It is possible for a person to spend 100% of his life focused on imaginary issues. An average media day is filled with broadcasts of ink and electrons that we see as shadows on part of the wall. Sometimes, broadcasts have to report actual news. Each piece of real news is quickly surrounded by clouds of shadows.
The airplane wreck becomes an advertisement for more airport funding. The bank robbery becomes a reason for widespread surveillance cameras. The tragic vehicle wreck is spun into a justification for highway spending. An incident involving firearms becomes yet another brick in the wall of gun control. The latest report on declining test scores provides another excuse for more spending on public education. A soldier’s death is twisted to show the futility of military expenditures.
Many have had their intellectual skills so damaged they are unable to separate real happenings from the subsequent demands for more money. The rest of us notice that media reporting will rarely, if ever, blame the person causing the problem. Instead, they blame a society whose greedy members are too concerned about their own well-being to pay more taxes.
People are endlessly encouraged from the earliest days in Public School not to be “selfish”. We are taught that it is “enlightened” and “sensitive” to let experts take “just a little bit more” away from us to “solve” these “serious problems”. Many of us are so easily taken into these “blame yourself” fantasies by skilled broadcasters and hired celebrities that we no longer think well enough to see how each truth is hidden by a cloud of self-serving lies.
Some are so wrapped up in lies that they become hostile when attempts are made to introduce truth into any such discussion. They have all learned to use words like “paranoid” and “radical” to describe those who have the intellectual ability to make disparaging comments about the way “news” is distorted to serve special interests.
Catholic Fundamentalists realize that those afraid to use their God-given abilities to think honestly and accurately about causes and effects are in danger of damnation. In their eagerness to please those around them, they become “luke-warm water”. According to our future Judge, “The luke-warm water, I spit out of my mouth.”
The best for which they can hope is eternity in a tepid cuspidor.
