Want the Truth in Energy? We Need to Think for Ourselves
A few years ago I wrote this post expressing my displeasure at my countrymen, as they had adopted wholesale the explanation that our government provided for invading Iraq.
Immediately before the attack, this message, without a comma’s worth of variation, was broadcast on every major channel, not only in the U.S., but all around the world: “The G8 has today endorsed an American plan to bring democracy to the Middle East.” It was short, understandable, and credible to the vast majority of people onto whose ears it fell—if only because of its ubiquity: the rice farmers in Indonesia got it on their radios every 30 minutes for 24 consecutive hours, just as did the corn farmers in Iowa when they tuned in their morning, evening, and nightly news programs–across every network. The tactics for promoting a constant, unified message were solidly in place then (as they remain today) though, as we all learned just a few years later, there wasn’t a particle of truth in it.
This is a good time to bring this up, as we normalize U.S. – Cuban relations; this is another watershed event in mass communications that itself has great import. (more…)
