Deliberate Distortions

I am beginning truly to understand why Lao Tzu, to a greater extent, and Chuang Tzu, to a lesser extent, wrote so much about government and the role of leadership in society. So much of what we, the people, take to be bona fide reality is based on the information we are supplied with. From what I've seen, it doesn't matter if a country's government is democratic or communist, a republic or a dictatorship, secular or bound by religious dogma: Leaders deliberately distort reality for their own political ends!

This fact was brought home the past few days as I read several essays on the internet. In the first by Ian Angus from Climate & Capitalism, "Mislabeled Food and the Myth of Consumer Sovereignty,"

One of the great lies of mainstream economic theory is “consumer sovereignty” – the idea that the consumers actually control the economy by “voting with their wallets,” deciding what to buy and thus forcing corporations to do their bidding. I discussed some reasons why this isn’t true in a recent article on claims that consumers are to blame for the BP oil disaster.

An issue I didn’t deal with there is the fact that the theory depends on the assumption that consumers know everything relevant about products, prices, etc., and so can make informed and rational buying decisions.

Of course, that’s nonsense. Every part of the capitalist market is characterized by what a few economists recognize as “information asymmetry” – the sellers have far more information than the buyers. And, although it’s hard to get an economist to admit this, the sellers deliberately and constantly withhold important information from buyers...

Aah, but it's not simply not corporations that employ this strategy. As John Pilger writes in "New Statesman - Flying The Flag, Faking The News,"

False reality The last US combat troops have left Iraq "as promised, on schedule", according to President Barack Obama. The TV news has been filled with cinematic images of the "last US soldiers", silhouetted against the dawn light, crossing the border into Kuwait.

Fact They have not left. At least 50,000 troops will continue to operate from 94 bases. American air assaults are unchanged, as are special forces' assassinations. The number of "military contractors" is 100,000 and rising. Most Iraqi oil is now under direct foreign control...

Everywhere we look -- no matter the topic or event -- those in power twist, omit and outright lie about what's going on! When reality is too disagreeable, they manipulate public opinion by sugar coating and distorting the information shared.

It doesn't seem to matter who the players are. Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Tony Blair, George W. Bush, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Kim Jong-il and Barack Obama each has been guilty of whipping up nationalistic pride or furor for strictly political gain. Even worse, the faceless elites who pull the strings behind the curtain do it solely for economic gain.

It's getting to the point that I'm simply suspicious of the establishment, regardless of the players or the brand. Maybe I'll become a hippie, two or three generations after the fact!