The Media Divides Us With Gorillas To Enable The Crimes Of The Government
By Tyler Durden
Submitted by Claire Bernish via TheAntiMedia.org,
By now, we’ve all witnessed selective outrage in real time — a misdeed, tragedy, or other infuriating item blows up national headlines and almost immediately receives backlash in the vein of, ‘well, why isn’t anyone irate about ___ ?’ It’s as if society has developed not only an odd hypocritical corner on the market of concern, but a notable inability to impassion itself with more than one issue at once.
Dichotomized moral outrage receives an altogether greedy leg up from corporate media. After all, networks understand all too acutely how tragedy drives opportunity – and what better way to cash in on casualty than by capitalizing on ethical wedges people invariably manufacture?
Cleaving division, in fact, comprises the bulk of propaganda. Intense bickering and debate saturate social media, both obfuscating other potentially significant happenings and setting the foundation for further division in the future. If personally invested in passionate disagreement over one issue, people’s resentments linger — prejudicing friends, colleagues, and associates against one another when an equally divisive topic or incident takes place in the future.
Now that we’re about halfway through 2016, having seen this polarity replayed innumerable times, one conclusion can be surmised with a degree of certainty — people simply favor certain things over others. And the examples comprise a list both telling and distressing in scope.
1. Harambe, an endangered western lowland gorilla living in a confined space at the Cincinnati Zoo, died after staff decided extreme measures were necessary to save a hapless four-year-old boy — who inexplicably managed to escape his mother’s notice and slip into the animal’s habitat. When zoo director Thane Maynard faced the media to justify the shooting of Harambe, social media had already amplified the controversy to a feverish pitch.
Though Maynard’s confirming the shooting had been unavoidable served to fan a growing conflagration, Cincinnatians familiar with his normal enthusiasm saw a fierce struggle underlying the resolute public stance — particularly as primatologists, animal behaviorists, and a whole spate of experts threw their personal opinions into the mix.
To varying degrees, Maynard, the zoo, the child’s mother, the people filming instead of somehow preventing the child’s foray into the enclosure, and even protesters and those mourning the loss of Harambe all became targets of countless arguments and rants across social and news media.
Was the shooting really justified? Why wasn’t that mother watching her kid? How did an entire crowd of people not stop this four-year-old, even if the parents didn’t? Who cares about an animal when a human child’s life was at stake? Why wasn’t Harambe’s habitat better fortified against errant kids? Must zoos be a thing?
As soon as these questions hit keyboards, the inevitable expansion of the backlash also hit. Why should we care about one gorilla when so many endangered animals are poached in the wild? What about factory farming? Why all the attention on an animal when millions of innocent people perish in multiple wars? What about the …read more
Source: The Media Divides Us With Gorillas To Enable The Crimes Of The Government
