LiveWire

A post by Maynard

You’ve heard, from Tammy or elsewhere, the strange tale of the San Francisco TV news report that misidentified the four Asiana Airline pilots. For anyone that missed it:

If someone told this joke on the street, it would be grotesque. A crashed plane with dead people is no laughing matter. But — please forgive me, but in this context it becomes hilarious, in a terrifying sort of way. That’s because the “joke” is no longer about the crash. The story here is about two major pillars of our civil society, media and government. And the fact that they are filled with morons.

How long did it take you to realize those names were screwy? Probably less than two seconds. That’s because you are normal. Anyone within a stone’s throw of normalcy can see this as a goof.

Now consider the various people that the news segment had to pass by before it went on the air. Somebody had to take the initial report. Somebody had to prepare the news format. Somebody had to corroborate the report, and somebody in the government had to issue corroboration. Somebody had to prepare the text display. And of course, a lot of people are overseers and casual observers.

How long was the chain of custody before it reached the bimbo newsreader? How many people participated? Any one of them could have spoken up and halted the process. Any one, from the highest executive to the lowest intern. And nobody did. Not one.

The nation gets its “facts” and attitudes from media. And we are all subject to the national political structures are encroaching on our lives to an ever-greater extent. And the ranks of media and government are filled with morons! Otherwise events like this could not happen.

My political advocacy is largely against the concentration and centralization of power, and this ludicrous example is one small illustration of why authority must always be questioned. (Those of us in mid-life can remember when “Question authority!” was the mantra of protest. It seems very weird to now find that the “question authority” people, having come of age and risen to power, now condemn anyone that dares question them as extremists, racists, flat-Earthers, or worse.)

You’ll remember a few weeks back when the über-liberal New York Times, responding to the Snowden revelations, opined: “The [Obama] administration has now lost all credibility [added later:] on this issue.” Some conservatives were encouraged by the Times criticism. But for me, the important sentence was the one that followed:

Mr. Obama is proving the truism that the executive branch will use any power it is given and very likely abuse it.

That’s exactly the point! And it’s not limited to the American executive branch! The underlying principle:

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.
—Lord Acton, in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, 1887

Perhaps I’m mixing apples and oranges here, in that my initial point was institutional stupidity, and I’ve somehow morphed into institutional corruption. But I do see a connection between the two. Our institutional guardians cannot stand against corruption or against anything else if they’re fundamentally dysfunctional.