The utopian visions seldom get up the first couple of rungs up the ladder before realities cut the legs out from under them. The redistribution of wealth envisioned in communism only achieved the brutality of dictators because the reality was the old order of empires was imploding into the century of world wars brought on by the industrialization of markets and the creation of a middle class.

The utopian dream of a free and all-inclusive internet suffers from a similar reality of implosion of markets into the neoliberal cancer of multinationals gobbling each other up to stay marginally solvent.

Noam Chomsky, speaking of America’s post-Cold War (the last, and most lucrative of those three great wars) hegemony, said the only place you could find the truth was maybe the last pages of the Wall Street Journal. Because markets sort of have to know what is true, or else they’d be working from pure speculation.

Lindsay DeFrates’ column (May 23) is right. Such disenfranchisement makes it imperative we relearn to listen, decipher from multiple sources. But as well as clearing browser histories, it is important to acknowledge where we are evaluating the data from within the overriding reality of are day: markets imploding toward the survival mechanism of monopolization.

We’ve become the inadvertent outcome of all this, an addict called a consumer. It is a codependent relationship, each side’s identity completely subservient to the others needs. We also must admit our own branding to have ears to hear.

Eric Olander

Glenwood Springs