This week, the major commentators for sanity in the U.S. were mightily disappointed when, at the proverbial very last minute, it was announced that a settlement was reached in the Dominion Voting System’s $1.6 billion lawsuit against Fox News.

Some sadly jaundiced observers noted that “money is everything” when it comes to just about anything in our culture these days, and therefore the settlement outcome came as no surprise. It is true that had a full trial ensued in front of a very interested American public that the extent to which Fox News had knowingly distorted and misrepresented the outcome of the 2020 U.S. presidential election, in particular, the result would have been truly explosive, and could truly have been the undoing of Fox.

But still, it is argued that all the proven facts of the case had already come into the public view through pre-trial depositions and that the only real matter to be decided by the court had to do with the level of Fox’s knowing intent to lie.

Nonetheless, it remains that the service this lawsuit, had it been carried out in court and with daily major news coverage, could have provided to the American people was beyond enormous in the effort to heal the nation’s divide over Trumpian/Fox alternative realities and the truth.

Sadly, we will not enjoy the benefits of that, and what it could have done in this desperately needed healing prospect, not this time, at least. There are those who are espousing the case for the enormity of the victory for the forces of truth, nonetheless, in Fox’s acceptance of the terms of the settlement, just under a half in dollar terms of Dominion’s demand for $1.6 billion in damages.

They also argue for how this opens the door for more suits against Fox going forward. 

But in reality, this was one of the most important opportunities the forces for truth, to put it simply, have had to strike a blow against their enemies. It could have have been of vital interest to the global forces in the struggle between the rule of reason and its democratic objectives, against those of its opposite being held up not by Fox alone but by cynical global forces, the same way they always have for eons, for imposed ignorance engendered against deluded masses.

There is simply no way to overstate the importance of this. What Fox’s Rupert Mordock and his ilk seek is little less than a “New Dark Age” to cast its pall against the advance of universal reason, the explosion of potential on this lonely planet for the fulfillment of the potential of evolved human minds for us all.   

For the average person, this is an astonishing goal, which would stand in the way of everything that science and progress in the last millennium has brought us. World Wars that have annihilated hundreds of millions of educated peoples on this planet in the last century or more are nothing compared to what today’s purveyors of unreason and social divisions are seeking now. Donald Trump and Rupert Murdock are part of that hateful faction, as is Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

But they can and must be stopped. They still do not have the hearts and minds of an overwhelming majority of amazing human minds on this planet. They get their way through deceit and lies. 

Therefore, it is more important than ever that their deceptions be exposed for what they are, and that Fox news and their ilk be brought to swift justice, if not legally, then in the minds of the public.  

As always, they count on the ability to buy their way with the American people, the way that money bought the settlement in the Dominion Vs. Fox suit.

But the question for us all is whether that will remain the standard by which American justice and morality move forward in our culture. It is not an insignificant question. On the contrary, it is the most important question that confronts us as a people.

Our enemies are counting on their old ways of buying allegiances to hold onto power at our expense. But can they?