Years ago, Kodak, a long-forgotten company that was once the superpower of photographic film, came up with a brilliant marketing phrase: “The Kodak Moment.” There are very few marketing phrases that withstand the test of time. “The Kodak Moment,” however, made it into the American lexicon: “an occasion suitable for memorializing with a photograph.”

No one could have imagined or foretold that mighty Kodak would one day be relegated to the “dustbin of history.” It was all because of a change in the marketplace. The Goliath of film was slain by a tiny David: a  4” phone that took digital pictures.

Fast forward to 2022. Elon Musk bought 100% of Twitter for cash. Twitter was all his and he could do anything he wanted with it. One of the first things he did was to examine the extent of government influence. The ensuing “Twitter Files” made clear that Twitter had been an arm of the federal government. It had been used to reinforce government positions and squash dissenting opinions. Twitter censorship got so bad that a former president, Donald Trump, was banned from its pages.

Our government, which was created to be “of the people, by the people and for the people,” had clandestinely and purposefully morphed into a propaganda machine used to kill free speech. Musk, explained the obvious, “If you don’t have freedom of speech, people cannot make an informed vote. If they are just being fed propaganda and there is no free speech, democracy is an illusion.”

This wasn’t the first time the government was found to be “massaging” public news. Over several years, starting perhaps as early as 1960, our government had increasingly commanded the alphabet networks, ABC, CBS, NBC, as well as multiple cable outlets that sprang up in the ‘70s and ‘80s, to parrot government talking points. There are many examples to be found where newsreaders all across the country recite from the same script, saying exactly the same thing. What a coincidence!

In effect, the “mainstream media” was nothing more than a propaganda arm of the government. It spit out “government approved” news while ridiculing and limiting opposing views. Anyone in opposition was severely chastised. The typical treatment was to be labeled a racist, homophobe, election denier, or any number of derogatory tropes designed to marginalize the speaker. The “free press” was a hollow shell, a Wizard of Oz full of bloat and bile.

The marketplace noticed.

As a reminder, the marketplace is where all voluntary human interaction takes place. The marketplace started when humans appeared on Earth. It came long before money or countries. It is the counterpoint to big government.

The lesson for government is no matter how hard it tries, how tightly it squeezes, people are going to talk, even within the worst dictatorial systems with the biggest prisons.

People talk. It’s what we do. In the final analysis, you can’t stifle human nature. We “buy” truth and in time, reject what we see is bull. If the marketplace won't buy, the government, or any other entity, can’t sell.

This is what happened to Kodak. They were selling film while the marketplace was buying digital. The Kodak moment we are seeing today is not a picture, but rather a paradigm shift of how the public gets its news. We ain’t buying what the mainstream media is selling.

Twitter, now X, is the new sheriff in town. It is cleaning up the lies and propaganda the old order has been spewing for far too long. Just like the iPhone, no one imagined this would happen until it did. History has shown the marketplace always changes in the most unexpected ways. We can now see that those who bet on the mainstream media were sadly mistaken.

Image: JD Lasica