"One rule to follow when evaluating the news stories being pushed onto us by the media: If it's spectacular, world-shaking, and has the capacity to significantly alter the course of your life even though you live thousands of miles away from where it happened, then it's probably bullshit. Whenever you hear about some really big, truly world-changing phenomenon, then it is usually speculation, bullshit speculation meant to get you to stick around through the commercial break.
(…)
The media has calculated that people are dumb and easily tricked. Push the right buttons and you have yourself a loyal audience. Missing little kid, serial killer, robbery on video, live police chase, natural disaster, cute animal story, big panic story. Over and over again. People never get tired of it. Sell them something big to panic about and you will insert urgency in their lives, something to do, something to buy, some excuse to call or email their kids. None of it has to make sense providing it summons up the right emotions."
I think about fear a lot – that maybe it’s the only real emotion and that every other emotion is an offshoot of it or the just pleasure of its absence.
I’ve grown to understand that the fear of losing what you have or the fear of not getting what you what motivates most people. It’s the juice that fuels the reactions not found in reason – it’s the primal ooze of what makes us human.
The press runs on fear. The FAA did not want to release the numbers on how many birds stuck how many planes because they knew the press would only address the fearful part of it. And – look at the papers – they did.
The media did not point out that the numbers were voluntary and haphazard – they penalized the airports that did a good job reporting and rewarded the slothful, less diligent ones. They did it to sell papers; they did it for the money.
The government runs on fear – they cut the libraries and day care to scare working parents – they make everything a level orange to get more money. They tighten control and freeze dissent by appealing to patriotism through fear. They want you scared to death so they can control you – strong, true words that each of you reading this know in the core of you are.
The government is the people and the press exists to keep it in line and accountable and the people informed, so that if the government of the people strays from what the actual people see as a civilized covenant they want to be a part of –they can act to change it.
Both of them – the press and the government – have gone off the reservation on us. They have become business cancers that exist to feed and grow – and both only want to live no matter what and no matter who they have to run over.
So it goes....it's just I'm really missing the ice-nine scare, and simpler times.
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