The problems produced by the corporate media are the hardest to combat. They are protected by the first ammendment, and this is more legally important than the problems the media causes. These problems include extreme shallowness over things such as clothes, attractiveness, corporate censorship, and excessive care over inconsequential material objects. The shallowness i speak of is caused through the attitudes of advertising companies and of tv show characters, and especially in the content of fashion magazines. The entire idea of fashion is, in my mind, an extremely shallow and commercial thing. It is just a group of designers deciding what people should wear that year, and then marketing it as a "fashion breakthrough". This is also true of many ads; ads market products by simply showing attractive people who supposedly use this. This is not only indicative of the shallowness of this industry, but of the American consumer. These products may be completely worthless, but simply because they may have a more attractive spokesperson, they have great revenue because ignorant people buy products based on the subliminal message that people who use this product will become like the spokesperson himself, or herself. The combat of shallowness in the media and society in general is a hard issue, because the first ammendmant, rightly so, protects the press. The entertainment industry based in the media will most likely not change it's content, but the news industry most definetly would with the correct stimuli. If the government, partnered with citizen groups, would issue incentives to news companies to run real stories and give actual equal time to candidates, or even if enough people eimply withdrew monetary support from these stations until policy was changed, there could be a drastic change in the bias and lack of content in the media. There will still be bias, as the media is run by human beings, and human beings all have views which will, purposefully or not, run together into almost all communication, especially in the news industry.
Another problem that faces the US is the problem of security. President Bush has attempted to address this through forming the Department of Homeland security and taking away our fourth ammendmant rights.The department of homeland security is and was a good idea, but the abolition of our rights is not. The patriot act may quite easily produce even more enemies of the US out of our own citizens, angering them to the point of rebellion and terrorism. This is clearly not a course we wish to take. The way to defend our country from terrorists is to stop aid to countries supporting terror, not countries tied to al quaeda through nothing but rumor and suspicion. Afghanistan was a step in the right direction, because it scared osama into extrem secrecy. Now, we must squeeze other countries known to be helping al quaeda or other terrorist groups such as saudi arabia, iran, and pakistan.Another policy that would help security would be a sort of gun control law. A gun control law that did not punish law abiding citizens for the crimes of violent criminals, but at least makes it harder for these criminals to obtain these weapons. A complete gun ban would be a bad idea, as it would not stop criminals from getting guns, as they are commonly obtained illegally anyway. I propose a partial gun control law. This would do several things:First, it would ban sale of assault weapons(uzi's,AK's, sawed off shotguns, under 8 gauge shotguns)to anyone who does not have proof of membership in the US military or the SWAT team. These weapons can serve only one purpose:to kill human beings. This is the function of the army and SWAT team. It is true that it is sometimes necessary to kill in self defense, but a .2 gauge shotgun or an AK-47 is not necessary for this. The only purpose of weapons that powerful is to carry out military or guerilla style attacks. Another measure that I would propose is one limiting gun owners to owning no more than three guns. It is true that this hurts collectors, but is it more important to appease hunters who have a gun for each type of animal and collectors, or to protect the people from violent criminals and terrorists by making it harder to obtain large amounts of weapons? This is not unconstitutional, as it does not ban guns completely; anyway, since when have high powered special ops weapons been required for a standing militia? Felons convicted of violent crimes such as rape,murder(of any degree),or armed robbery should not be allowed to purchase guns of any type. Laws effecting in policy like this would greatly improve national security, especially agains gang violence.