Reply #80: A few reasons...

[warren pease]

Hideous and precipitous decline in public education, and what's left of it is based on teaching to the test, which is designed to promote rote learning and kill creativity.

Hideous text books promoting nothing but the American creation myth, thanks to the fundie takeover of hundreds of school boards around the country during the 1980s when they ran as "stealth candidates" pretending to be sensible people and then revealed themselves as religiously insane as soon as they took office.

If Howard Zinn's "Peoples' History..." were taught in high school, you'd see a lot more skeptics and far fewer flag-waving zombies running around believing the Bushean world view.

And speaking of religion, a 2003 University of Michigan study concluded that the US:

"...remains one of the most religious nations in the world." As evidence, the study cites stats like this: "About 46 percent of American adults attend church at least once a week, not counting weddings, funerals and christenings, compared with 14 percent of adults in Great Britain, 8 percent in France, 7 percent in Sweden and 4 percent in Japan."

And what does all this gawd-groupie stuff buy us? According to a 2005 study published in the "Journal of Religion and Society:"

It is commonly held that religion makes people more just, compassionate, and moral, but a new study suggests that the data belie that assumption. In fact, at first glance it would seem, religion has the opposite effect... It reveals clear correlations between various indicators of social strife and religiosity, showing that whether religion causes social strife or not, it certainly does not prevent it.

The author of the study, Gregory S. Paul, writes that it is "...not an attempt to present a definitive study that establishes cause versus effect between religiosity, secularism and societal health." However, the study does show a direct correlation between religiosity and dysfunctionality, which if nothing else, disproves the widespread belief that religiosity is beneficial, that secularism is detrimental, and that widespread acceptance of evolution is harmful.

The study continues in that general vein, saying:

"The most theistic prosperous democracy, the U.S., is exceptional, but not in the manner predicted. The United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developed democracies, sometimes spectacularly so, and almost always scores poorly."

Then there's my personal favorite, corporate mass media. Regarding that two-year-old story on Natalee Holloway, the kidnapped kid that's all over the place lately, I did a Google search on her and, as you'd expect, the first page of search results turns up coverage from ABC, MSNBC, the International Herald Trib, CNN, Fux, CourtTV, Wikipedia and CBS.

So I did a search on S 1959, the senate version of the "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007," which is the latest and potentially the most diabolical piece of legislative shit to hit the security state cesspool since the Military Commissions Act.

And what does Google tell me? It tells me that not a single "mainstream" media outlet gives a damn about S 1959. More likely, they've been ordered not to give a damn about it. So, on page one, Google returns this list of web sites that mention S 1959:

wordpress, the curmudgeon, bloggernews, justanothercoverup, clipmarks, binaryfreedom, lonelantern, indymedia, willyloman, rense, infowars and naturalnews.

Finally, at the top of page 10, there's the first MSM mention of S 1959 -- and it's from the Washington Times.

So that, in a nutshell, is what's wrong with celebrity stalking or kidnapped kid investigations replacing actual information about a real thing that could have profound impact on literally millions of Americans.

If this were an isolated case, it might be excusable. But it's the norm. Thanks to a couple of decades of media consolidation, only six gigantic holding companies now control almost 90 percent of everything Americans see, hear and read. And the thing about giant corporations: they're slaves to the status quo. They hate anything that might destabilize their revenue streams. They're arch conservatives of the most narrow, sociopathic self-interested type. Any ideas that run counter to orthodoxy are suppressed immediately. So there's no question what's going to get covered and what's going to disappear when an issue or event occurs corporate self-interest.

So important news that may contain a hint of controvery is either buried, spun, ignored or simply omitted, while the screw-ups and arrests of D-class celebrities are covered 12 ways from Sunday, with five cameras shooting from multiple angles, a helicopter on scene in case they try to escape and a round-the-clock team of investigative reporters there to bring us the very latest. It's as if "Network" was a documentary rather than fiction.

Result? Nobody who depends on TV news for most of their information knows a goddamn thing about what's going on in the real world any more. Because of the limitations imposed on them by the conditions described above, they aren't intellectually or psychologically equipped to seek out alternatives to the TV version. And increasingly, I doubt they really give much of a damn anyway.

Add to those systemic and basically insoluble problems an imploding economy, job insecurity, debt slavery, inflation, wage stagnation and a general, free-floating sense that things are coming unglued, and you have a population too uneducated, repressed, alienated, isolated, misinformed, distracted, scared, gullible, cowed and clueless to do much of anything except cringe, cower and pray the whip comes down somewhere -- anywhere -- else.

Oh, and terrorism, too, lots and lots of terrorists, just waiting to murder us in our beds in the most painful ways imaginable. With only George Bush standing between us and the terrorists. And immigrants, illegal immigrants, taking good American jobs and sucking up social services. Fortunately, Bush has plans for them, too. Or is that Iran? I can never keep all those brown people straight.

Since they haven't been prepared to think their way out of a paper bag, there's really nothing to do except pop another Bud Lite, stuff another handful of Doritos into the gullet, flip the channel to all-night NASCAR coverage, and gradually nod out. But all sleep means these days is a couple of feverish hours relief from the dull, grinding pain before rising and resuming the same dreary, empty life with no hope, no prospects and no way out.

Hell, I'd be looking for oblivion too if that was my situation. Only the very strong, the mentally defective or serious drug and/or alcohol abusers can stand such times and live.


wp