StarCat/CatStar

from the aristocracy. How different was that from the monarchies from all
previous nations from the dawn of civilization to the newly minted United States
of America. In fact, was little difference between US democracy and the
autocracies over countless previous millennia, regardless of how their
governments were labeled.
How then are the people convinced that the US has a democracy? At first in this
new nation the media was limited to the territory surrounding wherever the new
printing presses were located. Readership was a small minority. Much later,
radio came into being and it was soon followed by movie theaters that would
show short news briefs. And whom do you think controlled these new forms of
media? Of course these were almost exclusively controlled by the wealthy elite.
Soon after World War II, newspapers, radio, the movies, and then television were
controlled by a new class of intellectual elites subservient to the wealthy
elite. This new class soon became the masters of propaganda. Edward Bernays,
nephew of Freud, switched from being a populist to an elitist and first major
advocate of controlling public opinion through skillful use of the then emerging
forms of media to propagandize the masses. Propaganda became a vast new
industry which now virtually controls what the people of nations across the globe
will believe about what is going on in the world. There are very minimal sources
presenting alternative news. This is now a new perfect way of controlling peoples
everywhere. They can shape whatever ‘knowledge of the world ’ the these
propagandists allow the nations of the world's’ populaces to access. From the use
of non-disclosure, as in the beginning of the US, to a brief period of having to use
police force to contain huge public demonstrations, to the current omnipresent
televised propaganda, the wealthy elite have found ways to keep the general
public in the dark about real happenings around the world and to control the
belief systems of entire populations using modern media’s masters of the art of
propaganda.
In conclusion, if democracy is impossible in the modern world, what new form of
government could supplant both democracy and various forms of tyrannical
autocracy. As a cockeyed optimist, or rather idealist, I would propose something
resembling a more truly democratic innovation that in some limited sense
resembles the ancient Greek City States.