The Liberal Media

Some crimes move or frighten us in ways we hadn’t anticipated. The Colonia Narvarte massacre is one of those, as was evident at the rally for the victims on Sunday, August 2nd, when hundreds gathered around the statue of El Ángel on Avenida Reforma.CREDITPHOTOGRAPH BY YURI CORTEZ / AFP / GETTY

I was reading a story yesterday in The New Yorker about murder and corruption in Mexico. Five people were murdered in Mexico City, two of them were journalists from Vera Cruz, and I got to wondering why should a journalist risk getting killed to publicize corruption? I mean, nobody cares. If people cared about this kind of thing, they wouldn't keep electing these scumbags into powerful positions.
     But that's not really how it works, it is? People, taken as a whole, are stupid herd animals who are easily panicked with the smallest of advertising budgets. Bring enough money to bear on a particular issue and people will believe whatever you tell them. Tell them that Humpty Dumpty is their friend and they'll vote for him, even if he is a little cracked.

    "The Liberal Media" is a phrase I often encounter on my prowls around the net. It's always from someone who disagrees with something, big surprise there. I typically use it as a marker for a right-wing gun-nut. But there is some truth to this myth. There have been times when I have looked for information on a topic and ALL the reports seem to have the same slant. I had been thinking this validates the R.W.G.N. view that everyone in mass media is engaged in delusional group-think and they are all marching in lockstep, i.e. they are a bunch of dummies and you shouldn't listen to them.

    But now we've got this story out of Mexico and I'm wondering, if you aren't going to publish articles about corruption, how are you going to fight it? Well, there is the drug war, though I'm not sure it has risen to the level of 'low-intensity conflict', much less a civil war, and a civil-war is what it would take to kick these guys out of power, and it probably wouldn't work anyway.
    So maybe publishing articles in mass-media is the only effective way to fight this corruption. Not a very happy prospect.
    If you are going to war, the first thing you need is allies and the more the merrier. Okay, merry may not be the word we want here. If you want to remove an entrenched oligarchy from power, you are going to need all the help you can get. And in a war, which is what we have here, you are either on one side or the other. The people with the power don't need any help, they can hire people to do their bidding. But if you are part of the opposition, you need to toe the party line.

    So none of the issues being arguing about are really that important. What is important is that we fight against the oligarchy that is in power, because whenever they get to be too big and powerful, they tend to forget their responsibility to act as good citizens.