Mind's Eye What drives the herd to keep the mainstream milktoast?

"The tragedy of journalism now is that it is demand driven. And when you ask people what they want, we're like one of those rats that have a lever to push and cocaine comes out. And once that happens one time, they'll stay there till they die, until more of the drug appears. We can't help loving lurid stories and suspense and the kind of sex and violence which the news is now made up of," Marty Kaplan tells Bill in this interview.  http://billmoyers.com/segment/marty-kaplan-on-the-weapons-of-mass-distraction/

"The power of mass distraction" is an interesting notion, and I find that it is much easier for people to look away from a problem than to contribute to a solution. Part of that may be disagreement on what the solution is. Much of it may be the overall malaise of "nothing I can do about it" as most of us feel we have no real influence on the larger world problems. In the past four years I've seen a dramatic drop in public demonstrations in downtown Detroit and most of the demonstrations that happen are of the "for hire" variety, with the same nationally based organizers who are making a buck off the movement (big time) and choose the causes carefully to insure that.

I demonstrated during the Vietnam demonstration era and found that many of my pier group became social organizers afterward, not organizing demonstrations but organizing communities from within, more of social service than social activism as we know it today. There are huge demonstrations going on all over the world but not many here in the US. Does this mean we are giving into distraction and looking away from solutions waiting for the action to implement? Or is there a different social organization emerging, one more of collaboration than dissension? Or something else?

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