The Cognitive Leap

“There’s a lot of evil in the world.” A Peabody-winning producer friend, a great friend and script partner has said it many times in response to my ranting about this strange coincidence and that blatant corruption. True enough. It’s obvious that there are forces at work in our strange and violent world. Be they man or metaphysical, those forces are ascendant. Is there any doubt? So, how do we make sense of it all? I make sense of it by…making sense of it. Or, at least, trying. Dots get connected, lineages get uncovered, events scrutinized, histories read. There are patterns. It’s really not that complicated. It’s funny to find so many here in the WoB who despise what is happening, those who are doing it and the inaction of those who might try to stop it, but when the question of “why” comes up–the crucial question of motivation–they refuse to make the leap. After careful reading of ignored history books, declassified CIA papers, weird plans like the “Operation Northwoods” document (look it up!) and Rebuilding America’s Defenses (by PNAC), it is quite obvious to me that “things happen for a reason.” For instance, Greg Palast blew open the 2000 election scam in Florida–replete with documentation–and it aired on the BBC’s prime newscast. CBS bought the exclusive rights to the story and…killed it. They refused to run it. The scoop of the new century…poof!…gone. Why? I know enough from my time here, from watching hard questions notget asked, that there is a pall hanging over the media and journalism–the mainstream stuff, that is. The corporations that run it all often have interests that conflict, CEOs and socialites have cocktail parties to lure editors into complicity and there is a general fear of being deemed unpatriotic…or worse. It has a long history–Project Mockingbird, NBC-GE, “perception management,” and…well, I could go on. And on. And on. Just ask Peabody Producer. It all comes down to how far you are willing to go. Dig deep enough and you’ll find it. But what you find are the corpses of American idealism: truth, fairness, equality, justice, compassion, rule of law. They are rotting and the worms of greed, avarice, power and elitism feed on the flesh. It’s an ugly picture. There is an ugliness behind the stark white facades of this city. We glory at the facades while the ugliness carries on. We sometimes turn away from the ugliness, not out of fear or ignorance or indifference…but self-preservation. It’s too grand a lie before us. Too much depends on the lie having some chance of being true. As for the Peabody Producer and many of my cohorts in this city, they know someting’s gone terribly wrong. But they have lives to live, children to raise and are unwilling to toss hope into the open grave where those worms feed on the corpses. It’s self-preservation. I have to respect that. It makes sense. It makes life livable. Then again, I might be wrong. Perhaps he and others forced to listen to my barrages are simply trying to shut me up. I guess it is self-preservation!

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