If you are not mad as hell and disgusted beyond the pale, at the growing corruption of our American democracy by corporations and government… If you don’t find yourself more and more frequently day dreaming about the clear and present need for a peaceful revolution in the interest of ‘We the People’…

A revolution in the interest of what our forefathers intended for ETHICAL American capitalism to be: Free enterprise that is first and foremost diligently PROTECTED FROM predatory monopolies, that have as their primary agenda the eradication of competition, and the destruction of the ‘American Dream’ for the poor and middle class…

If you are in neither of those ethical mindsets right now as an American, then you are either:

A.) Not paying attention because you are just too overwhelmed with your THREE or FOUR jobs just to pay the rent, utilities and put food on the table (and hopefully pay your Netflix bill with what’s left over) or…

B.) One of the millions of conforming SHEEP with little to no moral principles upon which you are willing to speak out about and take a stand on. As such, you are exactly who these corrupt corporations and corrupt elected officials are COUNTING ON for the continuation of their corruption.

Recently, during a discussion with a friend about the
mind blowing degree of corruption of our current internet and social media monopolies, it hit me like a lightning bolt that what we need to create to begin an effective revolution for ‘We the People’ is first and foremost, what you might call an ‘ALTERNATIVE INTERNET’…

You’ve most likely heard of the ‘dark net’…Well it’s time for us to create what I’m calling, for lack of a better term, the ‘GOOD NET’…A re-structured, alternative internet entirely and restrictively designed as our forefathers intended for American ‘free enterprise to be’…FOR THE PEOPLE, and not to be corrupted by mega corporations who have replaced ethical Capitalism with what is best referred to as ‘Corporatism’.

Sorry all of you far left wingers out there who think Capitalism is a bad thing by nature…It is not. Unregulated, unbridled Capitalism? Yes I would agree with you. But Capitalism required to operate by ethical regulations designed by the working and middle class is the best model ever invented to raise people out of poverty…hence the wonderful “American Dream” so many wish to experience.

I had a conversation with another friend of mine recently who is in his early 30s, who was lamenting the destruction of many ‘mom and pop’ small businesses by the huge ‘big box’ and ‘big internet’ companies like Walmart and Amazon. He made the inaccurate comment out of frustration, saying, “Well I guess there’s nothing you can do about it, because that’s just Capitalism”.

I reminded him that was in fact not the case, but that our forefathers went out of their way to define the need for anti-trust protections for the common man and small farmer/merchant/business owner in the U.S. Constitution, and subsequently by Congress with the passing of the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890.

But these fundamental protections for true equal access to ‘free enterprise’ have not just been forgotten, they have been AGGRESSIVELY and DELIBERATELY IGNORED by a growing majority of corrupt members of Congress and many Presidents in the unethical, anti-democratic interest of being sold out to those huge corporations who have bought them off.

Back to the first conversation with the other friend I mentioned…We were discussing how the internet was envisioned and championed to be the great ‘equalizer’, but how we can see now that it has quickly been corrupted by giant monopoly corporations led by the hugely dishonest practices of Facebook, Google, Amazon and many others I could name here, who are now being exposed on a daily basis for their predatory, corrupt behavior and/or massive violations of their users’ privacy and personal data, etc.

I read a recent Sacramento Bee story about how Buzzfeed is having to lay off something like HALF of its work force due to an inability to compete profitably with Facebook and Google who are monopolizing almost all of the advertising dollars.

As you may know, over the last 2 years, Buzzfeed has surprisingly been credited with doing some powerful and effective journalism (despite their unfortunate, hard to take serious name) in exposing the corruption of the Trump Presidency – stories having to do with his extensive cooperation with Russia and Vladimir Putin, much of it during his campaign while he was actively HIDING his efforts to get Putin to approve a Trump Tower deal in Moscow.

In addition to what I described above regarding an alternative internet entirely designed to protect FREE ENTERPRISE for the working and middle class, it is just as necessary for a redesign of an alternative internet designed from the jump to protect REAL JOURNALISM and FREEDOM OF THE PRESS that is dying a painful death in front of our eyes.

Many reading this right now are addicted to the current ‘status quo’ and don’t have the principles or conviction as a concerned patriotic American to want to fight the corruption of that status quo. You really believe you have collected hundreds of ‘real friends’ on Facebook. (Truth is you MAYBE have 2 or 3 friends.)

As I’ve written about and said before, a more accurate name for Facebook that captures everything about it would be “FAKE BOOK” . Facebook has you fooled and you have let them do that to you willingly. You should know better. As such you are complicit in this growing danger we face.

But the good news is, despite those character devoid sheep, there are a lot more of us who DO have the desire to fight the corruption of everything our forefathers intended for Americans with regard to access to the American Dream, personal privacy, free speech and real freedom of the press.

We have been watching…We have been keenly and painfully aware of all of those fundamental tenets of our American democracy, as outlined in our nation’s founding documents, being destroyed systematically right in front of our eyes, while too many Americans are distracted playing ‘Candy Crush’, and are just happily signing away all those sacred freedoms so they can feel ‘connected’ to ‘fake friends’ and have free apps to play with, etc.

Then there are those of you reading this who are thinking that there is no practical, effective way to create such an ‘alternative internet’. You would be absolutely wrong.

There are actually at least a couple of different ways that it can be created, and we better get busy and find an investor or two with the expertise to get it going.

Time is of the essence, because now that everything has gone digital in our new tech reality, and from the growing threats we are well aware of with the current corrupt internet by the giant monopolies of social media, our ‘We the People’ democracy and our genuine free press is at risk of soon becoming nothing but a NOSTALGIC RELIC, much the same as newspapers and shopping malls… All replaced by ‘WE THE TECH CORPORATIONS’ (Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple. Verizon and AT&T)

Nothing is free. Walmart should have been stopped in their tracks by our strong antitrust laws put in the U.S. Constitution by our forefathers and by Congress with the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, all done for the express purpose of preventing the predatory practices that Walmart admittedly set out to do to small business owners.

But politicians didn’t have the interest of the working or middle class and small business owners primarily in mind…they had the interest of huge mega corporations primarily in mind, who promised to take care of them with a quid pro quo arrangement in perpetuity. And too many Americans just cared about getting a lawn mower for $30 bucks cheaper than they could get it from their neighborhood hardware store. Who cares if it wouldn’t last even half as long.

Now, Walmart’s predatory model is seen as somewhat ‘quaint’ by the likes of online predatory corporations like Amazon and others. Like the title of the book says, that came out exposing Walmart’s agenda to destroy small businesses, there is a HIGH COST to LOW PRICE.

It’s time to wake up to these truths and get busy with a new ALTERNATIVE INTERNET of the people, that is VICIOUSLY PROTECTED by the democratic principles upon which our nation was founded. It’s time we began to stand up to this monumental corruption on steroids. There is no excuse that we’ve allowed it to go unchecked this far!

There IS a way, and that way is an alternative internet that will block from the beginning, any and all giant corporations that are identified as part of the threat to ‘We the People’.

Would we have to ban all corporations period? Not necessarily.

But there will be a “We the People’s Commission” in charge of deciding whether to approve any business that has more than 50 employees, using a strict waiver process to identify that they in fact are not operating with a ‘predatory agenda’, they share our values, and can be trusted to be committed to our democratic principles.

Such larger companies, and on occasion some approved corporations could receive a probationary waiver. However, if at any time they are reported by any of our users as engaging in standard predatory behavior that we are now well aware of from Facebook, Amazon, Google and others, they will be banned from our new internet universe.

On this ethical, alternative internet, will you still be able to spend all day on some alternative version of Facebook while you are at work, and waste away the hours playing some alternative version of ‘Angry Birds’? ABSOLUTELY!

But the alternative versions will be, get this…TRUSTWORTHY and not stealing your personal information, secretively monitoring everything you do online, and where you go because they are tracking your phone, all in return for your use of their product.

F#%K all those predatory social media monopolies! They are destroying EVERYTHING that is critical to the pursuit of happiness for the poor, working and middle class…They are depending on you and I being powerless, addicted to, and totally dependent on them! As I said above, right now some of you reading this already have in effect, happily “sold your soul” to these social media giants.

The massive dumbing down of this country that we’ve seen in the media over the last couple of decades has been part of this corrupt ‘Corporatism’ agenda. And that dumbing down has resulted in many Americans being fooled by the subtle con that these social media mega corporations have been running.

While they convinced you that you were getting all kinds of stuff for free, you didn’t realize the truth behind the con…YOU ARE THEIR PRODUCT…YOU ARE THE COMMODITY THEY ARE SELLING. And you are rapidly losing your coveted personal privacy and independence as a person.

The internet was supposed to be the great equalizer to this rampant growing corruption, but ironically it has become the GREAT TRANQUILIZER, due to being allowed to be controlled by MONEY and these corrupt corporations that do not have the people’s interests at heart, unless of course you happen to be one of their elite stockholders.

Yes, there is a way to create a new alternative internet with a new ethical internet protocol that would by design BLOCK those corrupt monopolies from having access…

A new ethical internet protocol that, in order to gain access and be a user in good standing, requires submitting completely to the democratic values of our U.S. Constitution that guarantees a free press, free speech and free enterprise protected from predatory monopolies, i.e. ‘The American Dream’.

Yes, it will take a little time to get it up to speed, but not as long as you might think.

The plans are in motion…the search is already underway for the right partners and coders. If you have thoughts and ideas on this, I hope you will share them.

There’s not a lot of time to waste, we can’t keep silent, and we can’t afford to be apathetic any longer. This new tech internet age requires a new ETHICAL, democratic redesign of the internet…

It is clear that this MUST happen to preserve what our forefathers’ intended for this country to be about…”WE THE PEOPLE”. We are facing a clear and present danger of losing that ‘American Dream’.

It’s time for an ETHICAL ‘TECH REVOLUTION’ for we the people, that cuts out and excludes the anti-democratic, predatory corporations BY DESIGN.

Connie Bryan

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(Connie Bryan is a writer in Sacramento, CA. Check out all of her material on her website and blog at www.conniebryan.com)