Another Problem With the Media

If I'm off-base about any of the following, I'd love to hear a reasoned argument as to why. No fact-free left-wing political rants, please:

First of all, let's establish that, by almost any parameter, life in the US today is, on balance, better than life anywhere, at pretty much any time in human history. If you don't buy that, I'd love to hear your example of when it was better. Yes, there are plenty of anecdotal stories of suffering and inequities of all sorts; but if you have studied history, you know that the entire grid has moved upward, and most of what we consider problems today would not be recognized as such by our ancestors, from the caves forward. The "problems" we have today have generally existed in some form throughout history, but were so far down the list that they were accepted as facts of life (disease, standard of living, life expectancy, infant mortality, incessant warfare, oppression -- you can pretty much name it). Now that we have solved so many of the issues that flummoxed our forebearers, those previously seen as less serious, have risen to the top and, for lack of the previously-solved ones for comparison, are seen as just as serious (even more threatening) than they were. Anyone who has studied history or Abe Maslow understands this.

So why are we so discontented? In my humble opinion, it is the result of two primary causes: first, the study of history has gone out of fashion among the general public. Without that, there is no way for the average person to put current events into any context other than what he has known during his own lifetime. What seems to result is a tendency to gauge our condition against perfection, an unattainable and counter-productive goal.

It is important to realize, when comparing our condition to that of our ancestors, that until recently history was generally written by and about the upper classes. Why? Because they were the only ones who could read and write and who had the luxury of time to do it -- most people were too busy just trying to survive, which also speaks to the general improvement in our living standard. So, unless one has the time and interest to really dig into it, one can easily have an excessively rosy picture of what life was like for the average person in, say, Elizabethan England. Very few people were dressed in frilly outfits, writing poetry, and eating grapes by the River Tyne.

Secondly, the rise of the 24/7 media and its voracious appetite for "news", combined with the ability to spread it instantly from coast to coast. Absent the study of history for context, the constant drumbeat of negative news ("if it bleeds, it leads") in aggregate from coast to coast, gives the impression that these are the worst of times. Every mother in California hears about the kidnapping of a 3-year-old in Florida (and over and over, to boot), and news of robberies, murders and other bad stuff is spread all over the country so that we are bombarded with the sum total. This was not true until about 20 years ago, prior to which, with rare exceptions, these were local events (24/7 news really ramped up for the first Gulf War, which ended so quickly that they were left looking for something, anything, to fill their time). Unless one has a good understanding of what has gone before, this can leave one with the impression that crime is higher, the economy is worse, poverty is more widespread, government competency is lower, partisanship is greater, and life is generally tougher, etc, than at any time in history. All of that, of course, is absolutely untrue, but I'll bet if you asked 100 people on the street, most would think it was.

It would be nice if the media themselves would provide some context but, except for such as PBS (which has other objectivity issues) and a few columnists such as Charles Krauthammer, George Will, and William Bennett, the evidence points to their being unequipped to do so. Note that the above examples lean to the right; I have said elsewhere, and I will say again, that most of those on the left side of the political spectrum simply lack the knowledge and depth of analysis, absent which the shallow appeal of liberal arguments prevails. If you doubt this, watch Rachel Maddow or Keith Olberman on MSNBC as long as you can stand it. There is utterly no evidence that either of them (and they're among the higher profile leftist commentators) have the least understanding of the historical context of the events which are the targets of their shallow rants. Television news hires almost exclusively young, attractive people as news readers and reporters. While I am sure this works for them ratings-wise, I do think the over-emphasis on looks and on-screen persona crowds out general knowledge and perspective . . . which, of course, tends to promote a liberal viewpoint.

So why does this matter? One reason is that we lose sight of why previous decisions were made. Take the banning of DDT: used to be that crop failures and insect infestations with their attendant diseases were a rampant, everyday fact of life. DDT came along and ended much of that. Time goes by, and we take for granted that there are not massive crop failures, bubonic plague, typhus, etc; with no historical memory, all we see are the supposed ill effects based upon an early '60's book by some whacked-out chick, and the supposed effects on a few species whose value is questionable against the lives lost and now at risk for want of DDT. Africa is a textbook example.

And now we've got to tear down all these dams because the fish are dying. The folks advocating this are the same ones who are against building any nuclear power plants (primarily because they don't understand the technology and inclusion of the word "nuclear" is sufficient), coal-fired generators, etc. I suppose a few of these left over '60's hippies can live in the woods without electricity, but where would the country be without it. Wind farms? The fine (and environmentally-conscious-until-it-affects-them) residents of Hyannis won't stand for any to be built in a windy location in Nantucket Sound because they will see them. Perhaps they're hoping for a revival of the New England whaling industry to supply whale-oil lamps in lieu of electric ones . . . that is, until they see how the whales come out of it.

Or, more currently, repeal of the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act in 1999, which had required that banks keep separate their deposits and investments, the idea being that profligate speculation with the latter had done much to cause their failure when the stock market crashed in 1929. After all, the banks were now behaving themselves and there was much money to be made in exotic instruments via Wall Street. The fact that we couldn't have it both ways was just waaaay too arcane for the pundits. There was more to it (the Community Reinvestment Act being the biggest), but this was one of the watersheds that led to the current economic mess.

Or the decline of religion in much of the population and the ongoing effort by such nut-jobs as the ACLU to stamp every vestige of it out of anything connected with the government. I hope I'm not breaking any big news when I say that religion (primarily Christianity) has been woven into the fabric of this country from before Day One, and was such a part of every day life and belief at the Founding that the Founders couldn't imagine it necessary to address every aspect of its relation to government. Unfortunately that, fostered by a general public ignorance of the extent to which (primarily) Christianity as been at the center of our development as a nation, has been used by some in an effort to expunge it from all forms of government and public life in this country. The inter-weaving of Judeo-Christian ethics and beliefs into the forming and framework of the US government and institutions is a significant part of why this country has evolved to be the envy of the world.

By the way, I suspect that the recent reports of the reduction in the number of Americans who call themselves Christian have as much to do with the fact that the very term "Christian" has acquired an Evangelical connotation that many mainstream Christians don't identify with as it does with any reduction in faith.

Let's look at the last Presidential election. Absent an understanding of history, a sufficient plurality of the voting public was swept away by the shallow appeal of a good-looking, well-spoken Demagogue. Their gullibility allowed them to fall for a litany of promises that no Reasonable Person could possibly keep, from getting out of Iraq within the time frame required to insure election, to the immediate closing of the Guantanamo Bay prison, to universal health care, to economic aid to the needy, to winning the International Popularity Contest, World Peace, and on and on. The Miss Universe interviews have nothing on this Guy.

So He's inaugurated and son-of-a-gun the backtracking begins: "the generals say we can't get out of Iraq for 16 months and I need Congress to appropriate more money for the War"; "I've ordered prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay transferred within a year"; and "the economic problems of the country are much worse than We were led to believe" (the classic excuse of a new President, as it neatly lays the blame for renegging on campaign promises on the prior Administration -- seriously: who did not see that coming?). Our enemies must feel that their persistence will, after all, be vindicated, as the US shown that it has tired of fighting them, by electing a President who professes to want to make nice and be atop the international popularity polls; i.e, cave in. The current President is either very naive, very cunning, very cynical, or all of the above. Those who voted for Him were certainly naive (and many have now got their knickers in a knot because he's not doing what he said he'd do to get elected), and we are now saddled with having to go once again thru the learning curve trod by, among others FDR (the economy) and Jimma Carter (foreign relations), since we have failed to learn from the history of their administrations what works and what doesn't.

So that's why it matters.