media bashing

Like my last post noted, my friends on the right bash the media as least as intensively as my friends on the left. Makes me feel sorry for the media. In this post I'd like to point out a very slippery slope that many unwittingly find themselves speeding down (in my opinion, always in my opinion). There's a truth that we can't believe everything we read. That we need to read between the lines. That we need to be skeptical. Agreed. A reporter's--or any human's--bias is sure to play some sort of role in a news report, however subtle. The danger comes, however, when we take hold of this small, useful truth, and misuse it in defense of our worldview. Take the main excuse for launching the war against Iraq: weapons of mass destruction. Save for a handful of people who were in Iraq, and even smaller handful who were actively hunting weapons, we're all relying on secondhand information to draw conclusions (more wisely, tentative conclusions), and defend those conclusions to either support or oppose a war. Before the war I would have used certain lines of reasoning and certain facts to tentatively conclude Bush and company were either lying or wildly exaggerating: there were inspectors on the ground, spyplanes overhead, the stakes were too high for saddam to be lying, etc. Now, over a year later, can we *know* that he didn't have wmd? It's only fair to make concusions based on the information we are given. That is, after a year of intensive searching, and the aforementioned spy planes overhead, etc., absolutely nothing has come up. If a supporter of the war has any honesty, any integrity at all, he'll at least admit the wmd argument has proved--to the best of our knowledge to date--dead wrong. There are no wmd. But what do many supporters do? They wiggle and squirm with charges about the liberal media, and wild speculations about night trains to Syria, or hold off seeing the misrepresentation/lies because they may be buried deep underground, etc.. This is meant to be just one small example of how people misuse small truths, twist these small truths to serve their world view. Certainly, it's a bit of a trap for everyone. For I too want to read the news with skepticism. Maybe a grayer example would be the recent Syrian border killing of 40 people that the US carried out. The US says they were terrorists, smugglers. Arab tv reports it as a wedding, and the villagers swear that's the case. Who's lying? Well, the pictures and video are pretty good indication that it's the US, yet I can just hear the patriotic folk I know making excuses, casting doubts on the pictures, the videos, the eyewitness accounts. We all have to make judgement calls from afar about actions halfway around the world. What's the truth? can be maddening, but I tend to see it as the strongest argument for pacifism around. We can't *know*, so what should we do? Don't support killing. I'd rather err supporting peace than supporting killing.

the media

One enigma when considering the left-right political dichotomy is the media. There were/are/will be many articles on left sites railing at the media for its pro-military, pro-right biases. Indeed, the media is, by and large, *owned* by right wing elements. How, why, would, for example, Fox be anything but right wing? Still there is the perception of the "liberal media." My childhood friend, who lives in Florida and apparently supports George Dubya Bush, recently sent an email joke. The pope and Bush are enjoying a chat when a stiff wind blows the pontiff's headress into the lake. Dubya, shocking all present, walks *on* the water to retrieve. The pope is dumbfound. The next day the headline reads, "Bush Can't Swim." Hmmm. Bush works magic, but still gets persecuted by the press. I wish I could understand where this comes from. Take the reporting of the Iraqi prison crises. The right seems to feel offended that the press came out with these stories of flagrant, degenerate abuse, that it somehow proves they are against the US' drive to liberate the world. What's bizarre is that I knew there was systematic, hideous abuse at prisons by reading leftist sites such as from many months before the crisis broke out. Amnesty International, Iraqi humanitarian organizations, the Red Cross, etc., as is now being reported, were squawking for months. Rather than criticizing them for reporting the news (note the irony), we should all be asking why they didn't report this news SOONER. Some Times or Post reporter must have caught wind of these reports, but it took sordid photos and videos to storm the world presses for all to take notice. The press--i.e. reporters--may strive to be objective, but if the news is owned by multi-millionaires who profit handsomely from the system, and the reporters are extremely biased for the Good Guys whose job it is to save the world ('I line up behind the president,' dan rather said when dubya asked networks to censor Bin Laden's messages because they might be coded), then can one reasonably expect that these huge corporations are gonna hire radicals to screw the system? Perhaps there is some historical truth to the claim that the media tends to the left, but what is the present basis for this claim? I see no evidence. The media--especially tv networks--seem of the right, by the right, and for the right. Right?

What color is your heart?

welcome to 'what color is your heart?'

Politically, I am extremely left of center. I'm so left of center, in fact, I'm off America's radar screen, digging online to read the likes of Chomsky, Pilger and Robert Fisk (although in fairness, the lattermost occasionally used to appear in US mainstream papers). My dream is to have those right of center, even those off the radar screen on the right (if there is such a thing in america), critique, comment, criticize my posts freely (or at least read them). Hopefully, in time, I can find some right of center blogs to read so I might better understand what divides us. This interests me a lot; what puts us in our respective camps? When I read about Berg, who was beheaded in Iraq, I thought about how much I might have liked him, his concern for humanity, his apparent fearlessness (even if it did spill over into foolishness). Yet he was a big Bush fan and supported the invasion of Iraq. Go figure.

My colleague B, who is of the same political stripe as I, told me today of his younger brother, involved in the military for so many years, a true believer in the War on Terror, the War on Drugs, the War on Bad Guys. Growing up he had smoked dope, wandered, and apparently healthily mistrusted authority. What happened? I'd like to speculate in the general sense, for i never met B's brother, and the factors that mold a man (and woman) are so complicated anyway that one could never say anything definitely. I picture a young guy, somewhat confused in the way that most young guys are, trying to figure out what this grand game of life is all about. He had his kicks, his flicks and probably his flames, to speculate into irrelevant areas, then at 26 (this much i know), decided he wanted to be a pilot, and saw that the best way to achieve that is thru the Air Force. Now we come to our first observation about the Political Right in America; it's connected to, inseparable from the Military. It believes in the military, perhaps seeing it as a defender of peace and democracy, whereas I/we see it as a beast out of control. We see that he took that first step into his personal militarization, perhaps partly due to patriotism, but on the surface, principally an economic decision. How many small town guys--and now gals--are not joining because they see it as an economic ticket. Never mind the Saddam's halfway around the world, the phantom weapons of mass destruction, or the abstract concepts like liberty and democracy that they--we--don't know the first thing about. The system is rigged, and by and large those who buy into the Militarization of their consciousness stand to win big economically. It pays to believe.

So what do I know about the military? Nothing firsthand. Despite my abhorence for the militarization of the planet, as well as outer space, I'm sure these young men and women are learning some worthwhile things there. Namely discipline. We live in an undisclipined society, and the army, navy, etc., offers discipline, structure, which can be a good thing. Partial truths, small truths, told convincingly enough, can soothe, can offer a sense of security, as can the construction of a world view that elevates us to Good Guys, identifies enemies--these days under the convenient heading of Terrorists--as Bad Guys. The Good Guy fighters have every sort of technological advantage on their side. For most, they have God as well, like that general who said, 'I knew we would win (some attack on Moslems) because our God is greater than their God.' Oh, it'd be so easy to go off on tangents (if I haven't already). The point here tho is simply that the military hammers a world view home, that we the chosen enlistees are the Good Guys, fighting the Good Battle, and Good Wars, for abstract concepts we don't really understand, because God is on our side, and because our desire for a better material life led us deeper and deeper in until we found ourselves fearing roadbombs, or taking delight in killing people as a sniper from a tower in a town we invaded halfway around the world, or rounding up thousands of suspects and putting them into prisons. And perhaps worse. I will leave it at that tonight, because my students and I are heading out early tomorrow to clean up the beach.

What color is your heart?

raja