Posted by
John Caile on Wednesday, March 25, 2009 12:42:40 AM
Americans seem to be acting more and more like trained monkeys, jumping onto every idiotic bandwagon that comes down the pike. From "global warming" madness, with its endless variations of "green" worship, to the hostility toward "the rich," people seem willing, if not downright eager, to adopt whatever view seems to be the one that "most people" have.
Psychologists call it the "cascade affect" - once a belief, or a viewpoint, reaches a
critical mass, where more than half of people seem to share it, then it becomes more and more uncomfortable for anyone to hold an
opposing view - you feel like an outsider. So, rather than question, or even think critically about the issue, most people just go along.
Take the almost lynch mob hysteria directed at "big business" these days. No sooner did the mainstream media instruct people on how "angry" they were supposed to be at the fact that some executives got relatively big checks, then folks stopped watching "American Idol" long enough to start talking about how "angry" they were. Never mind that these same people simply yawned when Obama and the Democrats initiated more spending in 60 days than all previous American Presidents combined.
But where did this animus toward business in general, and the wealthy in particular, come from? After all, for two centuries, America has admired those who achieve - being the biggest, the fastest, the strongest, the most successful, was what being an American was always about. But today, even the word "rich" has become almost a pejorative. But why?
The answer, it turns out, is no further away than your nearest TV or movie theater screen. Because the way propaganda works is this - subtle themes are repeated over and over again, slowly but inexorably causing a change in the views, attitudes, and yes, even tastes, of the viewers. Most of the time, we aren't even aware of it - we just keep absorbing the messages until one day, we wake up and find ourselves thinking "like everyone else."
And over the last 40 years or so there has been a clear shift in the messages contained in entertainment media, particularly in the way people in the business world are portrayed. Before the age of television, we used to have films like "The Fountainhead" in which Gary Cooper brings to life Ayn Rand's genius architect, struggling to make his sweeping visions of mile-high skyscrapers a reality.
But not anymore.
Today, just about anyone in business is portrayed as a pariah. From crime shows like "CSI" and "Law and Order" to a comedy like "Boston Legal" - it is almost impossible to watch any TV show that doesn't have numerous derogatory references to anyone in the business world. More to the point, the characters in these shows who are corporate types are almost universally portrayed as mean, arrogant, cold, harsh, unfeeling, dishonest, and of course, "indifferent to the suffering of the little guy."
If you landed from Mars and watched American TV, you'd think that there wasn't an "executive" anywhere in America who earned an honest dollar, much less one who went home at the end of the day and kissed his children good night.
Be honest, when was the last time you saw anyone in a mainstream TV show or Hollywood movie who was a vaguely sympathetic character, let alone heroic? In fact, the only "business people" who might actually be shown in a positive light on mainstream television tend to be "whistle-blowers" - like Russel Crowe's character in "The Insider" who was working to "expose" the horrors of "Big Tobacco."
Come to think about it, even the very word "big" - which used to have a positive connotation, is now used to demonize. We have BIG tobacco, BIG Oil, BIG Pharmaceuticals, as if just being BIG is in and of itself evidence of being BAD. Note, however, that Hollywood has never done a movie or a TV show that shows the (genuine) dangers of BIG GOVERNMENT.
But, hey, if Barak Obama's "plan" does half the damage to the economy and the American free enterprise system that we fear it will, it should make one hell of a Mini-series...if there is any money left to produce it, that is.