Propagandists flourish in worlds of half-remembered truths, undigested speculations, all raw ore mined but not refined by intelligent thought.
Intelligent study of history chases off the fallacies on which the propagandists thrive. I am increasingly concerned for the future of American culture that valuable thoughts and understandings from the 20th Century are wearing down, being misremembered and misinterpreted throughout the years.
Perhaps the greatest Original Sin of American culture is contempt. Contempt, allied with ignorance, and warmed up with frustration and anger, seems to me that it is the cause of our pandemic of mass killings in the American public spaces and in private.
I hear of shootings every day. Almost all of them occur in places where the shooter has felt humiliated or treated with contempt, and has boiled over in frustration and narcissistic rage. The actions are inappropriate to the source, of course. But the actions are re-invented, day after day, in schools and places of governance, hospitals and healthcare centers, and in others where people engage in wrath and slaughter at the place most strongly associated with humiliation.
Yes, it’s a “mental health” problem, as it takes some derangement to act homicidally in a place where others are perhaps quietly simmering but inactive. But American culture appears to be awash in contempt and suspicion, so much so that it seems part of the very air pressure in which we go about unaware of its presence.
I wish to go on, and speak about mistrust, the populace and the ubiquity of fear, about the early Soviet Union and its transmogrification into the tyranny under Stalin. But that’s for another time. The workday beckons.
"Perhaps the greatest Original Sin of American culture is contempt. Contempt, allied with ignorance, and warmed up with frustration and anger, seems to me that it is the cause of our pandemic of mass killings in the American public spaces and in private."
We need to go back, or try to find, the foundations of our contempt, frustration, and anger, because those are the outcomes of informational input or some inherent, early-on misunderstandings. If a person is angry, he has a reason; bogus as it may be objectively, it resonates with him. For example, "I tried to stop election proceedings because the president told us that it was stolen from him. So, yes, I'm mad as hell about that," and naive enough to believe it.
Every response has a stimulus. What's egging on these people? The most obvious answer is lies, well-done, effective propaganda broadcast almost constantly for decades. Such work to foment violence. Thus, unfettered freedom of speech has a serious downside; as the cliche rightly has it: With freedom comes responsibility. In this case, the responsibility to always speak truly; to fail to do so, should be prohibited, stopped, and penalized. Until then, gasoline will continue to be poured onto our blazing national firestorm.
[steps down from his soapbox with great, silent dignity as his audience thinks, This guy needs to get a life; I wonder if he's ever had a girlfriend]