Turn It Off

I was at a Wilco show a few weeks ago and noticed something about the audience: they were very energetic, very young, and very happy to be there.  I don’t know why this struck me on this particular night.  It’s not abnormal to find a bunch of people at a rock show having a good time, but there was a special feeling to this crowd.  While I was watching this sea of people ten to fifteen years younger than me dance and live it up, it projected a whole lot of positive thought about the future.  Now, I don’t know what sort of ideology this crowd carried as they are growing up in a time of almost complete authoritarian control and it is hard to see beyond the propaganda, but all this positive energy that kept Wilco on stage for 2 ½ hours gave me a bit of hope that this crowd wouldn’t be growing up with anger guiding the way.  To really achieve an enlightened shift in mindset I believe there is something very important they all need to do.  Turn off the TV.

Television, radio, and print are cesspools of establishment ideas, and it isn’t just entertainment personalities, it is political leaders too.  These ideas and these people are hate-catalysts, and they are exactly what the young need to move away from.  This is not a screed about left media, or right media, it is about all media that coddles the establishment line of thought.  That just happens to be pretty much everything you’re going to find on television these days and the only way to escape is to turn it off.

I really have no idea what popular viewing is, but it does not matter because while the voices may be different, from Jon Stewart to Sean Hannity, the message is the same.  They always protect the state, no matter how wrong or how far it goes.  It may seem at times that Jon Stewart is going after politicians for various social issues, but in the end he makes so light of most of the corruption that he helps his audience look past it.  He is an enabler, because while making sometimes poignant jokes about one group, the very serious civil rights issues and drone-murder atrocities fall way in the background to the point where his audience comfortably gets to forget what the Democrats are really doing.  How else could you explain how the anti-war left has failed so miserably in holding these people’s feet to the fire?  After 6 years of a Democratic Senate, 4 years of the Presidency, and 2 of those with the House, the wars are worse then ever and expanding.  This is why the left media is as dangerous and ugly as the right, and why we must recognize the whole shebang as state media.  Acquiescence to authoritarian power is what they aim for.  It is the same reason why they frame the argument for gay marriage as a right we must have bestowed upon us, not one that should be given back.  It is always about the creation of new laws, not the repeal of old ones.  Our rights were always there.  It is the state that has taken them. 

The conversation is always framed towards the benefit of power, never in rejection of it; people who are much older and come from a different era, one that was enveloped by conformity and propaganda, frame it for the young.  The “trust in government” cycle has been going on for much too long and it is time to break it.  The people appearing on your television are deep in it, whether they believe that American empire must shape the world, or they believe it belongs in every aspect of our lives, what they don’t believe in is solutions.  They believe that your life belongs in the hands of a higher authority, and that your volition does not move beyond voting for one of two ideologies.  Beyond the parties and their push in one direction, you barely exist.

But your life belongs to you and only you.  You must take control of yourself.  It’s like we have been thrown into a padded room wearing a tightly fitting straitjacket.  The walls surrounding us are covered in words and phrases that don’t amount to more than talking points and empty rhetoric.  These are the crazy ideas of bureaucrats and managers that believe they can control your life better than you can with programs that box humans with different needs into a one-track life.  Even with all this distraction, there still exists a door in this room and it is left unlocked.  There is an escape.  You just have to somehow turn that knob.  Maybe it’s a little harder because your hands are not free, but in real life, it’s even easier to get the process going of leaving behind the noise.  It starts with clicking the power button on a remote control. 

Is there still hope for my own relatively young generation?  I’m not sure.  Most seem to continue to fall in line.  They watch the old media and listen to the same old voices that protect their ears from hearing the serious violations of human and civil rights by their government.  They still seem to believe in leaders who wear their corruption on their sleeves ( It’s funny, you always hear that politicians should have to wear patches like NASCAR drivers to show who owns them.  But they really don’t have to, do they? We already know they are corrupted and vote for them anyway.  If anybody should wear the patches, it is us, because we really have no clue just how owned we are.).  The people I grew up with still believe that the authority they like should also have authority over their neighbor’s life, even when your neighbor does not agree at all.  We have yet to turn it off. 

I used Jon Stewart as an example of a protector of the establishment earlier, mostly because he is seen as a guy who is there for us.  But he isn’t alone.

Lawrence O’Donnell – Born 1951

Glen Beck – Born 1964

Rush Limbaugh – Born 1951

Chris Matthews – Born 1945

Stephen Colbert – Born 1964

Keith Olbermann – Born 1959

Bill O/Reilly – Born 1949

Sean Hannity – Born 1961

The youngest person I could find on this list was Rachel Maddow who was born in 1973.  Of course I haven’t had cable news on in quite a while so I’m not sure if these folks are even the main personalities anymore.  It doesn’t matter if they are or aren’t, the fact is that they are on TV because and other parts of establishment media because they are going to play nice.  Whichever side they represent, they protect our authoritarian government.

What I’m not trying to say is that because these people are older they are wrong.  Each individual is wise in their own way, and every one of them is going to understand and convey truths that cannot be denied.  They are wrong because they are part of ideological teams that they cannot see beyond.  They promote the vision of their team, and ultimately that vision is state power.  For their generations, freedom is an afterthought.  You would think after years and years of failure to move liberty forward in any way, they would see that the authoritarian power structure that they promote would no longer be the solution, it would only be the problem.  Forcing the individual to be a part of the collective would be the problem.  Forcing free and naturally working markets to be ordered and controlled would be the problem.  Forcing other areas of the world to Westernize through coercion and violence, instead of promoting our way with peace and freedom using the tools of the information age, is the problem.  These people on television are wrong and they remain on television because they are wrong.  They create an unquestioned reality for viewers to soak in.  They create the angry divide.  They create hatred in our society and enable state power to work off that hatred.  And they probably don’t even see it because they’ve been in the thick of it for so long.

So turn it off.  Find out what reality is.  Find out who people really are.  Understand your natural human rights.  Live beyond the state.  Live as an individual who wants others to be able to live in their own way.  Leave the loony bin behind.  Turn it off.