For some stupid reason, mankind is gallivanting around calling this period in human existence “the information age,” as if we are any less confused about things now than we were when we ate mites off of each others’ backs. It’s damn hard to make sound decisions or be sure of anything anymore, and that’s the only thing that makes sense.
Unfortunately, culture is now being delivered to us via giant corporations with little concern for empowering the polity. We live in a society that looks for understanding of its fellow man not through our own compassion and commiseration or through his feelings or thoughts. Instead, it judges by that man’s purchasing
decisions.
To paraphrase cultural critic Thomas Frank, many people fancy themselves too savvy to be duped by advertising, but advertising works at such a deep level that we often underestimate its power for shaping consciousness and identity.
Many Americans, overcome by the inanity of commercial culture, fail to see what real cultural exchange can bring to a society.
Recently, Paul Wolf and his colleagues presented a report — “COINTELPRO: The Untold American Story” — to the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights. The report detailed the atrocities committed by the FBI against social and cultural movements during its Counter Intelligence Programs (COINTELPRO) regime known to exist from 1956 through 1971.
FBI agents infiltrated hundreds of sociopolitical movements and organizations. The agency worked tirelessly to create factions within groups using violence, disinformation and scare tactics to quell movements around the country. The report quotes a former COINTELPRO Internal Security Branch Chief saying that one of the main goals of these programs was “penetration of specific channels of American life where public opinion is molded,” and to prevent it from having “influence over the masses.” This lends legitimacy to the idea that culture is the lens through which we view and identify with the rest of the world.
Programs like these possibly still exist, but now the FBI has a little more help. Commercial culture serves as a preemptive assault on potential movements by dividing and pacifying the public. Instead of culture creating an active, passionate community, it confuses, distracts and divides. Instead of open discussions of politics and life, we are left with a mindless barrage of escapism, fantasy and preoccupation.
The sad reality is that there are just as many threats to democracy and freedom within the country as there are on the outside. Take Operation Northwoods. This supposed plan, hatched by the Joint Chiefs of Staff for the Kennedy administration,
proposed falsifying reports of or even faking Cuban terrorist acts in order to justify a military invasion of Cuba. Although some critics discount it as a mere conspiracy theory, after reading Wolf’s report, one tends to be a little leery. Do these things happen in a democracy? Are these the types of decisions that an informed, active and empowered society would make?
In a true democracy, the people create political and cultural discourse, they do not just make do with what they are handed. There are no practical solutions to this dilemma yet, but at this point, awareness is paramount. A man who calls himself informed admits unabashedly to ignorance.
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His opinions do not necessarily represent those of the Emerald.