Why I love Reality tv

2001-10-28 - 1:27 a.m.

Okay, so I watch day-time television. Not like the soaps or anything (well, if All My Children ever comes back to the CBC, or back on non-cable channels, I'll be back there faster than you can say "Tad's a hottie!"), but I do watch the two Queens of daytime talk, Oprah and Rosie.

Or I did.

Definitely not the worst thing to come out of the Sept.11 bombings, but still disturbing, is the amount of propaganda, and it seems it's not just the government this time. Anyone else annoyed by the American line that the terrorist bombings were because the terrorists resent American freedom?

How do people buy that shit? "Oh, you have freedom, so I'm going to risk my life to kill a bunch of people?"

Oh sure, envy is a powerful emotion, resentment and jealousy can lead people to do horrible things, and, under different circumstances, maybe it'd wash.

But how about this idea: maybe the terrorists (they might have been Afghani, but we're basically a bombing a country when we haven't even proven this much...innocent until proven guilty, unless we have a point to make) bombed the WTC in New York because they resent: a) Living in enforced poverty because of the 20% richest nations consuming 80% of the world's resources. b) having being bombed and civil war be a way of life for generations. c)Being used as pawns by larger nations in war games and discarded as soon as their nation is no longer useful. d) Having their culture constantly bombarded by a consumer culture where religious figures/iconography/themes are used to sell such things as cream cheese and sex. e) all of the above, plus the added insult of having terrorists be trained by the U.S., funded by the U.S., and then set loose by the U.S. in their very own country.

Isn't it a sign that if, to convince your people that the war you're in is right, you have to lie? Invent platitudes?

I know people are hurting, and will go on hurting, and I have no way of knowing the depth of grief that the Americans are feeling, but I do know that killing people because you're upset isn't right. I wonder if people will once again remember that Texas, under George W., had more death penalty victims than all of the developed countries -combined-, and that this is the man who is now in charge of peace and war at a time when global politics has never been more incendiary.

In my opinion, there's no such thing as acceptable loss of civilian life (either ours or theirs). This war on terrorism stands about as much chance of success as the war on drugs, especially so long as countries are still using their vast wealth to play chess with weaker nations as their pawns.

And now I have to watch all this on my television set.

Thank God for Survivor 3.

Cheers,

The Magus

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