The Black Box

[ajtj99]

Diesel, just a question. Have you ever traveled outside the Western Hemisphere?

I have found that one of the problems we have in this country is that we find no reason to learn about other cultures and other people. There is more to this earth than America. We tend to think myopic and believe the world revolves around us. If someone is different or we don't understand them, we tend to dismiss them or even deem them to be sub-human or not worthy of our concern. If someone from another culture dies, it doesn't count as much because they're not like us.

How many times have you heard about an accident and the news says something, "A plane went down over the Pacific, and 3 Americans on board were killed" when in fact about 200 people actually died.

While people talk about how bad dictators are, I do recall about a million people were killed in a civil war in Rwanda a few years back, and I never heard word one of concern about it from most folks (and still don't). That conflict was started by a military dictatorship. I never once heard a suggestion that the US military go in and protect millions of people from a brutalizing situation begun by military dictators.

Here's some info on that kind of stuff. It's from a strange source, and not completely balanced, but sometimes we need to look outside the box to get a balanced picture. It's one of the first links that came up when I typed in a "military dictatorships and killing and africa" on a search engine.

http://www.socialistworker.org/2003-2/457/457_06_Congo.shtml

When I hear stuff like "make that place into a parking lot" from some folks or "bomb them into the stone age," I realize how little some people in the US understand about other people in this world. There are people everywhere who struggle daily and foster simple hopes and dreams of having a better life for themselves and their families. They are the vast majority. Sweeping generalizations do not provide justice to these people.

The spin out of Washington is second to none. My hat is off to this administration for their ability to frame the truth and dictate the truth.

He who controls the message controls the truth. The truth is malleable, and those best able to frame it will control it and dictate it.

I believe it is up to the individual to seek out the truth, weighing all facets and coming to a rational conclusion based upon balanced sources of information. I believe if we had more thinking on the part of the individual it would be more difficult for the framers of the truth to control and dictate the truth.