cryptogon.com news – analysis – conspiracies

December 6th, 2013

The piece below is about how journalists confronted the money power last century, but how they’re failing to do so today. The theory is that we need journalists to let us know that we’re being bent over a barrel, because we’re somehow confused about what’s happening to us. More muckraking journalists will save the day!

What Adam Curtis doesn’t seem to understand is that most people like what’s being done to them on that barrel. Most people in the big consumer societies not only suffer from mass amnesia, but also from Stockholm syndrome. In other words, this situation is much more consensual than it was in the days of the robber barons—sick and twisted as it is.

Countless books and articles have already been written about who’s doing what to whom and guess what: Close to nobody gives a damn. So, write more, Adam Curtis and get others to write more and better books and articles explaining… this shit sandwich we’re in.

Are the the hordes of grossly overweight zombies, who trample each other to spend money that they don’t have on crap that they don’t need, going to read this reporting and experience some sort of epiphany? I doubt it.

If the main barrier to reaching positive outcomes was a general lack of understanding about what was happening, that could be handled. But better journalism isn’t going to help when ignorance, stupidity and zombie consumerism are revered and desirable traits for people to have in a society.

Via: BBC:

At the same time American society was rocked by scandal after scandal along with terrible stories of the effect of growing inequalities. Politicians were bribed, policemen arrested and beat up innocent men and women, adulterated food was sold, and terrorists threw bombs. While the gap between rich and poor grew wider and wider.

But none knew what to do about it. The genteel middle classes who believed in reform were baffled and confused.

They knew that all these scandals were somehow a part of the enormous changes that were happening to American society. But they also knew that the new technologies and giant industries were bringing amazing benefits and transforming their world and the way they related to each other. Nobody seemed to be able to understand the true dimensions of what was happening.