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Growing
up in
America in the seventies and eighties, I really had no concept of
geography or international relations. My public and private school
educations managed to avoid the whole concept of the world outside of
the United States, with the exception of England and the Soviet Union.
I was aware that France and Canada existed, to be fair, and I had heard
of Mexico.
However, I was taught about other things, like the coming Ice
Age,
recycling, and how overpopulation would have so outstripped the food
supply by the year 2000 that most people would be retarded due to
malnutrition. Somehow, the teachers managed to sneak basic arithmetic
and a reading list into the curriculum mandated by the government and
assisted by the teachers's [sic] union, so I grew up a functional
citizen. My
extracurricular interests included reading, girls and cars. I continued
through college, marriage, running a business, fatherhood, divorce and
remarriage, blissfully ignorant of the larger context of things.
It wasn't until 9/11 that I started to wake up to the world of
geopolitics.911attack.jpg The morning of 9/11 I received a call from my
stepfather saying,
"They've flown a plane into the World Trade Center."
Since I was
running a business
from a desk, and had an internet connection, I started to read. I went
to the Drudge Report site, and was able to access and read every
newspaper's analysis of events. After about a week, I started to notice
that different papers had different viewpoints. In some cases, widely
divergent opinions were put forth as the truth. What was this? Wasn't
the news objective?
 My first lesson was that the news is far from objective. I
found myself
reading the Wall Street Journal and nodding my head in agreement. I
could follow the logic. It made sense and bore a relation to how
reality worked in my experience. When I read the New York Times I found
my head spinning. The logic didn't hold and the premises were bizarre.
The conclusions were twisted versions of reality.
I gradually came to realize I was a Republican. I found myself a
partisan, not because my parents or my University professors
indoctrinated me, but because what the crazy Right Wingers were saying
made sense.
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Did
you get this far?
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I
tried to talk to my friends and family about all of this, and some of
them understood what I was saying. These were the same happy and
well-adjusted Republicans as above. They did not engage in
name-calling, character assassination, lying or complaining, and none
of them were on Prozac. Some people, though, did not understand, and I
found myself under withering fire from people I loved, who just could
not understand how I could be so wrong, and tried their best to correct
my thinking.
Their attempts at correction, however, all failed, largely because they
sounded the same and used the same rhetorical techniques. I soon
learned of the concept of "talking points."
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Go back then. It's the ultimate validation of your own experience
and conclusions. It's
Payoff!
By the way, Prozac isn't supposed to make you feel good, per se.
It's supposed to temper mood swings. Cut out the spikes that make
you want to nuke Vermont, and stuff. Prozac, Ritalin, red whiskey and a good woman make you feel good.
Okay, no more long stuff from me today. You're
welcome. |
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