subject heading, “Since I have virtually stopped watching TV,” Reader N. writes:
In the course of discussion of Ann Coulter you made the above offhand comment that is very significant. I stopped watching news shows on TV back in the mid 1970s, for non-ideological reasons, and sometime after Reagan was elected I quit listening to NPR’s All Things Considered and anything else that wasn’t music on that network. I got my news, such as it was, from newspapers and the subscription to National Review; my mother bought for me as a yearly gift.
When CSPAN became available, I watched things of interest to me on that channel. By 1982 or so, certainly by 1985, there was a definite disconnect, or disjoint, between me and most other people I knew. It was the underlying premises that were changing; relatives and friends held opinions and positions that didn’t make any sense to me, and would say things that I knew weren’t true. The difference was simple; I had quit being brainwashed by ABC/NBC/CBS/PBS, and they had not. For example, I knew, from watching CSPAN and from primary sources, what was really in certain legislation, and they knew only what Dan Rather told them, which often was less than nothing. In some cases my premises were reverting to what I was taught in childhood, while older relatives were moving further away from what they had taught me, and the only major difference was their heavy TV viewing in combination with reading weekly magazines like Time.
It was an odd feeling to realize in the late 80’s to early 90’s that my own relatives believed some utterly false things, such as foolish claptrap about “assault weapons” that I could demonstrate was false with fact after fact. Even stranger was the realization that even if I did rebut all the garbage “facts” they knew, because they kept on watching TV “news” and shows like 60 Minutes, they would be “re-infected” with the same garbage thought in time, and drift back to being brainwashed. This was true on issue after issue after issue, not just “gun control.” I was passively skeptical of the media because I kept catching them in errors of fact that always leaned one way, therefore they were not random accidents but something else.
The watershed event for me was Waco. Suffice to say, what the “news” media printed about Waco was nothing more than press releases from the FBI and other government officials, and the facts clearly lay elsewhere. I’d already noted that even the Associated Press was only willing to print Handgun Control Inc. positions on the issue of “gun control,” but the blatant cover-up engaged in by the “free” press in the U.S. on Waco left me actively distrusting anything printed or broadcast. Previously I was passively skeptical, Waco made me actively hostile to the mainstream press. I quit reading most newspapers except in an intelligence-gathering mode, like reading Pravda in the old days. And as a result, I find that my thinking is clearer than before; the rigor of Internet debate sharpened my logical skills, getting away from the propaganda that is the mainstream press allowed the fog to clear, and I’m better for it. I view all TV “news” as active propaganda, and am able to dissect it much better; but I only look at Fox or CNN when I’m thinking clearly on my feet, so to speak. I would never sit down with a glass of some adult beverage and a newspaper, then turn on the “Evening News.” That’s a recipe for brainwashing.
So “virtually giving up TV” is a significant first step to clear thinking, and it comes as no surprise to me that you did so, probably quite a while back. We should all urge everyone around us to turn off the TV. Not just the news, but the sewer that is “prime time” as well should be turned off.
Jesus said that it is not what a man puts in his mouth that fouls him, but what comes out of his mouth. However, what comes out of his mouth is what is in his thoughts, and “as a man thinketh, so is he,” thus when we allow the sewer of pop culture into our minds, we give some part of ourselves over to that culture.
TV is a hypnotic experience; the frame-rate flicker actually has hypnotic effects. We cannot stress too strongly how important it is to stop letting the enemy into our living rooms.