Trust Me. Would I Lie?

I love my job because I can change the world with the power of my words. I may inspire some and infuriate others. Either way, I’ve touched them. I’ve made them think. I’ve made them feel even if the feeling is nothing more than indifference.

If I only reach one person, I’ve had an impact on their life and changed a tiny piece of their world. For the better or the worse only time will tell. After all, every great grassy plain once started with a single blade of grass.

I am an Internet Content Creator. Granted, a relatively unknown one at the moment but that will be changing soon enough. I’m in the process of legally establishing a tax paying media company and have seven websites in the works, funding permitting.

It’s something I’ve been thinking of doing for quite a while, even before the internet actually existed. The inspiration started to germinate within me back in the 1980’s when I realized, like a bolt of lightning, that the mainstream media doesn’t tell the truth. It’s agenda driven. They lie.

You see, there was this investigative news program that had a segment about ‘Dangerous unsafe trucks on our highways!’ The lede for the segment showed a tractor-trailer truck swerving all over the road as if the driver were drunk. The problem was that truck was being driven by my father, an independent owner/operator, and he definitely was not drunk nor was he operating in an unsafe manner.

My father, now 91, remembers the incident – A white van cut him off while he was traveling across a highway in Western New York; the van was swerving all over the road and radically changing speeds; the back doors were partially open with an object stick out (the camera). My father thought the van driver was drunk, but he wasn’t. They were setting him up to get a video for their story. Fake News before fake news was a thing.

Neither my father nor I actually saw the show but when a dozen people over multiple states come up to you and tell you that they did, it raises questions and concerns. This was in the 1980s before the internet and the video recording we have today. I’m not even sure what weekly show it was since there were many during that period, but I’ve been looking for it. It could’ve been 60 Minutes, 20/20, 48 Hours, 30 Minutes, Dateline, etc.

My father’s rig was a unique looking piece of equipment, which is probably why they picked it. It was a 1967 Freightliner COE (cab over engine) painted appliance brown, the color of a stove or refrigerator. We painted it in the backyard garage hoping for a more copper color. The chrome and aluminum trim were acid-washed giving it a more whitish look than usual. We painted the 40’ steel hauling trailer the same color, trimming it off with a yellow cream-colored stripe and side kit.

This truck also had a V-12 Detroit diesel engine that we salvaged and rebuilt out of a junkyard. That engine was fairly common in construction equipment like bulldozers but very rare in tractor-trailer rigs. It was one of the most powerful and unique sounding truck running up and down the highway.

Needless to say, both the truck and the driver were fairly well-known in the trucking industry and the regional area of operation. They nick-named it ‘The Copper Kettle’ and also ‘Shit on a Stick’. It was a unique piece of equipment, so when people familiar with it tell us they saw it on TV there isn’t much doubt they did.

My father, William Duncan, is a Korean War veteran. He enlisted in the US Air Force immediately after graduating high school and served one year, 1949. This was right after World War II and there was a one year enlistment option since no one was really interested in joining the military at the time. The war was over. We had won.

He had every intention of re-enlisting in the Air Force but wanted to come home for a few months first. When he did go into town to re-enlist the Air Force recruiter was out to lunch and the Navy recruiter across the hall suggested he enlist in the Navy instead, so he did with a 4 year enlistment. Technically, he was still in the Air Force but they transferred him to the Navy and allowed him to skip repeating basic training. It took a few months for the paperwork to go through and then the Navy sent him straight to school.

While he was in Naval training to become an Air Controlman, the Navy equivalent of an Air Traffic Controller – the guy in the tower at the airport controlling all the planes, the Korean War began. That conflict ended in 1953 before my father’s enlistment ended. He was in the conflict from the beginning to the end.

Being an Air Controller is the best job in the Navy. You never have to go out on a ship; you work 8 hour shifts; you have no other duties except your shift; and can live off base in your own apartment if you like. You have to be an intelligent, competent, and a reasonably solid person to even qualify for that job. People’s lives depend on your every word.

After completing his 5 years of military service William could’ve gotten a job at any airport in country, but he would’ve had to live in or near a city to do that. He was a small-town country man and the city is not where he wanted to be. He chose trucks instead. He chose the adventure of the open road.

Except for the military service, trucking is the only life he knew or wanted to know. He retired from driving at the age of 82 with over 58 years of experience doing a job he loved. He used to say ‘I would be out here doing this for nothing and I’m just thrilled people are actually willing to pay me money to do it.’

He was a professional who prided himself on being a professional. Yet, here was this media company portraying him as a drunken, dangerous, and unsafe driver? Broadcasting that to a national television audience? That was insulting. That was disrespectful.

Although many encouraged him to file a lawsuit he just let it go, moved on, and quickly forget about it. That’s the type of man he was. I didn’t forget. It was always in the back of my mind. They lied.

A few years later, in November 1992, an investigative news program called Dateline ran the prime-time feature ‘Waiting to Explode’. It was a story about how GM pickup trucks could explode on impact due to a faulty fuel tank. Millions of people tuned to see if they and their families were at risk.

The problem was NBC Dateline rigged the trucks to explode on impact. An investigation showed the truck exploded six video frames before the actual impact. Over 22 junkyards in Indiana were searched by GM to find the remains of the charred pickups used in testing. GM sued and NBC Dateline was forced to admit they lied.

Of course they lied. The media did the same type of thing to my father a few years earlier.

The 1990s were a chaotic time here at home in our semi-rural county. The largest employers were closing up, shutting down, or moving away. Hundreds of people were losing their jobs. There was a Rails-to-Trails controversy pitting property owners against hiking trail enthusiasts over the now abandoned railways. There was a county-wide property tax re-assessment and a contentious debate about merging and consolidating the local high schools.

To top it all off, the districts Congressman was proposing to build a $6 million riverfront park in an area that already had a riverfront park, complete with an amphitheater named after himself, of course. The whole thing boiled over into a Home Rule Charter movement to replace County government with a new form of governance. People were angry.

The local newspaper editor was an angry ‘Get off my lawn!’ old man preparing to retire soon, seemingly terrified of change and lashing out at the world. He was adamantly against every position that wasn’t in line with the status quo. He was vehemently against the Home Rule Charter movement.

He began using the local newspaper as a propaganda tool. Every story and editorial was slanted to support his positions. Bad news was buried or omitted entirely. Good news was highlighted and glorified. He wasn’t being fair or totally honest in reporting. He had an agenda and a narrative to promote. He and I had a few unpleasant exchanges about it.

He actually turned things personal by publishing character assassination attacks on the people he considered the trouble-making ringleaders. The final straw for me came when the newly constructed pavilions in the new $6 million riverfront park were vandalized, followed by a lengthy and nasty editorial rant against people in opposition to his positions, whom he publicly blamed for the vandalism.

Within a week the police arrested the children responsible for the vandalism. It had nothing to with any of the issues in question. It was just children being children. The editor then wrote an editorial acknowledging his mistaken blame, but it wasn’t really an apology. He turned it into an editorial justifying and doubling down on his positions. I was so infuriated I canceled my subscription to his newspaper.

The Home Rule Charter eventually failed at the ballot box, somewhere around a 70% to 30% vote tally. The old editor had prevailed on every issue he supported. Looking back on it 25 years later I still believe he was wrong on every issue. Nothing here has changed for the better. The county has remained in a state of strong and steady decline. For me it was a lesson in the power of propaganda and pushing an agenda by controlling the narrative.

The last example I want to leave you with happened in September 2004, two months before the Presidential election. CBS ran an exclusive story critical of then President George Bush. The story claimed Bush shirked his National Guard duties in the late 1960s and early 1970s and presented documents to prove it.

The problem was the documents were fake. Some were typed up using Microsoft Word, which has a unique font and didn’t exist until decades later. The signature of the commanding officer who supposedly signed the documents was a forgery. The man had died over 15 years earlier, again, before Microsoft Word was even invented.

The ensuing scandal forced CBS News anchor Dan Rather to resign. Rather admitted the documents were fakes but insisted the story was still true. They lied. They did the same thing to my father years earlier.

At this point I could give you literally dozens of more recent and current examples of ‘Fake News’ that I’m sure most of you would be familiar with, but I won’t. If I did I’m sure many of your heads would explode in anger. You’re still too invested and caught up in it all. Also, my story probably wouldn’t be accepted on Vocal Media due to the community guidelines, that part about a happy, safe place.

Let me tell you that the ‘Fake News’ is coming from both the Left and the Right. The stories are being shaped and slanted to fit the agenda and desired narrative. The truth be damned, they’ll lie when it suits the purpose. It’s dividing and having a very negative effect on our country. It’s creating an ‘Us vs Them’ mentality that won’t end well.

It doesn’t leave much room in the Center for a Libertarian like myself. If fact, I see no Center ground. I became a Libertarian in 1984. Ronald Reagan was running for a 2nd term as President. Having some very strong conservative views and some very strong liberal views, I voted for the Libertarian candidate. Later, I was a Libertarian candidate for public office and managed to receive about 23% of the vote.

I believe this lack of Centrist ground could leave an opening for me to start a media company of my own. I intend to be a tiny little island surrounded by a sea of angry partisanship and Fake News. It’s something I can get passionate about, that dream job to fall in love with like my father fell in love with his trucks.

I know it won’t be easy. Trust me, this is not a good time in our society’s history to be an unemployed, 56 year old White male. No one wants to hire you. You don’t fit their profile, their agenda, or the narrative of the story they want to tell.

Funding will be a problem. Those lawyers needed to help with incorporation, accountants for bookkeeping, and web hosting services will all want to be paid. The IRS will want their quarterly payments in advance too. That’s what brought me to Vocal, the chance to win some prize money. A fair chance is all I want.

I estimate I will need about $10,000 to $12,000 to comfortably do this. I currently have $3000 from investing $600 of a stimulus check into the stock market. A stock market information site is one of my planned websites. Let me tell you about them without giving too much away.

1. A Stock Market information website. I spend a few hours every morning reading through SEC filing, looking for my targets. I see so many new investors posting in forums that have no idea what they’re doing but they think they do. I was there myself once during the late 1990s dot com bubble. I lost it all with one bad investment.

Most of the current Stock Market information sites want subscriptions of $100 or more for information that is already publicly available for free. They’re just repackaging it and leaving their novice investors with no guide on how to actually use the information.

This is planned to be a subscription website with some free content. If you had 1000 subscribers paying $15 a month you would be making $15,000 a month, or $180,000 a year. That’s basically what Vocal Media is doing with your $9.99 monthly subscription.

2. A video music channel with new content weekly. The idea is to monetize through one of the many ad services, such as Google or Yahoo. A successful website here should earn around $30,000 per year.

3. A tropical fish website. I have a background in the tropical fish industry, both retail and wholesale. I think we could make an entertaining weekly channel. Again, we are targeting $30,000 per year through monetization.

4. A sports and satirical sports website. I get so tired of seeing every sports related story morphed into social commentary. I’m more of a ‘Shut up and play!’ type of person. Let’s stick to the scores and action on the field.

5. A media call out website. I’ll have the most fun with this one. When people start putting false and misleading information out there and try to pass it off as real news, let’s call them out on it. Let’s expose them for the partisan propagandists that they are.

6. A site covering local town council meetings. This will be the most expensive one to do and will have a fragmented user base. There will be 10 to 15 viewers here, 10 to 15 viewers there. The trick will be putting them all together and attracting a few national advertisers along with local advertisers. Sort of like what your local newspaper does.

7. An occult, mystic and supernatural related website. This is a nice little niche. Let's take a fresh look at 'Witchcraft' and see if we can explain some of it through quantum physics and psychology.

Sound interesting? Well, you can help make dreams comes. Go ahead and hit that ‘Send Tip’ button. Maybe we’ll be able to get this thing rolling sooner rather than later. Remember, the only job worth having is a job that you love.