Today’s technology-oriented, media manipulated civilization has succeeded in imposing a degree of hyperreality capable of obscuring whatever remnants of reality still remain within the average person’s field of perception. This requires a permanent effort to deviate attention from hyperreality itself. On rare occasions when hyperreality allows a glimpse of its...
The media announced last week what appears to be a major breakthrough in pandemic news. It could be a turning point in the history of a pandemic that will soon celebrate its second birthday. “In the not-too-distant future,” according to MarketWatch, “you may be able to walk into a doctor’s...
A 2014 study published by Princeton University sought to determine how political decisions were made in the United States. The study’s conclusion called into question the legitimacy of calling the current political system a democracy. It had effectively evolved into a functioning oligarchy. The New York Times’ Laughable Lack of...
The Daily Devil’s Dictionary belongs to the category we might call ironic journalism. It is dedicated to unearthing the subtleties of language used by officials and public personalities as well as the media outlets that report on their sayings and doings. Irony is an effect of language that calls attention...
Once upon a time in the United States, people referred to something called “Culture with a big C.” It turned around the notion of a communally shared appreciation of the noble arts: music, painting, literature, architecture, cinema and other fields of creative production, including philosophy, history and science. It encouraged...
Yahoo Finance regularly features its senior columnist, Rick Newman, as a voice of open-minded reflection and staid wisdom, a seasoned journalist skilled at juggling with issues at the junction of finance and politics. Though no doctrinaire libertarian, he adheres to the capitalist faith and understandably will never question the logic...
In this age of social media and artificial intelligence (AI), the dominant model for modern systems of government has now become hyperreal democracy. If current trends continue, society itself will inevitably become lost in a world of commercially driven illusion. Even if many brave souls are rebelling against it today,...
The legacy press continues its endless campaign to promote the belief that Russia is waging a never-ending battle against US diplomats and spies thanks to the secret weapon that provokes the dreaded “Havana syndrome.” Two Washington Post journalists, John Wagner and Miriam Berger, have apparently received strict instructions not to...
Political news in the US often begins with legitimate debate and then quickly tends toward the competition between extravagant personalities that can only delight the media. They don’t even have to pay the actors. Occasionally it can rival reality TV, attaining the gold standard of the Kardashians. Taiwan Becomes a...
In early September, with the war in Afghanistan officially over and the Middle East retreating from the media’s landscape, The New York Times began preparing the American public for the next theater of war. This time it will be just off the coast of mainland China, in Taiwan. There will...
