April 3rd, 2006 by Hoopleton

Why must the media keep us blind to what is happening? Partly the answer is conglamerization. Independent outlets disapear as giants like the News Corporation amass more and more voices. An interlaced bureaucratic web develops. Conservative in its ideology and business practices. Devoted to the bottom line and entertainment. For these media monsters the only public interest measure that seems to have survived is the maxim: responsible media should not spread public panic or inflame social tensions.

Partly also, the answer is that politicians have become masters of spin. In my brief stay in the Communications department of the Illinois State Treasurer Judy Baar Topinka, also the Republican nominee for Governor, I saw first hand how easily the press is pushed along. Potential scandals are nearly everywhere, but no one bothers to seek them out. Press releases are treated as fact.

It seems that social unrest (reaching its heights in the 60s and 70s), maybe even the threat of all-out conflict (dating back to the Civil War), has filled media and politics with so much fear of breakdown that they rather keep us under informed than relay the truth. Both sides win. The media gives little time or real understanding to modern social movements, opting to distract us with suburban murders, abductions and culture wars. They can claim to have reported it and dismissed it, the details being lost in the 24-hour news cycle. The politicians simply want to hold on and centralize power.

Aren’t the Republicans the small government party?

And the people doing the masking? The spinners, the speech writers and reporters? What about them? Is it a conspiracy? Is it ignorance and systemic corruption?

Not really. They’re good people for the most part. But in a society where gaining wealth and power are more important than truth, it’s easy to lose one’s soul. It’s easy to abandon the ideals of youth when family and social responsibilities make a paycheck more important. It is also easy to start getting caught up in the ideologies of those you work for. After all, when you represent a thing, and people are quick to blame you for the system, the easiest thing to do is to defend your side. That’s it isn’t it? Sometimes good people find themselves under attack and retreat to those who are causing the corruption, becoming corrupted themselves.

How easily we sell our souls. But of course, what is the alternative?

“All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men; but blasphemy against the spirit shall not be forgiven – whoever speaks against the eternal truth in the spirit of men, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come – Either make the tree good, and his fruit good; or else make the tree corrupt; for the tree is known by his fruit. Oh generation of vipers!” — Jesus Christ