The Monging of Pseudonews

Some people angrily tell me to stop talking about all the bad news unless I am going to offer something that they can do to help counter or or repair the issue.

But the problem is that the pseudonewsmongers have lost all control of objectivity and of verifying the facts. When I was a practicing journalist, I would have been fired if I had printed anything that wasn't clearly and documentably true. But (everywhere on the political dial) people are following the advice of one well-known twentieth-century political leader.

This chief executive taught: "All propaganda has to be popular and has to accommodate itself to the comprehension of the least intelligent of those whom it seeks to reach."

"The art of leadership," said this leader, "consists in consolidating the attention of the people against a single adversary and taking care that nothing will split up that attention."


And, finally, he declared: "Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it." For, he concluded, "It is not truth that matters, but victory. ... Success is the sole earthly judge of right and wrong."

This famous leader? Adolf Hitler.

If every one of us doesn't do our very best to hold to reality, to the truth, then these mendacious pundits will be the only source for people to learn what is going on. Therefore, we have no choice but to do everything we can to spread the truth.

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It shames me when Americans decry the way the press is controlled in certain countries - little realizing that their own media are likewise controlled by the rich and powerful. It shames me when Americans condemn other countries for having only one party and one candidate for each office, or for holding obviously rigged elections - little realizing that, thanks to gerrymandering and yellow polling and lying media and big-bucks political contributions, their votes are already known and accounted for long before they pull the curtain on the voting booth, and the outcome already arranged to the satisfaction of the powers-that-be.

Polling is a science; everybody knows that. But few realize exactly what kind of science it is. It is the science of getting the results desired by whoever is footing the bill.

Do you want a more conservative response? Take your poll during the day, when students and workers, more likely to give the answer you don't want than retirees, are most likely away from home.

Do you want poll results supporting the incumbent? It's all in the wording. "How strongly do you appreciate ___'s efforts to protect the American way of life?" Opposing the incumbent? "How strongly do you think it's time to replace ___?"

As a journalist I watched efforts to gerrymander out of existence an enclave of strongly Democratic minority voters in one small city. The Republicans who controlled the county legislature at the time got to draw the districting maps, and strove to split up the neighborhood into several districts, destroying any chance of electing a Democrat. And, yes, I've seen Democrats do the same thing.