The election of 2016 began 6 months ago but has taken a turn for the worse in that time……the media has picked the candidates that it will highlight and the process has become one distraction after another….and the voter has jumped on each and every distraction given to them by the media…..
Distractions have become a norm…..and the voting public has taken to knee-jerk decision when voting…..and thanx to all the distractions we have a system that is beyond dysfunctional….that borders on the pathetic.
America’s moral compass was performing surprisingly well until a few months ago. Citizen journalism and social media were driving the news cycle and framing the narratives. The mainstream media can try to spin atrocity, but they can’t completely control the stories that emerge from war zones and urban occupations, much less how the public conscience responds to those stories. This is especially true now that every individual with a smartphone is potential photojournalist, and any affecting image or alternative news story can go viral through social media.
The Regularly Scheduled Dumbing Down of American Discourse
Source: Electoral Distraction and Media Dysfunction – Antiwar.com Original by — Antiwar.com
No, they, (the PTB & MSM), can’t hide all of it any more, but, they sure can, and do, obscure the truth all they can with massive piles of bullshit, which is thrown onto every news item of import coming from other sources…. The dumbing down is a natural process, as time passes; we cannot avoid the species decrease in average intelligence, as long as we continue to breed uncontrollably; it’s a mathematical certainty. All we can do is attempt to make the truth so sharp and shiny, shit runs off…
gigoid, the dubious
Maybe we should have paid attention to the words of Gramsci….he saw this exact scenario playing out back in 1920….chuq
There have, apparently, been a lot of ffolkes who saw it coming… Abe Lincoln, Tom Jefferson, James Madison, all penned warnings of just this scenario… Indeed, there are a number of entries in Ambrose Bierce’s “The Devil’s Dictionary”, which are such close descriptions of current reality, it’s spooky… any entry on politics in there sounds as if it were about yesterday’s news…
There just aren’t ENOUGH of us who can see to make the difference, and the majority won’t listen, anyway, as they’ve got their fingers firmly planted in their ears, chanting “I can’t hear you, I can’t hear you” over and over in a loud voice…
SIGH….
g
Most of the population never really wanted to pay attention to important shit. But they were dragged into it by the Mainstream Media’s lack of alternatives. (ie 11 o’clock? That means news on all media outlets) And since the quality of said media was also much better, people who never really wanted to learn important shit still picked up the basics….and everyone was better for it. Officially sanctioned versions, or not.
The dawn of the 500 channel universe was more than bad enough. People now had options and most opted for the most mind-numbing ones. In response, even the most serious media outlets joined in the Quality Limbo to compete for ratings, often with divisions of their own damn company. (Sheer genius!)
But in an era where everybody now has their little distracting devices in hand 24/7, nobody has to pay attention to ANYTHING or ANYBODY anymore. People don’t even pay attention while jaywalking across 4 lanes of traffic; lest they miss a Friend request from the cousin of the wife of their best buddy from High School. I almost hit one of these iDiots in my car yesterday….and not on purpose…although I was REALLY, REALLY, tempted.
Today, the second something goes over 140 characters, or gets “too serious” or “too thinky”….It’s Kardashian time! Or, “I got to update my Loserbook status”. Or they change the channel to The Unreal Housewives of Boise. There are trillions of distractions now and all are available at any time.
Even the tiny minority of people who still want to occasionally learn something meaningful are constantly distracted by all the noise and temptation. It’s a proven fact we can barely concentrate on anything anymore. http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/canadians-now-have-shorter-attention-span-than-goldfish-thanks-to-portable-devices-microsoft-study
And the Mainstream Media knows it. Instead of news outlets fighting back by drawing people in with better quality, they try to make everything less “thinky” & more entertaining. Thus we see an ever growing pile of bullshit you have to sift through to find anything of any value, even though that’s what most people have tuned in hoping to see.
So, it’s absolutely NO surprise to me that we are getting stupider & stupider every decade; to the point where a Reality TV douchebag is about to win the nomination of the formerly sober, serious, “intellectual” party, the Republican Party….He may even win the Presidency. Which is even more terrifying when you consider the 50% who aren’t going to vote are even bigger imbeciles than the ones who will vote!
That is scary…..we Americans are less attentive than Canadians…..send a shiver…..
It’s why Trump is so fucking popular. The entire description of every one of his policies fits in a Tweet and he talks like he’s straight from The Twit Zone. Dude runs a multi-billion dollar empire, is running for President, but finds several hours a night to shit on people on the Web-pipes!
He’s entertaining and he doesn’t ask you to think. He doesn’t even want your money. He’s just going to “grab it all” from other countries. He just wants your cheers..and your votes. He’s a perfect match for modern America!
He is the perfect match……