Ah, but remember that the city is a funny place
Something like a circus or a sewer
— Lou Reed
It’s been said that nothing is more radical than facts, than truth, but whose? Who defines the truth, and why is the current order so attached to its own version of it? Capital comes to mind, profit, after a certain duping, a violating of the populous. The validity of information is no longer its salience, its clarity, but rather its being widely distributed — or else “Tweeted” as the case tends to be. To me, American society is experiencing a problem that seems related to a dualism of intellect. This duality has been exploited by rulers since antiquity, with rulers purposely spreading misinformation (in the guise of truth), pitting the people against one another, causing the whole of a population being divided about what is real, what’s being enacted, what’s to be believed, expected. Questions are all the more radical, democratic, especially when facts are made to be elusive — another part of the spectacle perpetuated by corrupt rulership.The panem et circenses of old is perpetuated on down the line, where to see and to be seen becomes more superficial, banal, competitive for the sake of competition: the asserted American way. This may be one reason that leaders might “discuss” American football instead of, say, natural disasters and what part human beings might have in them. Or even how to send aid after a hurricane has sent an entire population into pre-modern state of survival.