Spreading Democracy

[Echo In Light]

Spreading Democracy
By Gozawheena Bergacker

11/22/07 "ICH" -- Deep in the bowels of a Washington DC Think Tank, a recent college graduate—selected for her unquestioning and eager embrace of their cynical ideology—labors under the watchful eye of a well-connected political strategist, creating “talking points” for the evening news. The large corporations that so generously fund the Think Tank will pleased with this latest fiction, the strategist muses as he inserts her virulent words into his email and clicks “send”. He is confident that corporate contributions will flow as long as the propaganda flows.

Squeezed in a featureless cubicle in the middle of a sprawling over-lit newsroom, a young reporter is struggling to ensure his article conforms with the worldview of his boss’s bosses, leaders of a large corporation with billions in government defense contracts. His computer chimes. He retrieves the Think Tank's “talking points” from his inbox and begins to read. If you want to get along, you gotta go along, he whispers to himself. He presses Command-Shift-C on his keyboard and proceeds to infect his own work with the diseased words.

Seated behind a desk on a cheap plastic office chair in a crowded suburban high school, an American history teacher bites her lip as she recites to her class from the authorized textbook. She must restrain herself from commenting on the narrow interpretations and overt omissions. No Child Left Behind dictates that her students must learn these fictions or her school will lose its federal funding. A bell rings and the students escape to the next class, where they will be infected with more fictions.

A 30-something copywriter in a major advertising agency rubs his eyes as he stares at his flickering computer screen. It is late and he wants to go home, but he must find some compelling reason for consumers to buy another drug, another game, another heavily processed food for which there is no true need. The packaging warns it may be harmful to the buyer’s health. He wonders if they mean a physical or psychological health, but dismisses the concern; there is no room for moral misgivings in the world of business. He touches his keyboard and continues to spread fiction.

Collapsing onto the sofa after a long commute home and an even longer day at the office, an exhausted middle-age couple turns on the TV and the husband begins to surf through the endless stream of violence, murder, and angry talking heads barking half-truths and Think Tank talking points. Numbed, the man reaches his favorite “reality” show and the couple settles in for an evening of fiction. Real reality is far too messy and complicated; they trust their Congressman to discern fact from fiction and vote in their best interest. That’s why they elected him.

More:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18763.htm

[mmonk]

1. Worth a recommend.

[Echo In Light]

2. Yeah it brings the various forms of enabling into perspective...

The sort of go-along-to-get-along poison jive that many delude themselves into perceiving as not being a determining element of the overarching mass conspiracy to abide unreality and flee from truth ... and into police state "freedom."

[brazos121200]

3. I think the worst travesty is the forcing of their creationist

fictions on our school children just because it is a part of their religious ideology. Several Repub candidates for President have expressed their support of this fiction already, as has Pres. Bush. When America wakes up from this national nightmare which is the Bush Administration it will marvel at all of the fictions it has tolerated and believed during these years. I just hope the damage done to the American people can be undone in the coming years.