Political Views,

or

How the Media Sucks Up to the US Government and

Helps the Cause of Losing Freedom
by James L. Secor
 

    For the past several months, the news media has been full to bursting with the horrors of Chinese interference with Internet companies. Specifically, forcing them to turn over their records in the Communist regime's attempts to control information and thinking and their own power base. This is true. It is true, though, of the Chinese versions of the Internet. I'm in China. I use Google—not Google.cn—and I have no problem opening up such governmentally dangerous sites as Opendemocracy or TomPaine or dissidentvoice or, uhm, you know, whatever with the words democracy or freedom or disinformation or bomb in its name. There may be an aspect of urban mythology going on here, though it is true that for Chinese services information is blocked. . .and Internet usage is watched by the paranoid nationalist government.

    But this is not the issue. Not at all. The issue is smoke screening. The US government is utilizing this Chinese control situation to enrage the news media within the country and, thus, the people—especially the left. But it is false. This is like tossing a bone to a pack of starving dogs. Run, Spot, run. Run, run, run. See Spot run. Or, as Pavlov might put it, watch these dogs salivate. The «revolution,» the Russians, discovered that if you want to control the populace, you control the media, the access to information. This is part and parcel of nationalistic control. This is propagandizing. But, of course, propagandizing does not take place in America, despite the many uncovered stories of stories planted by the government or the military to hide the truth of what has been/is going on. Unfortunately, the media—and the populace— only sees the bone it is thrown, never once considering the other, related news inside its corral.

    The media blitz, even on such sites as Znet which prides itself as being so terribly intellectual, has been about the horrors of Chinese governmental control of the Internet. At the same time, Google is in court in the US to attempt to keep the US government—at least on paper non-nationalist—from gaining access to its files, its database of users and user profiles. This story—the true story—only garners scant attention. Yet this kind of information gathering has been going on for some time within the business community and Americans don't mind this. . .though I do. Such mining is for the good of the businessworld, for they will then know how to sell their virtually impractical and unnecessary items to consumers. The government of the US is already using this information to profle its citizens but finds it not enough: the US government wants more monitoring of its citizens, in the name of freedom and the war on terror or the long war or whatever the newspeak is at this time.

    But the populace does not know this. It is hidden behind the smoke screen of Chinese limitations to intellectual freedom, the Chinese need to monitor its citizens in order for it to maintain control and power. Nothing like this happens in the US, the Land of the Free, the land that gave away its freedoms via the Patriot Act—and, slowly, for many years before. Except that Google is in court fighting this very intrusion into our lives by our very own nationalistic government. How so like Communist China, Communist Russia, Socialist-Communist Cuba, Monarchist Saudi Arabia, Fascist Israel, Dictatorship Lybia, Military Dictatorship Pakistan. . . .

    The media, supposedly a watch dog and a keeper of the freedom, is no more than a lap dog—and it's one of those kinds of lap dogs that only can gulp down pap. That is, it ain't got no teeth. The populace is even more gullible and intellectually wanting— Left, Right, Centre, Fringe, Whatever—because they suck up the media hype, the propaganda, the smoke screen like a fish its hook, line and sinker. No thought involved. No ability to see a connection with anything else. Every bit of information an isolated bit. Which is kind of like mythic thinking: although things happen again and again these happenings are always and forever isolated amazing and mystical happenings with no relation, no similarity, to each other—and no relationship to anything else that is happening in the environment. It is only when similarities are seen, when predictions or interpretations can be made that abstract—higher—thinking can evolve. In the US, in the US media, abstract— higher—thinking has become a thing of the past.

    Despite the adage «you can't believe everything you read,» Americans believe everything they read. And the writers believe everything they're told. Please stop thinking. It's dangerous. Here: print this. Belive it. I'm an authority.

    And so you have the wagging dog, the bone, the salivation of the news media offering up the propaganda and hype of the nationalistic US government while behind the smoke the US government is doing exactly the same thing—or is trying 

to—as the Chinese government with regard to Internet monitoring, information gathering, spying—you give it a more palatable name. I cannot.

    The nation is being screwed. The media has been screwed and, like a nelly queen on the meat rack, keeps going back for more, hind end upraised, emphasized and wriggling in anticipation.

======================

Jimsecor is a freelance writer who has travelled extensively overseas, especially Japan and China. He has published in all genre and produced several plays over the years and has taught theatre, writing and literature.

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