“There’s a war going on for your mind,
Media mavens mount surgical strikes from trapper keeper, collages and online magazine racks,
Cover girl cutouts throw up pop-up ads,
Infecting victims with silicone shrapnel,
Worldwide passenger pigeons deploy paratroopers,
Now it’s raining pornography,
Lovers take shelter,
Post-production debutantes pursue you in NASCAR chariots,
They construct ransom letters from Biblical passages and bleed mascara into the holy water supplies,
There’s a war going on for your mind.”
— Flo-Bots, from the song “There’s a war going on for your mind”
In the wake of every thought which has sprung from the minds of humankind, we find ourselves at what I feel is a crossroads. A divided country, which has become more and more separated from a world that it helped to shape since 1945. Ask anyone on the street, “What does America mean to you?” I guarantee that you will receive a different answer every time. This is rightly so; everyone is different, and everyone is entitled to their own opinion. But what I mean is a detriment and not an example of our rightful liberties.
Where once there was commonality as a people, room for rational discourse, there now is division, bigotry, hatred and mistrust. A nation that once stood for the equality of all now hails rampant white supremacy groups, fostering lone gunmen who terrorize and murder at will. When and how did we let America become this?
There are many in power who will and have gone to great lengths to maintain that power. A people who are divided on multiple fronts are always easier to conquer than those who are united. The distractions that we are fed on the day-to-day, whether that be a constant stream of advertisements or the latest enemy of the state, keeps us in our own ideological corners.
In many ways the United States was on the right track for many years. The civil rights movement, women’s liberation movements and LGBTQ movements, to name a few, have brought great progress to our country for some time. However, this is not to say there has not been great effort on the part of powerful individuals to subjugate and suppress these actions. A most notable of these was the formation of “white” neighborhoods by means to easing access to real estate loans thusly causing a form of financial segregation. The same is true for the training of police in larger cities to practice racial profiling.
Today in the age of the internet most everyone has access to nearly infinite information, which should be a good thing. Again, the manipulation of that information can be greatly advantageous to anyone who benefits from said manipulation. If you can sway one demographic in any direction, it can greatly change the outcome of say a presidential election for example.
Therefore, it is increasingly important to be objective, and source out the information you are being given. Not only is it necessary to verify the source of the information, but it may also be a good idea to research the person delivering said information, their affiliations and possible benefactors. With these ideas in mind it becomes much easier to paint a picture of at least what sort of agenda may be at work.
In closing, believe what you feel is right. But please, remember what America means to you, and please, consider every angle before jumping in with both feet.
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Contact the writer:
ledwards@crestonnews.com