Opinion/Editorial
LOOK WHO’S TALKING
How America has been ripped asunder socially and then held apart by deliberate communication isolation. Boeing is moving its headquarters to Arlington, Virginia from Chicago…to get even farther away from its production and worker facilities in Seattle, Washington. This follows a trend set forth by so many other businesses. Get just as far away as you can from any kind of controversy, complaints or need to provide services, counseling, or any of that. The gas station industry is a perfect example. At one time all measures of complaints, from gas prices to service could be lodged at the gas station itself. Owners and managers were directly on hand to provide service and response. The utility companies were the same way. Now, there’s nobody to complain to, or even to talk to. One is lucky to find somebody in these places, or on the phone, who speaks decent English.
Voice mail is another invention to distance the public from service. And it’s all deliberate, hatefully nasty, and leading to ever more alienation and distrust. Only twenty years ago a citizen could go to D.C. and visit a senator or representative. No more. Don’t bother. Nobody will see you or talk to you. The same is true of these now highly vaunted political stars in their hometowns and states. At one time fans could go to ballparks or coffee shops, college campuses, and more to talk to sports stars. No more. Forget it. If you are wondering why there is so much ‘hate’ today, well, there’s a big part of it. It is not hate, by the way, it’s alienation. We are becoming ever more alone while the population grows. Many Americans are coming to dislike immigrants, not because they are crossing the border illegally, but because they have close-knit tribal family ties, while we are losing our own.
All communication has not disappeared, however. The communication of ‘them to us’ continues unabated. There’s no place on your television to hit a button and then comment back to the talking heads speaking to and into us every day of the year. The Internet has the ability through social sites to allow for comments, but then, unless you are a movie or rock star, or maybe even a famous politician, there’s no audience to write back to and there’s now no possibility of building such an audience. The social sites are all very solidly limiting just how many contacts or ‘friends’ one might have. The New York Times isn’t so limited because it can still do what it just did, no matter how potentially damaging.
The New York Times, of all papers, published an article by a couple of junior and very irresponsible reporters that was based upon the word of one intelligence official. It was all about how the U.S. intelligence agencies targeted Russian generals for assassination and then gave the data to the Ukrainians, which also allowed them to sink that Russian flagship in the Black Sea. This idiotically led new editorial management of that newspaper brings us ever so much closer to nuclear war. What stupidity, whether the data is valid or not. How can they be this irresponsible, and supported by a huge highly paid editorial staff, to taunt and toy with a nut case leader in Russia calling the shots in this current (and potentially nuclear war. Is getting a story so important that we are all to be put at the risk of mutually assured destruction by such actions? Are these reporters so without relatives and family that they don’t care if they are killed by the reporter’s writing and actions?
Why did the leadership allow Jill Biden to be transported to Ukraine for a conference with that country’s president’s wife? How provocative is that, and how risky? What kind of action would be expected of the USA if the president’s wife was deliberately or even accidentally killed by Russian targeting and fire? It’s as irresponsible to allow that trip as it is to allow the reporters of a hugely respected newspaper to print a story as it did about the ship and the generals. Before we can hope to have a reasonable expectation of good conduct and intelligent action from others, we must first begin to exercise it ourselves.
