Message To Democrats From Juice Man Who Wanted To Be US President

Normally, we hate being made to feel small. We can’t stand to be reminded of our insignificance, we get affronted and resentful. What if 2020’s discomforting experiences lead to more a proactive citizenry that manifest something rather wonderful? Those of us who consider everyday life with a philosophical eye, the last 12 months reminded us the easiness with which the many are governed by the few, and the implicit submission with which Americans resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers. When we look into it more, we find that, force and numbers are always on the side of the governed, those in power only have opinion to support them. It is therefore, on opinion alone that government is founded, and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments, as well as to the most free and most popular. To know the true reality of yourself, you must be aware not only of your conscious thoughts, but also of your unconscious prejudices, bias and habits. Unfortunately, there is simply no way of providing factual, ‘unbiased’ answers to the really big issues facing societies.

News organizations that vaunt their neutrality forget that neutrality is simply impossible vis a vis the really urgent questions confronting our civilization. The word ‘bias’ ultimately simply alludes to the business of having a ‘take’ on existence. One may have a better or worse take, but one needs a take. One needs eventually to tackle the question of what is important, just, worth striving for. If news or information or even philosophy are to matter to us, really matter, they will have to be presented to us by organizations that have tried to think through the ends of human life, that have a vision of where we are trying to go as a species, and that have somewhere articulated their answers to their audiences. The issue is not – therefore – the illusory and timid one between bias and fact but between better and worse varieties of bias.

Jose Franco is a self anointed Brooklyn "Public Intellectual"