Television: Catapulting the Corporate Propaganda

At the core of the Bush neocon administration lies, and the public's willingness to accept them, is a fundamental confict between fantasy and reality. It is a theme that has resounded again and again over the past 5 years, as Bush-lovers blindly ignore concrete facts in favour of sensational talking points and hyperbolic memes.

As I've said before, Bush is a symptom of a sick society. And there can be little doubt in any thinking person's mind that the mind-numbing, lifestyle-substitute opiate of 24/7 multi-channel television is at the core of this sickness. Charles Sullivan calls it The Great Perversion:

Rather than living life, most Americans now experience it vicariously through the medium of television... Contrary to public opinion, the purpose of commercial television is not to inform the people with information that is relevant to their lives. It is to substitute fantasy for reality, lies for truth; entertainment for knowledge...

The experience that most Americans live vicariously through television is an utter fraud. As Thoreau said, “We have become the tools of our tools.” Our lives have become more virtual than real. Fraud does not inform our experience; nor does it provide us with the information we need to make intelligent decisions about life. Like all things American, television has been perverted from a tool with enormous potential for education to the trivial commodity of patent capitalism we call entertainment...

Television is a powerful, seductive, mind numbing drug that renders viewers physically passive, but open to the endless message of blind consumption. It holds the viewers fast while programming the mind to consume and to accept the manifest lies and propaganda spewed forth by the corporate juggernaut that has hijacked both the American government and the public air waves. As a compelling mind altering drug, television is without equal in the annals of human history...

Those who are seduced and mesmerized by television are not likely to make trouble. They are not going to question corporate America’s version of reality and make waves for the status quo. Television is junk food for the mind that leads to morbid mental obesity. The result is impaired mental function. It stifles free thought and inhibits human potential. Nothing in the history of civilization has been more responsible for dumbing down the American public than commercial television. Television numbs the mind and impoverishes the spirit. It is an essential tool of the corporations that have hijacked the American government...

By way of comparison, consider the dedicated pacifist lifestyle of Michele Naar-Obed, who is heading off to Baghdad for a fourth time in three years:

She attended the vigil that night, and the next. When the air war began, Naar-Obed said she climbed to the roof of a Baltimore armory with several of her newfound friends. As antiwar protesters circled below, she said they threw blood, sand and oil off the building.

The theatrics exhilarated her: "I felt that this was the most honest, the most free moment of my life."

Within the next year, Naar-Obed gave up her job, her car and her privacy to become a professional pacifist...

UPDATE: Mind you, television is just a tool. It is not inherently evil! And it can be used wisely: for example, if you have broadband for video, this is hilarious.