The More Things Change, The More They Are Different

The propaganda machines would like to convince us that “the more things change, the more they stay the same” -- although they have usually handsomely pocketed “the difference,” because it is not apparent anywhere else.

So despite putting in massively more funding into their projects, there is no difference, but the press releases pronouncing another “astounding success,” by the ruling party. If one reads the “Want Ads,” that seems to be the desperate need at these times -- for writers and promoters who can convince people of what is not true, and will say and do anything, “as their job” of defending that status quo.

Formerly, most people who took such jobs were highly paid professionals (usually lawyers) who had no qualms about doing anything for money -- and the more money they were paid, the better job they did -- at blurring the lines between the truth and deception. Their jobs, as they saw it, was merely to win -- for anybody who paid them enough money to make it “right.” That was the unfortunate consequence, of having money as the ultimate determiner of what is “right” in society.

One lie easily melded into another, and we were even advised by the self-proclaimed “objective” providers of such information, that we should no longer be able to make such discriminations between the true and the false on our own anymore, but should rely exclusively on what they selected for us as the only truth we needed to know about.

The revolving door between these self-interest groups and the self-proclaimed objective sources were spinning so fast, none but the least competent and ambitious seemed to remain in place, not because of their integrity, but because of their inertia. The most ambitious seemed to be the designated spokesperson for every special interest group that liked that style of winning at any cost. The cost usually was of the truth and integrity of all information.

It now became possible to convince us that the best of times was actually the worst -- and that nobody in past history, had ever suffered the indignities and slights people now had to endure. That kind of “management” of information reached its zenith in the 20th century with the centralized processing of all information through expensive and therefore carefully hoarded computers.

In the 21st century, all traces of such a dominant and domineering world are already forgotten. On the eve of the new century, many of the defenders of the old status quo were prophesizing the end of the world -- as well as the end of that millennium. Because it is no longer the old world, they think it is a bad world, as they long for a return to the “good ol’ days” in which they were alone at the top, telling everybody what to do -- because they alone knew.

It is quite a distressing world, in which everything has changed -- and they are the last to know it.