The government that you continue to let have advanced notice of the story that you’re saying in case there’s something that they wouldn’t like you to publish? The anonymous intelligence sources you continue to give cover to? The bullshit partisan hackery you spit out night after night after night, what state secrets are you revealing? What actual journalistic work are you doing? 

This is why we call journalists scum. Like, motherfucker you are the mouthpiece of the state! The government needs you to sell their lies. You are the one who obfuscates power. You aren’t expendable, you are the one who is necessary. You aren’t going anywhere, you fucking tool.

And these assholes– the ones who guarantee their primetime tv slot by molding their views and their voice to what the networks and their corporate overlords and the bankers and the US government and all it’s spooky apparatchiks want you to hear– these are not the people who will be persecuted. No, they get promotions. They get awards. They get celebrated. They get retweeted and liked and byline and byline and byline. They climb the ranks and they shape the shit that is now permanently lodged in your fucking brain that they pathetically sell to you as ‘the news’ and you’ve pathetically convinced yourself is the truth. 

No, the people who get persecuted are anyone who dare question the United States war machine, who dare reveal any of the coups, the assassinations, the innerworkings of the security apparatus, the well-funded networks of fucking so called democratic political power, the abuse that millions suffer at the hands of the US military and all the paid off NGO’s, the corporations, the war lords, the cartels, the sexual abuse, the rape, the murder, the towns that we’ve bombed to oblivion, the countries that we sell off to the highest bidder, and all the governments that we demolish, like what we do every day, every day, every day. Those are the people who will be prosecuted. 

People like Chris Hayes have fucking secured their spot, they’re not going to be attacked. He is not going to be arrested. And now they sit back and the fucking fake concern for Assange like, “oh what this means for the free press! oh no what this means!” No, this has nothing to do with Assange, or WikiLeaks, or anything WikiLeaks has revealed. This is about the media’s precious industry, which is dying, ironically because of the very corporations that they continue to cover for. They are eating the newsrooms alive.

And you know what? The public is right to fucking despise you. They are right to despise you for the obvious bootlicking and all your brazen careerism, for years of covering up the lies, and all the obfuscation of how real power operates in this country. Like selling the wars, and the PR campaigns of the State Department, and running fucking interference for the bankers, and all the politician’s bought off by the bankers, who stole all the jobs, and all the homes, and all the fucking futures out from under the world. How many bloggers, who are now call themselves ‘aspiring journalists’ or I guess what you’d now call ‘professional opinion-havers’, how many out there look up to the Chris Hayes’ of the world and their career arc? How many stare longingly at the fucking New York Times op-ed page, at the shiny bylines and the prestige publishers, at the fucking social power that comes with the fawning adulation of their peers, jealous of their little positions in the clout hierarchy of the media machine? How many of these content producers, editors, self-appointed political taste makers, take-havers, tweeters and– guess what? Yes, fucking podcasters– how many of them just want these precious fucking spots? What would they do, what do you think they would do, what do you think they would they sell you, to get one of those spots? Do they even fucking realize when they do it? But how many of them look to the man, how many will even fucking publicly support the man who is literally currently being tortured, who will die of starvation or maybe madness, or maybe he’ll just simply be kicked in the fucking skull in the damp basement of a super max prison in the middle of fucking nowhere because he dared to temporarily embarrass our highest ranking officials and mildly inconvenience the functionaries of the American empire’s unstoppable machine.

Who are you going to fucking look to?

Digital artist Daniel Voshart recreates the ‘real’ faces of Roman emperors thanks to machine learning. You can learn more about the process, discover more emperors or buy a poster here.

[Marcus Aurelius]

[Lucius Verus]

JARED CAMPBELL BADGE 8740 OFFICE OF ACCOUNTABILITY (206)684-8797