The Gutter Art Critic

For as long as I can remember, there has been fake news out there, from yellow journalism to paid advertising made to appear as news.   Advertising itself has in recent years gone to absolutely crazy levels of faking real life so as to make the two virtually indistinguishable.   There is a story by Jon Ronson of a group in England that faked a meteor impact in the country side, a crypto advertising campaign during a soccer match involved a Barcelona player and a spectator that threw a banana on the pitch, the player nonchalantly picked up the banana and ate it before serving up a corner kick, the whole event meant to advertise the campaign against racism in ‘football.’   There are countless of these stories.   In the 1930s yellow journalism spearheaded by the psychopath robber baron William R. Hearst, in a vast conspiracy with likeminded new-aristocrats like Dupont, made marijuana illegal for the next 80 years, only so they could have a monopoly in the paper and tree pulp market.

In light of the inauguration of Donald J Trump as president and the million people marches out there, I’d like to stay optimistic about developments around the globe, yet I find myself sinking back into a realization that we are not experiencing anything new.   The inauguration of both George W Bush and Barack Obama spawned protests and counter protests, all a bit wishy washy, with no clear goals or agendas, littered with celebrity speakers to make the crowds feel good about themselves.   I fear we have not learned much from the past.   I fear that the protests are a simple reaction, not a means to a sustained political and social change.     If we look at Trump’s cabinet appointees, we see that he’s filled it with nothing but business types, some with no political experience, much like Trump himself.   But is this a revolutionary move on Trump’s part?   I would argue the opposite.   Trump is just doing what is considered hegemonic in the current globalist business ethos.   He