Congressional Reports
“If you don’t want a man unhappy politically, don’t give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war. If the government is inefficient, top-heavy, and tax-mad, better it be all those than that people worry over it. Peace, Montag. Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of ‘facts’ they feel stuffed, but absolutely ‘brilliant’ with information. Then they’ll feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving. And they’ll be happy, because facts of that sort don’t change.”
— Ray Bradbury Fahrenheit 451
When I read the above I was reminded of my Facebook “friends”. They get involved in silly arguments and pepper them with “facts” they’ve gotten from Rachel Maddow or Laura Ingraham. They repeat MSNBC’s numbers on COVID cases ad nauseam. In fact, it isn’t the Government they have to worry about – it’s the propaganda machine – that implants thoughts that drown out common sense and like the old commercial whispers “OBEY” ….and they do! They boycott, repeat slogans – follow the celebrities all in a useless, waste of time because they’re still stuck in the same banal lives. They’re stuck because they observe rather than do. They’re born spectators and stand on the sidelines of their lives. —- Raf Collado