I returned to the United States in December to spend time with family and enjoy the Christmas season in wonderful winter land Minnesota. My mother lives on fairly secluded corner of a large lake so there were no daily urban walks as I had been accustomed for the previous eight months in Latin America. Instead, I settled into a slow month of indoor activities including an extraordinary amount time watching television - daily news, football and a few reruns from the golden years of its inception.
Extraordinary, because I haven't watched television in decades. Why? Because the media embodies a powerful force that's designed to coerce and steer the collective narrative. It's difficult to detect if you're born and raised within a TV culture like the US but very apparent if you step away for a few months - I invite you to this experiment and see for yourself. I choose information from multiple sources (domestic and international) with the highest degree of neutrality possible. So, it was interesting to test my hypothesis within the context of a country I had been absent most of the year. In other words, I was able to observe the contents of television through a neutral lens magnified by the residual of culture shock that affects every long term traveler.
The results - slightly shocking, exceptionally Orwellian, but not completely unexpected.
Obviously, the local and national news are the largest purveyors of the official story and that narrative is delivered by just six media networks. All of whom are owned by publicly traded corporations holding a fiduciary responsibility to return quarterly profits for their shareholders. This means the news is essentially privatized and needs to reflect and promote the agenda of its owners. And why wouldn't it? This is America - it's all business, all the time.
So, as much as you've been conditioned to believe the media is 'liberal' (whatever that means) it is definitively, not. Any doubts, read corporate law and/or the methods in which wall street operates.
And that's just the beginning. The tainted message or 'necessary illusion' transcends the entire media landscape including shows, movies, sporting events and ubiquitous advertising (aka propaganda) running 24/7. Ultimately, all of it becomes magnified within the echo chamber of social media platforms. The mechanics of their techniques are sophisticated, repetitive and heavily reliant upon emotion to reinforce the Zeitgeist. The net result - a society that supports and believes in a system that does not reflect their best interests and in fact, works against them.
Yes, it's powerful.
How else do you justify the following?
The fever pitched support of an economic system that has stolen 50 trillion dollars from the 90% who built it?
A one party system that's operated by and for the corporations while running Kabuki Theater to convince the masses they are actually two looking out for their best interests?
The egregious proliferation of a pharmaceutical industry that's been fined billions for unlawful and deceptive practices leading to millions of deaths including the recently celebrated Pfizer Corporation - fined 2.3 Billion for fraudulent marketing in 2009?
A secondary education system that indenture students for life while delivering four years of information in the form of a degree that reinforces and justifies the debt they just incurred?
A military that receives hundreds of billions annually, wastes 25% of the money secured, is essentially for profit and increasingly privatized even though it functions within a 100% tax payer funded socialized construct antithetical to the free market system it claims to defend?
A heavily subsidized food industry producing toxic products that ultimately drive its consumers toward a privatized health care system that's owned and operated by wall street profiteers who are continually bailed out by the very tax paying public they poison?
A 30 trillion dollar national debt built over the same 50 year period that ushered in a 50% tax cut for corporations and the rich enabling both to purchase Treasury Bonds which collect interest on the debt through middle class taxation?
In a functioning Republic, this would be considered Theft by Swindle. In today's America, it's call Neo-liberal economics and celebrated by those who benefit.
I could go on but you get my point. As the saying goes, the only difference between being uninformed and misinformed is that one is your choice, the other is theirs.
Turn off the tube, free your mind, think for yourself!
““The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error seduce them. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim. An individual in a crowd is a grain of sand amid other grains of sand, which the wind stirs up at will.”
Gustave Le Bon