The first piece reminds us that the government that is no longer answerable to its citizens is no longer governing, but ruling.
Pinocchios with Pensions, Kevin D. Williamson, National Review Online
From Lois Lerner’s weaponizing the IRS on behalf of Democrats before the 2012 elections to Mrs. Clinton’s toilet-server shenanigans to gross abuses of prosecutorial power among Democratic state attorneys general, the lesson of the Obama years is clear: If you are close enough to power, you can do anything, and there is never a price to pay.The second piece is a reminder that a media that tries to make, rather than report, news is no longer media but propaganda.
Katie Couric: More Reality TV Star than Journalist. Jonah Goldberg, National Review Online.
This is the more lasting lesson of the Couric scandal: Reality TV has conquered all. As a society, we want to be entertained far more than we want to be informed, which is why these scandals vanish the instant they become boring. It’s also why Katie Couric is more a reality-TV star than a real journalist.Both of these stories combine to illustrate why the United States is an empire in the last stages of decline.
For one, we've thrown away our representative system of government for a representative form of rule. Yes, we ostensibly have a say in who is ruling over us (but not in reality, as I noted yesterday) but the actual mechanisms of government, the administration, is often staffed by un-elected bureaucrats freed from the needs of shaking babies and kissing hands.
Couple that with the fact that more people typically vote on an episode of American Idol than they do in the typical election (the Presidential election possibly being an exception) and you have a recipe for decline on a Biblical scale. The Romans ruled the world, but eventually even they went off the boil, primarily due to a gluttonous public distracted by "bread and circuses" (thank you Juvenal) while their leaders wallowed in depravity. The concept of "media" in those days was slightly more limited in an age where all writing was done by hand, often on papyrus and at great difficulty. In fact the closest thing the Romans got to "media" was public speeches (and paid counter-agitators within the crowds) by Caesar and the Senators.
What we have today isn't really media either. It's propaganda. In fact, throughout most of American history there hasn't been the romanticized "media" working feverishly to uncover corruption, fraud and abuse on behalf of the citizen, as Hollywood romanticized. Early newspaper publishers were sharply partisan, and their publications were often de facto house organs for their chosen political party. The Screwtape Letters, Poor Richard's Almanac, The Federalist Papers were all propaganda forwarded by politicians with a stake in the game. Quite literally, that stake could have been being hanged for high treason.
Today the stakes aren't nearly as high. IF a reporter is caught violating the so-called public trust then they are typically released from their journalism position and make an immediate transition to the PR team of some politician. This typically makes sense because it is most likely that they were getting most of their copy from said team to begin with. In most cases however, As Mr. Goldberg points out, there are short bursts of outrage by the offended side, followed by a non-apology apology and this blue pebble churns along as if nothing untoward has happened. Until it's time for the next outrage.
As Mr. Williamson points out it's very common for the "outrage" to emanate from the government itself. Since there's no functional independent media apparatus to check them, they pretty much can operate with complete impunity knowing that there will be no serious, lasting repercussions for their actions.
While this doesn't mean, yet, that the American government is sending out shock troops to kneecap their political opposition, it does mean that people can suggest that political opponents be arrested and hardly anyone bats an eye. In fact, there are a large group of people who would stand and cheer America's descent into full-on authoritarianism. The problem for the people that are cheering is that they will be the first ones line up against the wall in the purge of the bourgeoisie, betrayed by their ruling bettors in Night of the Long Knives fashion. One thing about authoritarians, they ALWAYS have to have a purge.
This is not a conspiracy theory, nor am I predicting that the United States of America will fail as a State in the immediate future. As we've seen in the past, it's never too late for a (brief) renaissance of a State and America, with her still-powerful but stagnant economy, has a singular ability to pull back from the brink and reclaim greatness.
The problem is that doing so is going to take information and several cans of care. Right now it doesn't seem that the media, citizenry, or government care all that much about providing either.
