I watched the first so-called “Presidential Debate” on PBS the other night. It was a carefully staged, big media event, hosted by Jim Lehrer, a respected long-time journalist, a real journalist, not the NBC television “Today Show” journalism of October 4 that featured on their prime time “news” show a special segment of “Who has the best eyebrows.” (Really, I am not making this up).
If you have read the best seller The Hunger Games or ever watched the movie “The Matrix” you may get where I am going here — both of these works of fiction are relevant to today’s events and are allegories reflecting our population’s complacency. Both fictional works have a similar central theme: mindless entertainment keeps the public ignorant of what’s really going on in the world and leaders use it to their advantage.
Exactly what mainstream media is doing in America today. We don’t have unbiased, hard-hitting journalism. We have the "Real Housewives" of Beverly Hills and New Jersey; shows that highlight the drunks and trash of Hollywood not wearing underwear; so-called news shows that instead of reporting facts, report on Hollywood and fashion and report commentary as if it were the reality of our world today. We have the Rush Limbaugh-esque hate mongers spewing their own versions of “facts” that they have twisted grotesquely to fit their convoluted, partisan logic.
These are the divide-and-conquer tactics of war used by successful Generals in every conflict since the American Civil War. It’s a game of psychological warfare against the general population by American political parties.
Anyway, my rant is very sharply focused…it asks the simple question: Are we this stupid? Is America really this ignorant and easily fooled? Where are the free thinkers?
In Denver, Wednesday evening, Mitt Romney distanced himself from his own positions in a remarkable transformation that shed his old skin like a reptile — on stage he became a moderate, tolerant, likeable man in an instant — no longer associated with his mean spirited speeches to his super rich, hard-core Right Wing donors behind closed door.
Remember Mitt saying he didn’t care about 47% of the population that “believe that they are victims,” “dependent upon government”? Remember he said that “those people” believed they were entitled to benefits provided by government programs like Social Security, Veterans Benefits, Aid to Dependent Children, etc.? Remember when he said he hated workers’ unions, that he would push for vouchered private school systems, that he opposes women’s rights?
He tried to wipe that all clean — all tossed aside as if it were a dream and not facts — he stood before America as a beaming, affable man, completely remade — all made possible by reality television…. And America bought it…
President Obama came prepared to debate Mitt Romney— not a completely new candidate that with all new positions, not known. President Obama was as baffled as I was — Mitt was not Mitt … he was a Mitt “Redux.”
It is easy to win debates if you constantly change your core beliefs to fit those of the audience.
Do you really believe Mitt Romney is not the same Mitt Romney who stood on the stage in Tampa accepting the Republican nomination and the radical Tea Party Republican platform?
Are we really this stupid or what?
