I have no idea what’s going on with the national debt. I know we’re in debt, and loads of it, but I don’t know what we’re actually doing about it other than I know we’re doing something. Words about the debt and its impending something seem to pour out of my television and radio, but when those words reach my ears, all I hear is “Rabble-rabble-rabble-rabble!”
I blame this lack of understanding not on my own deficiency of diligence concerning the subject, but on the deficiency of our nation’s media. If I’ve gained any understanding of the way our country runs through all this debt drama, it’s that money makes our country go round—and not how you may think.
From debt issues, to lobbying, to the way the news is reported. Even the way this debt issue is discussed by the talking heads that compose our media venues, it’s money that controls the information. Multinational mega-corporations buy media outlets, they buy lobbying power, they buy politicians. I hate to sound like a mad man preaching conspiracy theory, but I can’t help but feel like they buy our whole concept of reality. It seems to me that media groups, or the powers behind them, stand to make more by reporting their take on the news than simply reporting the truth of the news.
This makes understanding the world around me difficult. Trusting it harder still. When my brother in-law talks, he hates the democrats. When friends talk, they hate the republicans. One side says the world is going to end. The other says the world has never really begun living. The only thing they both agree on is it’s all the other’s fault. But, really, is it either of their faults? Do they have the luxury of true objectivity?
All the while, the world turns despite media venues promising immediate upheaval of life as we know it. Daily it preaches to those hungry to hear it, those hungry to regurgitate its “truth.” Soon, I don’t know if I’m being, or can be objective about anything—maybe I’m just some freshly converted dogmatic rabble-rouser adding my voice to the noise and don’t even know it?
What is the truth? Is it what we hear from our media sources? Is it what we hear from the lips of our friends and family, who mostly regurgitate what they’ve heard other places? Is it what our politicians tell us? Is it, considering the impetus by which we act, even what we speak or do? I don’t know, and I don’t know what happened to a country that can’t trust the hand that feeds it.