Hell Awaits, America (Jason Miller)

[Tace]

Mass Manipulation, Blissful Psychosis, and 7 Easy Ways to Achieve Damnation

By Jason Miller -- World News Trust

“'But I don’t want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked.

'Oh, you can’t help that,' said the Cat. 'We’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.'

'How do you know I’m mad?' said Alice.

'You must be,” said the Cat. 'or you wouldn’t have come here.'”

--Lewis Carroll

Oct. 30, 2006 -- Awakening to a masochistic impulse last Sunday, I opened the Op-Ed section of my local paper, The Kansas City Star. Throwing caution to the wind, I plunged headlong into the mind-engulfing thicket of sophistry. Running for my intellectual life, I felt the collective breath of the ravening wolves thirsting to rip the jugular vein coursing with the life-blood of my capacity for independent thought. Driven by an insatiable hunger to devour the cognitions of those who strayed from the herd, the voracious pack pursued me with a vengeance. Yet today I was moving with the agility of Brer Rabbit navigating the Briar Patch. Powered by critical thinking and a fierce determination to maintain my noetic integrity, I evaded the ferocious canines’ furious bid to sink their razor-like fangs into the succulent gray matter they craved. Emerging from the tortuous copse, my psyche was bloodied but intact. And more importantly, it remained free.
Consider that The Kansas City Star, a paper that “serves” a metropolitan population of 1.9 million, is but one of 29 publications owned by The McClatchy Company, a corporate entity that raked in a net of $160.5 million in 2005(1). With McClatchy backing them and a daily subscription of 270,000 people, the Star can afford to publish the scribblings of the best propagandists money can buy. And they desperately need them.

Burdened with a task as daunting as the Twelve Labors of Heracles, the mainstream media strive with a fury to satisfy their demanding corporate paymasters. Yet unlike Heracles, they can’t luxuriate in the knowledge that quiescence awaits. For theirs is a Sisyphean challenge. Truth, the eternal and immutable one, anxiously anticipates the moment his would-be assassins crest the summit where he is poised to hurl them violently back to the base of the hill. Powerless to prevent their relentless prevarication, Old Man Verity delights at the opportunity to condemn them to perpetual toil.

Ostensibly fragmented and autonomous, the MSM duplicitously peddle their perversions of reality in a seemingly cacophonous din of independent truth-seekers. Yet how could such an incestuously entangled group of entities owned by a handful of leviathan corporations possibly adhere to a spirit of integrity? Acting in unison to protect the interests of opulent shareholders and maleficent politicians, print, radio, and television media embody the Ministry of Truth Orwell envisioned.

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http://www.worldnewstrust.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=490&Itemid=1

[Slyder]

1. WOW! You found all that in the KC Star!

I also have the KC Star as my local/daily newspaper. I can get through the Sunday edition in under half-an-hour! Opinion copy is usually by lesser lights of conservative and liberal punditry. National news and opinion are pretty lame. I take the paper only to keep up with local stories and LTTE. And the coupons.

And, what the hell is "noetic integrity"? All I know is that the KC Star wouldn't challenge the intelligence of a sixth grader!

Plus I am disabled and for years I have not been able to get the carrier to throw it where I can retrieve it. If a neighbor doesn't put it against my garage door I am out of luck. Or perhaps lucky because it gives me a chance to read something useful like Atlantic at breakfast!

BTW, I agree that we should break up the media giants. The Fourth Estate should serve the people not the shareholders!

[Jcrowley]

2. K & R n/t