We have entered a new phase of reality distortion as negative events become positive in their reporting. Truth is being transformed. I don’t refer here to politicians lying about the state of affairs to promote a self serving scheme or other. I refer to the mainstream media and its warped reporting of the reality its audience lives through each day.
Perhaps we subconsciously need the adulteration of our realities, converting them into distracting wishful deceptions. Is there a chance that the effect is dispersing our anxieties? With so many directly affected by a burst-mortgage-bubble recession, positive spins are readily accepted. How else can one explain an acceptance, with all associated relief, of continuing increases in unemployment numbers? Is it because the totals are not as bad as had been expected? How did it make any sense that the financial institutions most responsible for the current state of economic affairs became the too-big-to-fail partners of government? Is there any doubt that Wall Street controls the agenda?
Why is it good news that government has insinuated itself into the heart of American industry while permanently bolstering union influence over the management of companies like GM? Has something new been introduced into the concept of socializing industry? Did Soviet Russia not prove beyond any doubt that government-in-charge doesn’t work? The current version of hope-and-change appears to simply mean Big Government.
Is it really good news that the health care industry is heading irreversibly toward a day when it will be a government run business? Were there not alternative strategies available to seriously improve the state of health care including those discussed here: Health Care – What You Are Not Hearing? But wait, there’s more good news coming, and please ignore the $12 trillion U.S. national debt almost equaling the Nation’s GDP, since it only amounts to $111,000 per taxpayer. It is apparently great news that this amount is minor when compared to the funds “committed” to health care and pensions that the Baby Boomer generation is fully expecting just around the corner.
When a President professes concern about deficits, but supports unprecedented spending programs sending the Country into out-of-control deficits and debt, the headlines read, “good news,” because he doesn’t really want to do it, but he has to. The media sells us the gossamer subtlety of “intent,” to promote acceptability of truth distortion. The fawning mainstream media is doing its best to channel public consciousness down the feel good road.
Look for more government stimulus money to be added to the already pegged $787 billion stimulus, much of which has been allocated to prominent Democratic districts. Over two thirds of the money is still awaiting distribution, obviously being held back for release at the most propitious time in order to achieve maximum influence on upcoming elections.
Fear has been very effectively used through the past few years by government to gain support for the implementation of decisions that might not have easily floated over the electorate otherwise. Positive spin has worked the fear, and converted absurd policies into amplified and satisfying rays of hope.
If the main stream media continues its persistent misrepresentations of the truth, hope will disintegrate completely as new intractable realities insinuate themselves permanently into the economic and social landscape. Taxpayers deserve better from their Fourth Estate and from their politicians. If this transformation of perceptions doesn’t end soon, the result will be an irreversible transformation of America.
A constituent of the vast baby boomer generation with a career which has been fortunate to know the ponderous corporate worlds, as well as the intimately pressurized, and invigorating entrepreneurial domains of high tech and venture capital, I have harvested my share of mistakes meandering through corridors of enterprise from Silicon Valley, to London and endless, colourful, sometimes praetorian points in between. The voyage has provided an abundance of fodder for a pen yielding to an inquisitive keyboard, a foraging mind, and a passionate spirit.
Whether political or business or social or economic or personal, is it not all political? It is a privilege to write, and an even greater privilege to be read by anyone, and sometimes with the wind at my back the writing may occasionally be legible. I do not write to invite scorn, nor to invite respect, but if I get really lucky the writing can stimulate thinking. I also write for the very selfish purpose of animating my own processes, and engaging the best of what life offers. Above all, whether biting fire or swatting shadows, I am grateful to be gifted the freedom to write and publish whatever flows down to the keyboard. To all those who enabled this freedom, and to all those standing guard to preserve it, I am indebted.
The Fourth Estate has become The Fifth Column.
Matches my thoughts as well. The NBC, ABC, CBS, NYT et al media, lose credibility daily and seem not to care as they have lost much of their audience to more objective or at least honestly subjective media, FOX, Breitbart, Flopping Aces etc.