Future daze

Information/Ignorance

A completely quoted blog posting today (hey man, it's like, so the new trend!) from one of my favourite bloggers, the ever-sane and reliable Juan Cole:

The fog of information war thrown up by the Allawi government, the US military, and the guerrilla sympathizers, however, does make the [Fallujah] episode difficult to judge morally and ethically. In a democracy, such judgments are necessary, so that there is something radically wrong with the system, when we ordinary Americans don't have a realistic idea of how many US troops have been harmed in the prosecution of this war, and likewise have no clear idea of the human cost of an operation like Fallujah II.

The irony of the twenty-first century Information Age is that the American public is uninformed as never before about the most crucial information in our lives. The new Age of Ignorance amidst information riches is made possible precisely because modern means of communication lend themselves to manipulation by wealthy, powerful forces that understand how to make an emotional impact that will obscure the real issues. This observation is as true of the Baath Party as it is of the Republican Party, as true of al-Jazeerah as it is of Fox Cable News.