{"id":223437,"date":"2016-02-10T17:47:03","date_gmt":"2016-02-10T17:47:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=223437"},"modified":"2016-02-10T17:47:03","modified_gmt":"2016-02-10T17:47:03","slug":"kochs-ghostwriting-united-states-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/kochs-ghostwriting-united-states-story\/","title":{"rendered":"The Kochs Are Ghostwriting the United States&#8217; Story"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p><span class=\"wf_caption\" style=\"margin: 5px; float: right; display: block; max-width: 400px; width: 100%;\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin: auto; float: right; width: 100%;\" src=\"http:\/\/www.truth-out.org\/images\/Images_2016_02\/2016_0210koch.jpg\" alt=\"(Image: Jared Rodriguez \/ Truthout)\" width=\"400\" \/><span style=\"text-align: left; margin-top: 3px; display: block;\">Progressives need to fight back with their own &#8220;metanarrative&#8221; against the tall tales of the right-wing. (Image: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/truthout\/9415761283\/\" target=\"_blank\"> Jared Rodriguez<\/a> \/ <a href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/truthout\/9415761283\/\" target=\"_blank\">Truthout<\/a>)<\/span><\/span>Gather round for the word of the day: metanarrative. Definitions vary but let&#8217;s say it&#8217;s one big narrative that connects the meaning of events to a belief thought to be an essential truth, the storytelling equivalent of the unified field theory in physics.<\/p>\n<p>Now use it to define what&#8217;s being done to America today &#8211; our Big Story. Journalist and activist Naomi Klein did just that a couple of weeks ago <a href=\"http:\/\/billmoyers.com\/story\/naomi-klein-climate-change-not-just-about-things-getting-hotter-its-about-things-getting-meaner\/\" target=\"_blank\">when she and I talked<\/a> at Finger Lakes Community College in upstate New York about the Koch brothers&#8217; resistance to the reality of climate change.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;\u2026The Charles Koch metanarrative &#8211; and he&#8217;s said it explicitly &#8211; is that he is challenging collectivism, he is challenging the idea that when people get together they can do good,&#8221; she said. &#8220;And he is putting forward the worldview that we&#8217;re all very familiar with that if you free the individual to pursue their self-interest that will actually benefit the majority. So you need to attack everything that is collective, whether it&#8217;s labor rights or whether it&#8217;s public health care or whether it&#8217;s regulatory action. All of this falls under the metanarrative of an attack on collectivism.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.truth-out.org\/opinion\/item\/34772-the-kochs-are-ghostwriting-the-united-states-story\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Progressives need to fight back with their own &#8220;metanarrative&#8221; against the tall tales of the right-wing. (Image: Jared Rodriguez \/ Truthout)Gather round for the word of the day: metanarrative. Definitions vary but let&#8217;s say it&#8217;s one big narrative that connects the meaning of events to a belief thought to be an essential truth, the storytelling [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":223438,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-223437","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223437\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/223438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}