When I consider our general situation in the West I'm astonished that more people have not understood that our media is the gravest danger to our civilization imaginable - yet we do nothing to rectify the situation. The problem is that the only incentive those working in the media care about is revenue. Thus, Job One of every media organization is to sensationalize everything so as to grab for a few monetizable seconds the fickle eyeballs of the public. As ordinary people are generally ignorant and very foolish, they never notice that they bounce from one context-free piece of nonsense to another.
The problem, of course, is that this endless stream of infantile babble is not only highly misleading but totally undermines any national capacity for serious and sustained action. Time magazine is by no means the worst offender but it is typical of the breed. Editors know their audience wants mindless noise dressed up as reportage, and will never once imagine fact-checking or attempting to think for themselves.
By chasing revenues and not caring a damn about the consequences, our media organizations have fatally undermined civil society. Politicians have to chase votes, and ordinary people vote on the basis of the babble they are fed by cynical media organizations. It's a recipe for catastrophe and indeed we are already bearing many of the adverse consequences.
Ukraine is suffering for our abject stupidity today, but very soon we and our children will find ourselves on the sharp end because predators smell weakness and rush to take advantage. For all the silly commentary about Russian military blunders, the truth is that Putin has a single aim whereas we have no consistent aims, and so Putin and his ilk will ultimately triumph despite their endemic corruptions and incompetences. We are nearing the end of our civilization and have rotted fromt the inside. Our media organizations have carried us very far along the road to self-destruction, all the time making money and paying executives huge sums while doing so.
It would be funny were the consequences not so tragic.
