Foreign Policy is More Than War and Peace | Jane Sanders

[Peace Patriot]

6. Yeah, I know what you mean about the corpo-fascist media!

I gave up TV a long time ago, but I do try to keep up with what's going on there, as to...ahem...'news'. It is literally mind-boggling. I'll tell you what did it for me. I'd been off the TV opiate for a while, then I went into a big city to join a big protest march against Gulf War I. At a friend's house I saw the Gulf War presented as SPECTACLE, on TV, like the gladiator shows in ancient Rome. I was appalled. The TV war I had known was Vietnam and it was real--so very, very real. Gulf War I was, simply, NOT real, in any way. (Nor was our 30,000 people protest march--barely mentioned--but that's a given.)

So this is what most people have been soaking up for decades now. It's a wonder people can think at all. And it's a further wonder that we don't have more people going blewy and shooting up kindergartens and churches.

I think TV quite literally fractures the human psyche into splintery parts.

It is wondrous, though, to see people wake up from this relentless brainwashing--wake up hungry for real information, for expressions of the true realities of peoples' lives, hungry for honesty and integrity, and somehow able to put the splintered parts of themselves back together. Luckily for all of us, the internet has been cooking along, growing and evolving, into a incredible information provider AND as an organizing tool! And as a place where ordinary people can find their voice again as citizens! And, lucky for us, that these young techs who know how to use it come up with posters like: "Vote Bernie Sanders: He is not an asshole."

These kids (I get to call them that--I'm 70) weren't watching TV when they were young (well, maybe Star Trek*). They were programming!. And, amazingly, they pack an encyclopedia of political sophistication into that word, asshole.

THEY are our new feedback mechanism.


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*(And John Stewart. A whole lot of these sort of kids--savvy kids--got all their political information from John Stewart's jokes and mockeries. They did and do watch TV but very selectively.)