As for the election: With the tsunami of blaming that has flooded us since last week, what are we to think? Blame the Democrats for not figuring out the U.S. electorate? How about the electorate for not figuring out what it has to do to survive? The reality is that the Trumpified U.S. electorate has moved far away from a grounded political center, a center the Harris campaign had an excellent grasp of and laid claim to. 

No, the biggest factor in fact was the relentless impact of the rightwing media in an environment in which lying and deceit are now considered OK. Add to this the even more critical role now of online social media platforms, including the dubious Elon Musk’s reconfiguring of Twitter as X as an openly pro-Trump vehicle of influence.

The so-called mainstream media has done plenty, as well, to shape an overall environment in which Fox News and others on the far right have been able to shape the mindsets of millions.

The major media are controlled by six multi-national conglomerates whose shareholders have a generally unified shared interest that is reflected in the overwhelming predominance of news coverage. These news organizations walk a formulated line of false “objectivity” while shaping an environment to the benefit of their owners.

So, the so-called mainstream media, their relatively more toxic rightwing siblings and especially social media platforms like X can indeed be blamed for this electoral outcome, as they would have in 2008 with Obama had they been as prepared as they’ve become in the meantime.

In the last century, every edition of the New York Council on Foreign Relations’ annual report had as its only appendix a listing of major U.S. newspapers and other media, state by state, with information on their ownership and political slant. This was obviously used to capture all forms of the sharing of information and opinion, which was clearly successful.

The losers in this game? Everybody but the oligarchy, in America and worldwide, sitting on top of the process.

Add to this the oft-forgotten reality exposed in Orwell’s “1984” about how totalitarian regimes control the minds of their subjects. That is, the powers control both sides of the argument. In “1984” this included the underground opposition. Tyrannies set the point and the counter-point alike and win through the exhaustion of that fight. 

In this election, could the Democrats, ostensibly acting on behalf of all “others” besides the oligarchy and its allies in our society, have done things differently this time around? Not without selling their collective soul.

The messaging was flawless. So were the main policy issues. Biden continues to be one of the most effective presidents of the U.S. ever, better than LBJ and up there with the likes of Abe Lincoln and FDR. But now it’s going to take decades before that is once again understood. 

Of course, thanks to the media, Biden’s historic economic achievements got translated such that they were perceived as failures by millions.

On a global scale, the whole last period has been dominated by Putin’s obsession with Ukraine, and the heinous war crimes that he’s perpetrated there. Losing Trump’s ability to hand over Ukraine when Trump lost re-election in 2020, Putin resorted to one of the most criminal, bloody aggressions imaginable with a full-force military invasion. 

It wasn’t going well for him, so Putin orchestrated the equally abominable Hamas invasion of Israel 13 months ago, Hamas being a Russian asset operating through Iran. The subsequent horrors in Gaza perpetrated by the oligarchy’s friend Netanyahu is still owing to Hamas for using innocent Palestinians, the people they claim to represent, as shields.

But make no mistake, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has as its clear objective eventual control over all of Western Europe.

The task before us now is one of damage control and a longer-term very serious commitment to restore the brain cells of America. It is a moral challenge like none we have faced since the days of the Holocaust. This is not a struggle between “left” and “right,” it is between up and down — between the better angels of our natures versus the dark ones.