The price of thought?

"As for Saddam Hussein's 500,000 victims, we asked Amnesty International for broad-brush statistics on the tyrant's crimes. Amnesty sent a report in response: 'Human rights record in Iraq since 1979'. This showed that Saddam's worst atrocities were behind him - in the years when he was armed, funded and protected by the West, to be precise. Killings in Iraq over the previous ten years had been horrific enough, but they were numbered in the hundreds per year, not hundreds of thousands. As ever, Blair's skill lay in calculating exactly how much the public knew and didn't know - and in then exploiting the blind spot."

From Media Lens.

This is an issue that bothers me. There is a certain complacency amongst the general public that prevents a questioning of what we are told. Not only that but there is a tendency among governments to posit propaganda as absolute truths. When we were told '45 minutes,' many people said, well, the government said it so it must be right. They didn't stop to think that Iraq has been under sanctions for years and that if there were WMD the UN would have known about it long before now. When the government or media says something it is frequently accepted as truth, as the government so aptly knows.

The fault? Well, I'm sure there are many but I would say that one of the single most important factors is the education system. When we are taught in schools we go and listen, are told facts, expected to absorb them, remember them and throw them up again in exam form. When we are told about the laws of planetary motion we aren't expected to go and look at the planets, we merely accept that we are told and it is true. We get taught French without ever meeting a Frenchman, we study Maths without mention of Pythagoras or Pascal's histories. At school we are trained as sponges, there is no place for questioning, only for absorption. 14 years of such treatment must affect our questioning faculties in later life.

Truth, for what it is, is formed by the prevalent discourse in society. We are told that a liberal democracy is the best and only form of government, and we are told that this is true. What we are not told, is that this 'truth' has only come about through discourse. In Islamic societies truth is completely different from our own, but does this make it less true? Truth is formed and changes, but we are not told this. We are trained to accept and to regurgitate; can anything be done about it?

And even if something is done about it will our government listen? In February 2003, 2 Million people marched on London. The biggest demonstration in our countries history but we were ignored! It is not only the public who has this faith in 'truth' but the government itself is so sure of it's own discourse that it is willing to ignore the will of it's people. We have been ignored but the discourse remains and we go back to our daily lives, assured that the so-called 'war on terror' is far from our doorsteps, ignoring the warning signs.

And now Madrid. 200 people killed and 1,500 injured. And the people knew this would happen! They marched against the war, they saw it as wrong, and now this terrible, terrible tragedy against the people who believed that this war was wrong. But the discourse still remains, for the Socialist victory in the Spanish elections was not a dismissal of a deceitful Prime Minister but the victory of Al-Qaeda.

I've stolen a few more quotes from medialens.org:

Aznar paid the price in last weekend's elections, losing in a shock defeat to the Socialists. The media has expressed outrage at what it perceives to be a "surrender" to terrorism. In the New York Times, David Brooks describes how the bombs have caused Spanish voters to "throw out the old government and replace it with one whose policies are more to al-Qaida's liking". Brooks asks:

"What is the Spanish word for appeasement?" (Brooks, 'Al-Qaeda's wish list', The New York Times, March 16, 2004)

"Al Qaeda has achieved a victory beyond its wildest imaginings." (Hastings, 'So would the voters in Britain be any braver?' The Daily Mail, March 16, 2004)

How can the media industry be so callous? A tragedy occurs, a tragedy that could have been averted by listening to the people of Spain but they bring it back to the rhetoric of the tabloids. The headlines never read "Sham Government Deposed," or, "Is this the price of our foolishness?" The voice is taken away from the people and twisted to fit the media's discourse. Our voices don't matter, we are shouting beneath the wail of the storm, where the storm says; Bush, Blair, liberal democratic discourse = truth, while beneath; the consensus of the people, the rigorous investigation of truth = untruth.

In a so-called rational society, where is the rationality in that?

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