The Pandemic Rages and Planet Burns—But At Least We Got to Watch Jeff Bezos D**k Rocket to Space

Corporate media seem a lot more focused on the injustice of America’s stagnant space race then the real-time destruction of the working class and...planet earth.

America is knee-deep into an alarming new surge of COVID-19 infections, and deaths, due to the more contagious Delta variant being fueled by 40 percent of Americans remaining unvaccinated and widespread misinformation engulfing the Internet.

Instead of aggressive coverage of the raging pandemic—including systematically and continually debunking false claims spread by anti-vaxxers and right-wing media—the corporate media recently decided to support disgustingly rich plutocrats and distract us with their “billionaire space race.” 

As the COVID-19 death count stands at 622,000 Americans, social media and tech giants are willingly elevating conspiracy theories and misinformation that led to these deaths while white plutocrats who run these shops sit on their wealthy asses and refuse to take any action or accountability.

While this goes on, the massive wealth gap that’s been been swallowing the working class of America for 40 years continues to widen with billionaires’ wealth exploding by 54 percent through the pandemic.

But what’s corporate media’s focus in this scary and unprecedented time?

Jeff Bezos dick rocket to space.

Or, to be more PC, the billionaire space race. That’s right, nearly a month ago corporate media spent DAYS offering adoring play-by-lay as Jeff Bezos poured in over $5.5 billion dollars for his own privatized, four minute vanity mission to space (and then had the audacity to thank Amazon workers for making it happen).

The narrative created by billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Richard Branson—and elevated by corporate media—was that these privatized space trips represent human exploration, the new space-frontier, and technological advancement.

Unsurprisingly Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post surmised that “the billionaires behind these private-sector efforts have both the resources and the impatience with government bureaucracy to put Americans back in space — where they belong.”

As you can see, it seems corporate media seem a lot more focused on the injustice of America’s stagnant space race then the real-time destruction of the working class and…planet earth.

These “journalists” swarmed the billionaires like moths to a flame to worship these fat cats and their lucrative space joy-rides. NPR ranted and raved about Bezos creating the “space-tourism era,” disregarding the fact that his workers are literally pissing in bottles, shitting in Amazon Prime trucks, and being carted off on stretchers from heat stroke in Amazon warehouses throughout the country.

That same article from the Post went so far as to call wealth disparities and the climate crisis “existential problems” that could be solved by allowing privatized space programs to flourish!

This run-of-the-mill neoliberal propaganda on the climate crisis and wealth inequality is, ironically, what has helped expedite the climate crisis and wealth inequality. To these intrepid journalists, it will be the brave billionaire capitalists who will simply “invent” our away out of planetary destruction and the sinking Titanic that is the American working class.

Of all the cringe faux-journalism, CNN’s Anderson Cooper feverishly fanboyed in Jeff Bezos—donning a Cowboy hat—upon his inspirational return from four minutes in space.

In reality the space race was, and is, a PR stunt for billionaires meant to distract us from our planet's global climate crisis, the ongoing pandemic, and, ultimately, America’s unhealthy addiction to constant economic growth rather than human growth.

Jacobin Magazine writes that these space expeditions are simply a tool utilized by billionaires to attract investors. By drawing attention to themselves, these billionaires and their companies also have a greater chance of securing government contracts.

TRANSLATED: the revolving door of United Corporations of America keeps spinning.

These contracts allow our twisted brand of democratic-capitalism, and all of its faults, to spread beyond our planet.

Moreover, an article in The Conversation attests that, just maybe, humankind should focus on its own earthly problems—COVID, global inequality and wealth disparity, the climate crisis, and political tribalism—before “we litter space” with these “billionaire’s junk”.

So what corporate media is really creating is mass distraction; a distraction formed at the worst possible time. COVID is not going away anytime soon; in fact in places like the United States, where misinformation runs amuck, it’s getting worse and killing people.

In December 2020, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the chief medical advisor to the president, told Americans we would “approach some level of normality” by mid-fall of 2021.

But this didn’t account for massive politicization and misinformation surrounding the COVID vaccine that is causing the Delta variant to ravage America. 

And alternative health news figure Dr. Joseph Mercola are part of the problem.

Dr. Mercola, an osteopathic physician, has built a large Internet following off of bogus claims about the vaccine. His dubious conspiracies include how it’s a “medical fraud” and doesn’t actually work; or that it alters your genetic code to turn your body into a virus-making machine.

Both claims are undoubtedly false but reached over 400,000 people on Facebook. But Mercola is only one small part of the problem.

He isn’t alone in his crusade against the COVID vaccine. He’s part of a group called the “Disinformation Dozen”—who are responsible for 65 percent of the anti-vaccine content on the Internet. The Center for Countering Digital Hate found that anti-vaxxers could reach over 59 million people with their combined following on Twitter, Facebook, Youtube and other social media.

Despite the fact that these accounts have worsened a public health crisis and violated these social media platform’s terms of service, the social media giants have put in minimal effort into stopping the deadly misinformation. The CCDH found that these platforms failed to report 95 percent of vaccine and COVID misinformation on their platform.

So, surprise surprise Zuckerberg and big tech cronies continue to profit off of misinformation—while feigning outrage and aggressive action to combat it— and fail to hold themselves accountable for their platforms enabling of the worsening of the pandemic.

Their lack of action, and enabling the spread of deadly misinformation, has allowed this new deadly chapter of the pandemic that, frankly, seems likely to only get worse.

But, a las, at least we all got to see the joyride of a villain billionaire—who through Amazon has created an economic hunger games—to space.

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-By Christian Maitre