the corporate Hollywood women, so far as I know, never extended any form of olive branch to the women they purported to represent – both felt wrong.

To what extent, I still wonder, is big media actually paying attention to critiques? Was it a coincidence that right after Reese Witherspoon was asked via social media about several high-profile corporate news dismissals, including Jeff Zucker’s, she was featured in a flattering New York Times Magazine spread? Was it also a coincidence that beginning the day I wrote to the Free Press about some of my work and ideas readership of my work increased sharply online (and continues to this day)? Was it a coincidence that not long after I wrote to System Update about the same, asking about the dismissals of Tucker Carlson and Don Lemon, as well as my prior outreach to The Free Press, that Bari Weiss, Glenn Greenwald, and Tucker Carlson all appeared on the Megyn Kelly program on subsequent days? (Was this meant to be interpreted as encouragement that I try again to reach out to her show, rather than expect a reply to my previous outreaches, so that I could be used as a ratings boost for her program rather than simply receive answers to any of my questions?) Have I been discriminated against because I am considered woke, rather than pretend/corporate “woke?” Why would a news leader as towering as Sam Feist at CNN suddenly leave the network and corporate news altogether for CSPAN? Does he expect CNN to falter in the near future? May absolutely none of these things have anything to do with critiques of the corporate media business model? Of course. But they are are questions I’ve pondered, and it simply sometimes feels hard not to wonder about them.

I felt struck in any case, recently, by a claim by an extremely prominent late night talk show host (This host incidentally appeared to express exasperation that anyone would question the health of America’s economic trajectory, declaring that he had just enjoyed a $700 dinner and seemed to believe everyone else should, as a result, just calm down and cheer up.) who asserted that he represented an enormous swath of the American populace (termed, by him, “normies”) with, so far as I could tell, no real evidence at all that this was true. It felt like he may as well have dressed up in some provocatively bedazzled little outfit and performed a modified rendition of some MC Hammer hit outside a corporate journalism C-suite, pleading with them to “Co-opt m-ay!” And it felt hardly worth so much as counting backward from five to see how many moments would pass before a cable news behemoth would seek to publicly lock arms with him in order to share in the spoils of his unopposed claim, however spurious.

Just as a democratic government requires an educated citizenry, a democratic economy requires an informed one, and I, at least, question whether it is possible to have either a democratic government or a democratic economy in the presence of a Wall Street-doped news sector. But how is it possible to raise the issue when practically every even seemingly legitimate voice is scooped up – either voluntarily or involuntarily – with such speed? One of the obvious deficiencies of a transition from democracy to rule by stock market is that unaccountable Wall Street corporations (which they arguably all are, so long as stock market-integrated media corporations continue to dominate) do not need to represent citizens in order to thrive – they generally only seem to need to tend to appearances by buying off celebrities.

I saw an article not long ago about the seizure of Russian oligarch wealth to pay for Ukranian military aid, and, for a moment, wondered, why not seize ill-gotten assets of American oligarchs? Of course, I realized instantly the impracticality of the idea but, really, why not at least talk about what could be termed the distinction between so-called wokeness, to the extent it describes genuinely-held beliefs about equal opportunity, and “wokeness,” or, the corporate version engineered to protect companies’ ability to issue stock once this ability was questioned as part of the women’s movement in corporate journalism? Increasingly, it feels less like political debate is really a fruitful exchange between individuals who feel more called to advocate for either concepts of individual freedom or human equality toward the end of achieving reasonable balance and more like outright conflict between those who are either in on the hoax and those who aren’t. (Problematically, people on both sides of this line have, at times, behaved abhorrently; and I disagree strongly with the idea that January 6 was just another Tiananmen Square.)

I saw an interview recently within which a politician I usually enjoy hearing from spoke of corporate political correctness as if it were somehow self-initiated and sincere rather than a calculated effort to engineer precisely the type of backlash within which we are all steeped now, transitioning public dialogue from an “it’s a shame women have been exploited for so long in corporate America” to a “man, those guys are almost too woke” theme as an inoculation against legitimate and still-unresolved critiques when this is, of course, exactly what they wanted. But to change the narrative from a request for long-overdue credit for women whose innovations and contributions have gone unacknowledged in media for decades to a sudden push for equal outcomes for everyone who has ever been born cannot forestall the former forever.

It feels so important to identify blocks to such progress in the modern era and, perhaps, to better consider some more unexpected forms they can take. So much is made, of course, of the most obvious: intimidation and silencing. But, what about bribery? This is the tool that seems to be used most often in the suppression of solutions and progress for the world today. But it can be so difficult to identify looking outward.

As a person very grateful to have been brought up surrounded by lessons about spiritually advanced teachers and teachings, I realize I have in some important ways arguably been much more privileged than even so-called corporate Hollywood “nepo” babies. And I’ve taken pause over the years when pondering the life trajectories of so many beautiful people who, having experienced the same, went on to lead extraordinary careers including such stars as Elizabeth Taylor, Audrey Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe, Shirley Temple, and even Robin Williams. Every one of these contributed performance after performance in their careers that entertained and brightened the experiences of countless audience members, and I do not doubt that each rose to such heights as a result of expressing good qualities; but, sometimes, I wonder whether any of them could potentially have been called to an even higher purpose. I realize this is an extraordinary thought, given that each did fulfill an extraordinary purpose but, especially where Hollywood fame is involved, I often wonder when observing such phenomena, whether what I am seeing is truly gold or just the fool’s gold meant to prevent the higher purpose from being fulfilled.

“Give me liberty or give me death,” we’re reminded so often to declare. But what about the arguably more modern and more prevalent questions “give me liberty or give me a million dollars?,” or, “give me liberty or give me, did you say, a billion dollars and a well-connected publicist?” Can I get back to you?”

I continue to wonder about how to most helpfully raise the question of whether a stock market-fueled journalism sector constitutes an overall harm to the world that would cloud what would arguably be the easier recognition of such propositions and remembered, recently, an analogy shared by a mentor explaining why he did not indulge in caffeine. When confronted with the argument that the drug can be considered a sort of rocket fuel for people, he dissented that, actually, it isn’t. At least rocket fuel, he argued, adds energy to a machine, whereas all caffeine does is rearrange the ways in which energy is released and in ways that go against natural systems.

But, just as I certainly do not request that the world give up caffeine, I do not propose that the effects of stock market forces be phased out of every sector of society – only looked at fairly and, if practical, separated from the journalism sector as fully as possible.

Lately, and out of nostalgia, I suppose, I have been listening to a great deal of popular music familiar from my childhood and, as trite as it may sound, do believe the quality was markedly better. But how could this be viewed as any sort of surprise given the ways in which corporate forces have transformed the music industry? How likely is it that an artist that happens to have joined forces with a telecommunications or even a credit card giant will also happen to be the very best?

Of course, corporate changes to pop music can easily be metabolized by a society with access to independent options and even changing tastes. But corporate changes to pop news are a different story altogether. Social cohesion erodes when everyone seems to be operating from echo chambers of different facts and, just as the merger of the stock market and journalism sectors seems to have, perhaps irreverseably, jeopardized the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency, even the English language’s status as the world’s reserve language appears to be at risk.

Several years ago now, I watched an Elon Musk interview in which the inventor and entrepreneur described his reasoning in purchasing the social networking site Twitter and his decision to take the company private. And, while I believe I understand both the cases for and against doing so, I felt the way he characterized the type of organization he wished to avoid becoming – a profit-maximizing demon from hell (major themes were not put delicately) – was actually a better way of describing worst-case scenarios in corporate news operations.

The United States, while imperfect, was, of course, was founded on the dual principles of freedom and equality; and securities-issuing organizations based in the country should arguably be expected to optimize for the furtherance of these goals. To the degree that they do not, such securities, I believe, could reasonably be considered, essentially, parasitic machines. And any parasitic machine – and particularly those that lose mission-oriented founders and whose brand names, like some free radicals, are left to the devices of boards of directors commanded to maximize shareholder value or brand equity will arguably always optimize for undesirable qualities in figureheads as corporations tend not to have founding documents or check-and-balances governance structures designed to prevent such devolution.

The question of the hour, in my opinion at least, is whether disentangling the journalism sector from Wall Street would be enough to make a dent in the considerable challenges our country seems to face as a result of the formation of this partnership in the first place. And, as I have written at length and on numerous occasions, I do believe that making this separation, which would in theory help turn many formerly (but now only nominally) news organizations back into journalistic ones so that they might cover the rest of corporate America would be worth it. (Just imagine there finally being a wolf turned on Wall Street.) And, while one may rightly be wondering whether there aren’t now numerous new media organizations that are not traded on the stock market but that benefit massively in terms of power and profit from status quo corruption and the prevention of the communication of solutions, and I do believe the answer is yes, I also feel the transformative rewilding that would, hopefully, result from disentangling the stock market and journalism sectors would still be more than worthwhile and may even help either reform or phase out many such actors.

Still, in an information ecosystem so changed, even though numerous stock-issuing companies would be likely to quicken efforts to at least appear to better prioritize noble goals, it will remain important to remember, regardless of how they style themselves, and whether they continue blackwashing or not, what corporations really are: grizzlies.