Bruddah IZ
DA
Orwell’s Animal Farm parodies Soviet propaganda:
On Sunday mornings Squealer, holding down a long strip of paper with his trotter, would read out to them lists of figures
proving that the production of every class of foodstuff had increased by two hundred percent, three hundred percent, or five hundred
percent, as the case might be. The animals saw no reason to disbelieve him, especially as they could no longer remember very clearly what conditions had been like before the Rebellion. All the same, there were days when they felt that they would sooner have had less figures and more food.
The point: In a totalitarian state, there’s a chasm between daily life and the media. Daily life is awful, but the media trumpets the glory of the status quo.
The West now has a comparable chasm between daily life and the media, but it goes in the opposite direction. Daily life is wonderful. Unless you actively hunt for outliers, you’re surrounded by well-fed, healthy, safe, comfortable people enjoying a cornucopia of amusement. The media, however, uses the vastness of the world to show us non-stop terror, hate, fear, brutality, and poverty - not just in the third World, but right here at home.--Bryan Caplan
On Sunday mornings Squealer, holding down a long strip of paper with his trotter, would read out to them lists of figures
proving that the production of every class of foodstuff had increased by two hundred percent, three hundred percent, or five hundred
percent, as the case might be. The animals saw no reason to disbelieve him, especially as they could no longer remember very clearly what conditions had been like before the Rebellion. All the same, there were days when they felt that they would sooner have had less figures and more food.
The point: In a totalitarian state, there’s a chasm between daily life and the media. Daily life is awful, but the media trumpets the glory of the status quo.
The West now has a comparable chasm between daily life and the media, but it goes in the opposite direction. Daily life is wonderful. Unless you actively hunt for outliers, you’re surrounded by well-fed, healthy, safe, comfortable people enjoying a cornucopia of amusement. The media, however, uses the vastness of the world to show us non-stop terror, hate, fear, brutality, and poverty - not just in the third World, but right here at home.--Bryan Caplan
