RE: You Want To Hear The Other Side To That of The "Mass Media"?
Sorry for the loss. May he RIP.
& yes, I understand your point of view fully.
To what extent should a government control things?
However, we do vote our governments in and one of the biggest problems with that is a lack of information, a lack of integrity among the people in the media branches and most of all the fact that the people "running for a position" are willing to bend over backwards most often than not to get the vote, rather than do what is right, no questions asked.
If you have noticed, the bulk of the issues are arising since "career politicians" started taking over in politics.
Before this, we used to choose people who have proven their qualities and abilities through the course of their life in the fields that they were active in. Now we have almost nothing but those who have never earned a dollar that didn't come out of a tax payers pocket!
That says more about the problems than anything else.
I'll give you another "Amen!" on that @jackmiller. You are "talking" with someone who was actively involved in politics, at the grassroots level, for 6 years in the late 1980s / early 1990s - a District Leader over 42 precincts. I left when Bill Clinton was elected as the first "progressive" (how do our philosophical adversaries manage to "make off" with words like this?) President of the United States.
When asked by family and friends "Why?" I replied that too much of what had unfolded (including a historic defeat all the way "down the line" across much of the country, including the remarkable man I wrote about in my Liberty: Land of the Free, Home of the Brave - Col. Leo Thorsness) reminded me of what I had read many years before in the classic history of Adolf Hitler - The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. It created a lifetime memory to read the details of how the German people freely elected to power a monster ...
My point? Simply that "we the people" still have the power to change the course of our countries. But ... We do not. Lots to be said after that, as to why the famous Benjamin Franklin answered a question about what form of government the Constitutional Convention had created with, "A Republic, if you can keep it!" ...
Bottom line (one man's opinion ...): We have the government we deserve ... As a Christian, I can turn a political "conversation" into a spiritual one quite easily ...
P.S. A somewhat related side note: In this fascinating "world" of our Steem blockchain, I have had a number of interactions with people in Venezuela. Remarkable to me, as a clear example of what I have written above, is that we Americans are actively engaged in electing our next President, when a number of them espouse the same basic ideas that led Venezuela to where it is today ... Key question: Are the Venezuelan people allowed to own guns?
Self defence is a human right.
The tools needed for self defence should by default be a right too, otherwise people are literally 'lambs for the slaughter'.
Again, a logical equation.