Political Engineering

A recent Pew research poll of Americans found that only 22 percent of Americans say they trust the government "just about always" or "most of the time."  Forty-three percent of Republicans, 50 percent of independents who lean Republican, and 57 percent of those who agree with the Tea Party movement said the government presents a major threat to their personal freedom.  That compares with 18 percent of Democrats, 21 percent of independents who lean Democratic and 9 percent of those who disagree with the Tea Party movement.

This opinion represents a new low, with trust on a steady decline since the days of Eisenhower.

Now, is this surprising? Your answer probably depends on your view of the intellectual capacity of the American people. Remember that old saw, “you’ll never go broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people”?

But in some respects, it is, at the least dismaying. Americans are understandably fearful of their future.  The American economy is in a shambles, thanks to Act Two of the Great Depression, brought to you by the Republican Party and the Free Market capitalists who run our financial system. So, what is a bit surprising is that Americans fear Government, whereas they might well fear the Free Market Capitalists who are mostly responsible for the current mess. Government, after all, did not produce this second depression. Government did not create the derivatives market, or bring down the housing market by creating inflated investment instruments, based on bogus mortgages.  Government can be faulted, surely. Its primary fault was its failure to rein in the savage investment banking community.  So, how come the distrust of Government?

Well, my favorite theory is Rupert Murdoch, that wily old Aussie, and his Faux News Network, which created both the Tea Party Commune, and the largely racist campaign against anything President Obama has tried to accomplish.  The Republican Party has apparently been taken over in a pseudo-coup d’etat by the Faux News Network, and its ever growing bank of actors playing  mostly crazed political pundits. Oh, and we should not leave out the role played by Barracuda Barbie, our gal from Alaska, seemingly intent on  becoming a billionaire over the next few years.  Sarah has only one principle—pay me.

Oklahoma City--the results of anti-government anger

This network has succeeded in shifting the righteous anger at the current mess called America from the Republicans and American financial geniuses to Obama and the Democrats. Now, isn’t that convenient, with a by-election coming up.

And because the Democrats are normally shooting themselves in the foot, or mouth (sort of like Michael Steele) and the Dems have nothing equivalent to the Faux News Network of relentless attacks, they are slipping away into the ooze of slime created by Mr. Murdoch.

One can only marvel at this political engineering feat. As Mr. Colbert might say, a “tip of the hat to Mr. Murdoch” for leading Americans into the wilderness.

News and the Internet

Today I received yet another lesson about the basic unreliability of the Internet. The specific lesson concerned a claim posted and widely circulated about a roll of film left in a brownie box camera for 68 years, revealing, when developed recently, a host of amazing photographs of the Pearl Harbor attack. The pictures were indeed impressive, and, had they been taken by one sailor using his brownie box camera, it would have indeed been amazing. I failed to check it out before sending it on to my grandson. Happily, he sent it on to his history teacher who checked it with Snopes, who debunked the assertion. Had I been careful, I might have done the same thing, but I was too lazy. Mainly, I saw these pictures and thought of the technology involved—Kodak film developed after 68 years, plus this fantastic quality taken with the types of lenses common to box cameras. Indeed, yet another example of, if it seems to good to be true . . . it is.
Exactly why someone would go to the trouble to collect together a bunch of pictures from Naval archive files and then put together this story of the brownie box camera is not immediately clear. I understand that people who attempt to circulate widely some tale about a fantastical software virus that will erase your entire hard disk if you don’t pass the warning on to thousands of people simply get off on conning thousands of gullible people. I suppose, in the final analysis that is all that is involved here—yet another piece of evidence that we who use the Internet are mainly lazy fools easily conned.
It was a valuable lesson for my grandson. But I wonder whether this isn’t another nail in the coffin of the news business. I know, I know, the Internet isn’t news. It’s merely a pipe for whoever wishes to send out stuff. But the model for the news business being widely discussed is an Internet model—as newspapers and print magazines die out, they will be replaced by their Internet equivalents. And these hoaxes help to breed people who basically can no longer believe what passes across their desktops and laptops. Because people are too busy, or too lazy to validate what comes across the Internet, they may slowly not believe anything they read from that source, or, worse yet, believe everything. It may become akin to having nothing on your TV except Fox News, and the Daily Show. Of course, the Daily Show is closer to real news every day.
Isn’t it??