Sliding down the razor blade of life brings its usual thrills and chills. Occasionally, they take time away from more enjoyable pursuits. This is one of those times: a 2,000-mile junket over hill and dale (sorry, Dale) for all the usual reasons. More on that later. Maybe. Meanwhile, rather than leave you and the thousands of other medicated and slightly bent followers, I’m reverting to my Radio Roots with the old “Golden Oldie” bit; a 3-year-old scribble that racked up more reads than any previous post. ICYMI, know that the contents are even more true today. If you remember it, meaning you’ve been here that long, thanks. Another look will be good for you!
BW
It’s Always the Media
In this Age of Finger Pointing, Blame has become the most popular pastime from Elementary School to the Board Room to Congress and the White House. Personal Responsibility is following the Do-Do Bird, Hula-Hoop, 8-Track, and Floppy Disc into extinction.
At the root is Aggressive Ignorance, a real national pandemic; Public Education has been rightly cited as a Carrier. But a lackluster education, with which so many fellow citizens have been burdened has a simple solution: Curiosity and Effort. Rather than struggle with the Dewey Decimal System, rummaging through musty stacks of dead-tree books, a simple Google or YouTube search instantly brings a tsunami of articles, references, videos explaining Everything about Everything.
So why does Aggressive Ignorance persist?
Because Google, YouTube, X, Drudge etc., are News Aggregators, not Reporters or Networks initiating stories we call the “News”. ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, FOX, NPR are the Media sources for News. And if the Media doesn’t report it, citizens don’t – and most often won’t - know it. When diagnosing the Aggressive Ignorance infecting the public, the Media is always to blame.
Always.
What about politicians?
It wasn’t National Geographic that observed “Leopards don’t change their spots”. As far back as the Founding Dads, one would be hard pressed to find a politician with his integrity intact. The romanced versions of Washington, Adams, Jefferson & Co. gloss over their hypocrisy in violating their vaunted principles. However, compared with those who populate the DC Swamp of the Logic Free Zone today, the signers of the Declaration were damn near saints. But they were still politicians, and, in this analogy, politicians are just like leopards.
Daniel Webster put it this way: “There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.”
There was a time when the media pulled no punches. Newspapers and periodicals fulfilled their role as ‘watchdogs at the gate’, to warn, inform, and occasionally entertain the public.
Around the beginning of the 20th century, that began to change. Newspapers, then radio, television, cable and satellite TV “news” conglomerates morphed from ‘watchdog’ to ‘lap dog’; from serving the interests of the public by reporting scurrilous skullduggery of politicians corrupting “Liberty and Justice for all”, to creating smoke screens of Fake News to cover up the crimes committed against the same people the media was to protect with legal armor of the First Amendment. Today, citizens continue to suffer increasingly with a more virulent Aggressive Ignorance; the carrier is always the Media.
Eventually, Aggressive Ignorance leads to lost freedom and lost rights.
In the concluding chapter of “Last Rights; The Death of American Liberty”, Jim Bovard explains how it happens:
“Each lost freedom becomes a domino falling against all the remaining rights and liberties. Secrecy and censorship spur a deadly political spiral. If the media is cowed into silence or turned into political accomplices, citizens are unlikely to learn of proliferating abuses. If there is no freedom of information, government officials can fabricate perils to frighten people into ever greater submission. It then becomes easier to justify expanding surveillance, thereby deterring people from voicing criticism or even expressing wayward thoughts in emails. Once dissent is stifled, rulers can contrive pretexts to restrict or prohibit protests. Suppressing evidence of rising discontent enables politicians to further aggrandize their power. Citizens may not recognize the totality of their oppression until it is too late to resist.”
Secrecy and Censorship cannot exist without Media accomplices.
You wouldn’t have read this far if you didn’t love Freedom and your “inalienable rights” of “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness”. Ignorance is your most lethal enemy. It exists through the culpability of the Media.
“'In the end, we will conserve only what we love; we will love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we are taught.' Baba Dioum
The Media - whatever its platform - is our ubiquitous teacher. Censoring the challenges to our freedom, the Media is teaching us to hate the things we love; to misunderstand them, and to ensure they will not be conserved, but eradicated.
Do you “recognize the totality of [your] oppression? Is it “too late to resist”?
Well?
BW
The media is a joke. In San Francisco and the Bay Area, the media tend to get their camera gear stolen while they are on the street reporting. The media pretty much keeps to the studio and reports from the countryside nowadays.
A 2,000-mile road trip? Are you driving to California seeking paradise? Bring money.
Unfortunately,
Brian and Jim expose the truth.
We need more Sunlight!
Wan