Pretending

When I was in sixth grade my class put on a theatrical performance. I don’t remember much about it, except that it was a rendition of a television program. My role in the project was to make a pretend television camera, and operate it during the presentation. I wrapped a cardboard box in aluminum foil, and for lenses I put three empty toilet paper tubes on the front and one on the back. During the performance I traded duties with two other students, and we stayed in character throughout, keeping up the pretense that we were actually presenting a real TV show.

The memory of this class project came to mind in recent days as I was musing about how our mass media really are (Media is plural. The singular form is medium.) fake, or at best a misrepresentation of reality. The pretend TV show from my youth was more truthful than what we see on supposedly real TV.

This has been a growing intuition with me for decades, starting when I realized "American" news media were "selling" the Vietnam war, treating body counts like football scores. My disquiet with mass media reached a crescendo of sorts when the attacks of September 11, 2001 took place, and the subsequent undeclared wars were waged. It was a surreal time, when a military deserter who ascended to the presidency looked the other way when being warned of the impending attacks, then invaded two countries that bore little or no responsibility for the attacks. He couldn't have waged his two bogus wars without help from the media establishment. The Middle East is largely in turmoil and ruins as a result. The mayhem our "leadership" has caused is passed off at  best as "collateral damage" in the all-encompassing, amorphous "War on Terror." There is, according to conventional wisdom, an undifferentiated mass of people in the world known as "terrorists." They want to terrorize people by killing them.

Now we have a completely fraudulent president whose entire adult history is that of a con artist, swindler and sexual predator. The news media report on his lies, braggadocio and collusion with the government of Russia, but only as information, as superficial facts for daily consumption of news. The essence of news reporting is the pre-eminence of the "anchor" and reporter. In analysis and opinion shows like Meet the Press and Washington Week. It is the supposed expertise and insiderness of the anchor and his or her guests. It is all superficial, ego-driven and forgettable, a waste of time.

It isn’t just the "mainstream" media that are trapped in an inertia of hubris and official truth. Supposed "leftist" media follow the same rules – conventional wisdom, individual ego-driven rigidity about how the world works and how it should work, and institutional failure to look deeper than the surface of phenomena.

There are exceptions. NPR has a show called "Science Friday," which delves deeply into such concerns as climate change, species extinction, pollution and human health. The analysis is great, but it offers no conclusions - such as the need to drastically change our economic system. We are supposed to just merrily go about our normal day-to-day activities and wring our hands about the melting Polar ice caps, sea level rise, rampant forest fires, increasingly severe weather occurrences and the deadening of our oceans. The need for ever-increasing output of goods and services is a human imperative that outweighs all other considerations, especially the need for the continuation of life on this planet.

So now we have the presumed disintegration of the “Republican” party – a gang of criminal sociopaths if ever there was one. "Democrats" are licking their electoral chops, giddily hoping to replace the criminal "Republicans" in next fall’s "elections."

Maybe they will, even most likely they will. Then what? Pretty much nothing. The "Democrats" will enact some laws, maybe impeach our criminal president, and, they hope, pave the way for the next presidential “election.” Mostly they will game for the next "election."

But little will change, and, presuming our infinite-growth economic system will continue on its growth trajectory, the public will get tired of the “Democrats” and their lack of any real beliefs or solutions, and, voila, the criminal “Republicans” will be back, likely with even greater power than before.

We can look at our mass information media as an infrastructure of the status quo, and as such it is constrained within a very narrow spectrum of perception, belief, ideas and ideology. The "press" is fond of congratulating itself for being "objective," but it is an objectivity that is confined to what Noam Chomsky calls the bounds of thinkable thought.

So we won't be seeing, hearing or reading about changing our economic system away from one of infinite growth of output any time soon. The stock market is setting records on an almost daily basis. What could possible go wrong?

Of course, one of the implicit tenets of "American" mass media is that what they emit is supreme, that the mere fact that something is presented as official reality makes it the truth that is greater than the non-human Universe.

Arguing against this hubris is futile. Time will provide its own supreme argument. The Universe, and most particularly the ecosystem of Planet Earth, works in its own way on its own schedule, and in its own relationship between cause and effect. Our economic system can't grow forever. It is already too big, as the recent (and ongoing) wildfires, hurricanes, floods, droughts,  extinctions, sea level warming and rise, reef decline and fish depletion should indicate. Our news media report on these things, but dare not draw any conclusions about what to do. And, of course, our corporate and political elite largely pretend that these things either are not happening or have no human cause - or at least one that would cause a change in the way we occupy this planet.

In this larger context we might want to relax a bit. Our infinite-growth economic system won't be around much longer. Our demented sociopath president won't be around much longer either. It takes a certain level of youth and vigor to be an adversary to the entire planet.

Trump has neither. He is old, obese, irascible and desperate. He also is very likely suffering from dementia, as well as other severe mental disorders. He is a criminal sociopath, which, while the condition carries a certain insulation from scruple or remorse, requires an increasing level of energy as the lies of one’s life compound at an increasing rate.

Trump is exponentially dishonest, and as such he depends on an exponential level of deceit energy to keep the lies going. I expect him to implode within the next year. The only question remaining is whether the planet will implode along with him.
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Here's a rundown on the real-world consequences of fake news.

Here's a song. The Platters. The Pretenders. Infected Mushroom. Foo Fighters. Freddie Mercury. Eric Clapton. Creedence Clearwater Revival. Glee. Nightcore. The Temptations. Alternate version.