Recently I was part of a group in a certain horrifyingly expensive and the agenda was of course, the American election.
(Just to fill in any void in info, I wasn't paying! Now, you know that it wasn't because the wallet was any thicker I found myself in that place where most act as if they were following some rule book reserved for loyal customers! Even the way they took up the tea and coffee cups to their lips seemed to be, what should I say... choreographed! Anyway, if I was surprised of the whole ambience of the place and the way everyone seemed to act real surprise was to come when the discussions about the elections progressed. By the way I've to tell you only one was a friend of mine and I wasn't cordially familiar with the others though my friend now and then tells me about them.
If what I heard was anything to go by, I've to tell you they were supposed to be very well informed especially in global affairs. At least one of them being an employee one or another international agency he spent his days with the ferenjis! Ha! And the conventional wisdom seems to be if you're spending enough time with the ferenjis you'd know more about other countries. What if I told there could be more ferenjis than you could imagine who know not much about their own countries and other hot spots of the world.
For more recent examples plunge yourself in the social media world and listen to all the narratives, debates, so-called exclusive reportage during the just concluded American elections. In fact just playing the nice guy in town game you'd admire them for being involved in such heated and rage filled debates and arguments with the blood vessel making all those tributaries across the foreheads over things they know so little or nothing about. The fact is that this is an age of where many of us are going around trying to appear to act what we're actually not.
Does that sound familiar to you? It should! There are many of us around here who claim to know everything there's to know about the country and do no better than engaging in all those beer table talks where are no checks and balances about the authenticity of the things we say. Informed about what's going in in faraway places! Hmmm..... at least one working in some international organization. They were the types of guys from whom you expected the cream of global affairs and even more about things American.
Sometimes you wonder where the hell they are getting all this stuff! At times things get so bizarre you'd be surprised there are minds around which could create such otherworldly scenario. Because otherworldly is how those things sound. In this discussion I was telling you about I couldn't help almost gaping with wonder hearing narratives or so-called bits of information I didn't come across even in the weirdest social media sites. You know those sites which despite the foulest and the most appalling posts and still attract views on the upper side of hundreds of thousands.
Just for the fun of it I try to read some comments which I think are posted by the saner souls. Well many times than not such attempts turn out to be fruitless. Well, I must be cooling myself down with, "Well this is not the world as we used to know it. So wake up you dude! Or look for some time machine to fly you back through the ages to where you'd feel more comfortable!" Ok I'll sleep on it and come back to you any time before this millennia runs out.
I noticed a couple of things during the discussions and they made me a little uneasy. Not that they were new things in any way. But as I told t you the gathering around the table was of people who supposedly are well informed and who are expected to keep pace with all the changes happening all over the place through the mainstream media and, even more widely, from the social media. In fact two of them are very active on the social media.
But then there is this problem of 'source.' I mean it is not that you have heard about some event in America or in the Middle East or wherever what matters. It's also from which source you heard it. Of course, that too is limited to a very condensed part of the world. Because whether we like it all or not and in spite of all the flowery and glittery narratives there are parts of the world where every human being is not put on the same level and treated with equal respect.
While we are at it just a 'legendary' leader once said, "I am strongly in favor of using poison gas against uncivilized tribes, the moral effect should be good and it would spread a lively terror." That's what the big man was quoted as saying! No wonder that despite our attempt to make it look to the contrary this world is one of the most horrible places in the universe. I mean decades and decades later, when you'd expect real civility has sent its roots deeper than ever before chaos and mayhem is all over the place. You can't help wondering how many acts of pure evil and barbarity in various corners of the world pass by without as much of a few highly stifled denunciations. And it seems that we expect inhuman deeds where like always it's the innocents and the unsuspecting that are the final victims to be not only denounced but also the perpetrators made to answer to their deeds. No! Not at least in the world we're in.
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The writing on the wall seems to be that such acts are subject to the closet scrutiny depending where they actually happened. Anyone who thinks all the curse on the so-called mainstream media is nothing more than the result of politicized conspiracy theories should look into reports about things appearing about things happening in the third world countries. If you noticed that some commentators highly sensitive scare tactics against the American people was that their country was on the verge of becoming a third world country! Scary indeed!
Anyways I don't know it is just one of the thousands of misfortunes or actual curse on us that makes us act what we are not. The sad part is everything we want to know about is just a click or two away and we're still caught in in that old spiral being knowledgeable without the knowledge.
