THE MOUNTING HORRORS of terminal climate change foster the sort of news reports I deliberately exclude from Dispatches, a practice that today I am momentarily abandoning.
As a prelude though let me explain the three reasons that prompt such exclusions:
Firstly,
disasters are invariably headlined by Mainstream Media, which means all
of us are constantly deluged with all such news. In contrast, the purpose of Dispatches is ferreting out relevant information to which we might not otherwise have immediate access.
Secondly,
Mainstream Media typically eliminates any mechanism of empathy beyond
the solicitation of contributions to Capitalism-sustaining “charities.”
It thus reduces disasters to pornographic spectacles of death and
destruction. Nor is this accidental. It occurs because far too many
USians – especially the JesuNazis and their ilk – find it obscenely
titillating to witness the suffering of others, particularly when those
others have darker skins: precisely why the professional descendants of
Josef Goebbels reap such grotesquely huge profits by exploiting mass
tragedy.
Thirdly,
the pornification of disaster exemplifies perfectly the misdirection by
which Capitalism offers us the televised equivalent of lynchings or
mass executions to distract us from its culpability in the tragedies
and atrocities themselves.“If it bleeds, it leads” is therefore far more
than editorial policy. It is also disclosure both of the sadistic
nature of Capitalism and the fact that by offering vicarious fulfillment
of sadism – re-creation of the opiate provided by the Roman Colosseum –
the Capitalists cunningly numb rebellious impulse and thus perpetuate
their omnipotence.
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