By Ashley Coto, Special to the Chronicle
WARNING: Don’t read this if you are easily convinced by mass media. Don’t read this if you think ours is truly the land of the free; If you believe the media is impartial and true; if the mass media has you on lock.
Are you proud to be in a democratic state? Does the freedom and equality politicians preach prove practice in your life? I don’t think so. It’s a lifestyle. It’s an opinion. That’s mine.
At my current radical and rebellious state in life, I see the people of America as a large class of stupidity. We cherish the idealisms of a democracy so much that we are too distracted to even notice if it is actually practiced. As great as it sounds to give our voice to society, the executive branch is doing an even greater job by brainwashing us to believe that we have some authority in this game of social class. To me it’s no more than asking, “Hey, will you rule me?”
Are Americans so caught up with this fancy word ‘freedom,’ that we disregard the freedom of others? We think we fight terrorism, without realizing we may have been terrorists to other countries. Or is it by default to assume terrorism as an action against us? We are so distracted in trying to achieve the perfect middle-class American life that we miss out on the affairs of the government-the ones beyond what’s being told in the media.
The media feeds so much crime and terrorism into our heads that each time we turn on the news, we are convinced to expect the worse. We are made into a fearful country. Political talk is filled with promises to keep us safe, but I like to ask: safe from what? Save me from my fate of mortality, and then I will trust your word.
One might argue that, in a democracy, the people are given choices. I have a small task for the people satisfied with the choices we are respectfully granted. Pick a news station. Then, tell me who owns it. Coke or Pepsi? Burger King or McDonald’s? Hollister Co. or Abercrombie & Fitch? It doesn’t matter which you pick; it’s always the same people who end up getting the money in their pockets, and you are always the one taking it out of yours.
The mass of democracy becomes distracted enough to crave material objects in the hope to send a message of the type of wealth and authority we think we have. Whether lower-class citizens are dependent on material goods or something as base as drugs, the governmental class has an easy job of pushing us into a delusion of happiness. It is easy to satisfy us with the promise of small leverage, so we can practice this theoretical idea of democracy; a magical theory that all of our votes are equal.
The mass media is owned by a handful of corporations that share the task of keeping the stupid people on the same page by creating a negative view of all radicals opposing all sorts of strikes or boycotts, tricking us into the approval of their war, and terrifying us to the point that we hold hands and smile at the law for protection.
Mass media convinces the people that their participation is politics, and keeps us in a state of distraction. It’s a sad and close-minded world, but that’s why you’re at Hofstra, to one day become that comfortable middle-class family without a say in the world.
Ted Turner once said, “We won’t be signing off until the world ends. We’ll be on, and we will cover the end of the world.”
Well it’s comforting to know that when we’re all dying we can count on the news to be there and tell us that we’re bleeding.
