Carnage

In one of my early communication courses a professor told us, “Television has a tremendous power to teach. We should be grateful that it doesn’t.” That was a long time ago. With the proliferation of cable TV things have changed. TV no longer wants to entertain by reflecting society and appealing to a national consciousness but it wants to change society, rising the lowest to a new world order of mostly leftist ideals. This has not been a mass conspiracy it’s more insidious than that – it’s called niche marketing. With more outlets for communication the ideal model of balanced reporting doesn’t draw the crowds. Now they have to be louder, meaner and more myopic than their competitors. These outlets see the success of the Ted Turners and copy that approach. The middle ground – the common sense approach – is now viewed as ignorant and as superstitious religious nonsense. These outlets need only assert a conclusion and it is enough to establish its truth; no evidence is required and no rebuttal allowed. None of this is new of course it is just now coming at us so fast and so relentlessly that it has become difficult to separate the truth from the truthiness. We are not given time to reflect we can only react. And they can get us to react in a predictable way.

Case in point, the media coverage of the war in Iraq. Regardless of what any of us know or think about this war the mass media wants us out of there. They never teach us what jihad really means, the difference in Shiite and Sunni, the practice of Moslem female circumcision, or that Islam really means submit not peace. What they teach us about this war is all about the confusion and mayhem but mostly the carnage. Some even want us to apologize for the Crusades as we leave. (As Mark Shea once said, “Yes, we should apologize – that we lost!”) They want us out. They would say “Out now and let the chips fall where they may” but they don’t think there are any chips.

There has been a monthly average of 160,000 troops in the Iraq theatre of operation during the last 22 months, and a total of 2,112 American deaths (as 12/06). That gives a firearm death-rate of 60 per 100,000 soldiers.

The firearm death-rate in Washington D.C. is 80.6 per 100,000 persons for the same period of time.

That means Americans are about 25% more likely to be shot and killed in the U.S. Capital than in Iraq.

Conclusion? The U.S. should pull out of Washington. (Push governing back down to the local level.)

The vast majority of Americans want to throw in the towel in Iraq and the Middle East in general. This mistaken attitude lies solely at the feet of the Main Stream Media who want to teach us that at heart all people are peaceful and we should just leave them alone. In other words it’s the blind denial of The Fall. We have a Capital full of Neville Chamberlain’s where we could use a few Churchill’s

Victor Hanson of American Enterprise online made some observations I feel appropriate here.
He was commenting on war-torn Iraq of 26 million residents, versus peaceful California with 35 million. The former is a violent and impoverished landscape, the latter said to be paradise on Earth.

“Imagine what the reaction would be if the world awoke each morning to be told that once again there were 6 more murders, 27 rapes, 38 arsons, 180 robberies, and 360 instances of assault in California — yesterday, today, tomorrow, and every day. I wonder if the headlines would scream about “Nearly 200 poor Californians butchered again this month!”

How about a monthly media dose of “600 women raped in February alone!” Or try, “Over 600 violent robberies and assaults in March, with no end in sight!” Those do not even make up all of the state’s yearly 200,000 violent acts that law enforcement knows about.”

There are of course good things in California just as there are good things that have happened in Iraq but nobody hears about those in the MSM. Why cloud our agenda with facts.

Its progress.

Some time ago, a U.S. Senator referred to Iraq as another Vietnam. It was not true then…but dissenters like him – with the help of the teaching media – have made it true now.
What we see are the headlines running across the screen on CNN: “Carnage In Iraq.”
Followed by Al Gore asking “Is it hot in here or is it just me?”
It is no longer journalism but brain washing. The MSM knows this - it has become an ends justify the means thing.

But just what are the ends they hope to achieve – that is what I do not know nor am I sure they do. They think movement – any movement – is progress. "Progress should mean that we are always changing the world to fit the vision, instead we are always changing the vision." (GKC) MSM has lost the vision and is confusing something sparkly with clarity.

Or as Edison’s little brother once said. “Golly Tom, now that we put the balls on the other end it goes in and out just like anything!”

PROGRESS HO!