If you are going to comment on what is happening in the United States today you have to be careful as to the style of writing you choose.
Events here have become bizarre enough to make you wonder if you are witnessing reality or some weird form of satire that has replaced real life experiences. The line between satire and life has become so blurred it is hard to know which is which.
All of this would be funny if it were not so serious. It is absurd to contemplate, but I am told many people here get their information about world events by watching comedians comment on today’s news. If this is true imagine the consequences in a democracy where some semblance of fact is necessary to make an informed decision.
What has caused this? And why do people here feel the way they do about politicians and political events? That will be for scholars of another generation to determine. As for now we can only speculate.
Some time ago a funny thing happened in the United States on the way to the polling place. Voters stopped taking their political leaders seriously. To some extent they still try to pay attention to their elections and keep up with what’s happening in the political arena, but for the most part they no longer believe what they see or here. While information is king, facts are no longer relevant.
What replaced their need for facts is a nebulous, intuitive feeling on how the events they are witnessing affects them. If they are agitated enough, they vote on this feeling, if not, they can wait for another day. If you think this is the way it always was, you might be right.
However, what makes this time more alarming is the degree to which this phenomenon is now unfolding and shaping present and future events. Information overload has taken its toll.
All of this is not lost on the opinion makers. Today they are able to get information out to millions of people in minutes. That information does not have to be accurate. What it does have to be is good enough to create the negative or positive impression they are trying to place in the public’s mind about a candidate or an idea.
No longer do you see serious attempts to bring reform and positive change. Now what you get is tacit acceptance of the system as it is while the manipulators without restraint use new, ingenious methods that exploit the situation to further their self-serving point of view.
Unfortunately, exploitation of public opinion has become the true art form in the United Sates. This includes the constant manipulating and bombarding of public opinion by innuendo, half-truths and lies all expertly packaged to be made palatable to a mass audience.
This is now endemic to the culture here and has become so pervasive, cynicism is considered normal. Will they change this? - Only when it stops working – and I can see nothing in the immediate future that suggests that is going to happen.
As Edward Murrow said, “The speed of communications is wondrous to behold. It is also true that speed can multiply the distribution of information that we know to be untrue.”
Brother Giovanni
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