So the Ron Paul blackout has, much like the banking bailouts in 2008, brought to me another epiphany. We don’t live in a Republic or a Democracy anymore, but a Mediacracy, like the one that was described in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. The epiphany came after it was clear that the will of the people was being ignored by various media outlets in the wake of Ron Paul’s close second place in the Iowa Ames Straw Poll. Despite all evidence pointing to a very strong support within the Republican party for Ron Paul, he is completely and utterly ignored.
What we have here is exactly what happens when the various media barons think they are gods and know what is best. And there are plenty of people out there all too willing to support these crony journalists because they believe that they can direct the future of humanity.
It is no secret that whoever controls the flow of information controls the direction of the majority. This is the inherent danger of the system as the majority rule is tyrannical rule. We always forget that the smallest minority, the individual, needs to be insulated from the abuses of other individuals.
Essentially, we now are seeing a media machine where all supposed sides promote their guy and if someone says something that is outside of the commonly accepted dogma, he is shunned and rejected. Ron Paul has largely been a pariah for sticking to his principles.
The Internet has, by and large, done a lot to allow voices like mine and many other radical views to be discussed. I knew next to nothing about anarchism, for example, until I researched it on the Internet and I do not regard with the same negative connotation which so many others still do. It has, however, contributed to the problem. The problem is that there are so many voices, that most people would rather go to people and outlets they are familiar with and not to other sources, which could be just as legitimate. Unfortunately, I do not see this as a problem to be resolved, just an observation of the current media culture’s drawbacks.
And thus, because we have instant information from all the various news outlets, we have essentially manufactured candidates like Winston Noble and Hubert Hoag in Fahrenheit 451. Nobody actually listens to what people are really saying, but just looking at the image and projecting their own ideas onto their guy (or girl, as it were). I admit I have done so in the past and I am probably doing so with Ron Paul.
Normally, I would not have a problem with all this, if we were voting on a reality television show. Unfortunately, this is serious business, as the winner of the Presidential race will have access to nuclear weapons and can easily issue an executive order to launch them without consequence. Already Obama has demonstrated that he can go to war and Congress will go along with it, despite all their fake protests.
We trust the various media pundits to tell us how to think. We trust politicians, most of whom would sell their dead grandmother’s body fat as soap if they could, to lead us and be our moral center. And we trust the mass media outlets to give us the correct information.
That is the problem with Americans these days: we are too trusting of people who hold authority over us. We do not question them all that much and when we do, it is usually barely scratching the surface or the questions are usually incorrectly worded. For example, during the debt ceiling debate, nobody was asking why it needed to be raised nor were we asking why we have reached 14 trillion in the first place. Had any of those questions been asked, I will bet that we would have seen a much more reasonable deal reached or a government shutdown. Instead, the debt ceiling debate was one of raise the debt ceiling or default on our debt. It was a false dichotomy and it was disgusting to watch it on display each and everyday.
So the reality is that we are living in a mediacracy, where the flow of information is what represents the people’s opinion, not the people themselves. And when the political class is wrong and the people say something else entirely, the mediacracy still manages to win at the end of the day.
The only solution, as I see it, is to encourage a constant state of skepticism regarding what we are told otherwise, this global game of Chinese whispers will continue.