politricks and other distractions

The End of Our Infallibility

Twenty years ago today we started to have some serious chinks in our wall of Infallibility, of grace bestowed upon us by whatever good our country had done in the past.

Twenty years ago this morning as I got ready for work, I watched the Challenger launch on TV out of the corner of my eye while I had my coffee and got dressed. It took a second to realize, after it had exploded, that that's what really had happened.

I got in the elevator a little while later to go down to my car. I asked the woman in the elevator on the way down if she'd seen it. She hadn't. We both didn't know what to say.

That time, all the testimonials turned out to be true. Back in those days you didn't have to worry about spin so much. The media hadn't turned into the ratings monster-product placement idiots they are now, though they knew a good story when they saw it.

The funny thing is, I thought I had a short attention span then. I'd never have guessed it would get as bad as it is now.

Now I need the 24-hour news cycle and my internet connection. It's the Sudoku puzzle of politics and media that fascinates me. I was never schooled in advertising, but I've worked in various forms of it. Once you become aware of the sales pitch, you see it everywhere.

Advertising and PR has become the invisibility cloak we wrap around our failings. We screw up in Iraq and they invent the Jessica Lynch story. Suffer 9/11 and you get the Saddam connection fable. Have the public learn they're being wire-tapped illegally by the government, and you send out the Armies of Truth to repackage it as "terrorist detection." Find your message, repeat, repeat, repeat. Stick to the words. If you say it enough, you can sell anything.

I don't mind being from a country that's imperfect. They're all imperfect. I mind sitting still in a country that can't tell the lies from the truth anymore. That's been so inured with fear and arrogance that we're not surprised anymore by failures that cost lives, like Challenger did. We just don't like having it pointed out to us.

Only now our failures and our distraction has gotten a whole lot of people - American, Iraqi, and others - killed and it doesn't look like the end is anywhere in sight.

I don't mind being infallible. But being naive (or asleep?) and arrogant is a deadly combination.

posted by dcnative @ 10:10 PM