Public Comment

If we are to believe our not very reliable media, some or even many of our fellow citizens, raised in what we once thought to be a civilized country, apparently are believers of incredible conspiracy theories such as Qanon. This is both puzzling and deeply disturbing.

How has this happened?

The relentless Republican defunding and denigration of public education and of teachers (who still understand the benefits of unions) has been all too successful, especially in economically-marginalized parts of the country. As state and federal support retracts, the costs of higher education are driven to absurd heights, making it almost impossible for students from middle- and low-income families to attend college without acquiring debts that will take decades to repay and limit their future employment choices.

TV, the opiate of the people, was designed, in the U.S., to breed consumers and serve capitalist profits. Besides addiction to mindless, or vicious, social media and dumb TV, addiction to drugs and unhealthful food are driven by the constant flow of false promises delivered by TV and now Internet commercials. Cellphone addiction distracts users from the real events that threaten and raises concern about electro-magnetic radiation and cancer, but such concerns are marginalized by all those who profit from these addictions, manufacturers, marketers, and even users themselves. And further money is to be made by promising solutions to them. 

Chemical and other environmental pollution, which damages fetuses in the womb as well as the rest of us who breathe toxic air, polluted water, and eat food “products” grown in intensely poisoned soil long since depleted of nutrients and minerals. Ongoing scientific research, much of it funded by our tax dollars, has demonstrated repeatedly that the developing human brain, as well as children’s bodies, are damaged by the introduction of many of the thousands of chemicals introduced into our environment in the past 75 years. The chemical companies enjoyed their profits from nerve gas and other chemical weapons during World War II and they decided domestic uses could be found and sold to gullible U.S. consumers. Ten years ago scientists found more than 200 chemicals in infants’ cord blood. No doubt they’d find many more now. Few of us escape the cancers traceable to these chemical disruptions of our physical systems. Not to mention the wonders of plastics, the fallback product for the oil corporations once we really do cease to poison our environment with their primary product. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/newborn-babies-chemicals-exposure-bpa/ 

The bought media, that is, most of the mainstream media, owe their profits to serving their advertisers, not their readers and viewers. In the 1970s scientists began making public their concerns about the devastation that would be wreaked by human-induced climate disruption, especially the mining, transport, and burning of fossil fuels. But most media were not conveying these concerns to the public, and the oil corporations that supported the media corporations hired pseudo-scientists to refute them and confuse the public. It is only in the past year or so that mainstream media have dared to use the term climate change, let alone global warming, or the climate crisis. 

Meanwhile, the governor of California purports to be showing the way to a green future but has already signed many more oil and gas fracking leases than he did last year. And the president works to incite civil war. 

“He who can be made to believe absurdities can be made to commit violence.” —Voltaire