Dazzling Hearts and Minds in Amerika
The Trapped Miners Rescue Spectacle in Chile
It is October 13 2010 and I am visually and sonically inundated with blow-by-blow descriptions of the Chilean miner rescue operation. TV, radio and newspapers have whipped themselves into a frenzy reporting the rescue of 33 miners from a collapsed mine in Chile. With a couple of months’ lead time, courtesy of the drilling process, this event has received more build-up than a Superbowl. Naturally, everyone is glad the miners are coming out (miner 14 hit the surface a minute ago), but it seems to me this is an extreme case of media overkill that is designed to serve as a distraction from Mass-Murder Incorporated’s (M-M Inc., the Amerikan government) worldwide killing spree, if not from the mine operator’s greedy rush for profits that caused the accident in the first place.
The world waits with bated breath as one miner at a time rises to the surface with a digital clock ticking off the time of his ascent to the second and, of course, a count of each miner rescued replete with video footage of tearful reunions with family and friends. What if it were so for those unsuspecting people blown up in their homes by the predator drones Amerika operates with impunity worldwide, but it is not.
As I watch the miners coming out of the ground one at a time, I can’t help but think about how many people the Amerikan government is simultaneously putting in the ground. I wonder how many people were murdered in Afghanistan and Pakistan by the drones over the course of the rescue operation? How many Palestinians, Iraqis, Somalians and Yemenis? Do they not deserve a ticking clock and body count? Certainly, but there is little feel-good factor in being confronted with a second-by-second ticking body count of the murders we are responsible for as the good citizens and share-holders of M-M Inc. No, no, we can’t have that.
But why not? Why does the mainstream media ignore the big stories, the real stories? Why isn’t there a body count of every human on this planet murdered by Amerikan-made weapons systems? Why not show the video footage of every single drone attack, replete with men, women and children dying in agony? This would be a stellar moment for Amerikan television corporations. Real reality TV! Maybe, when fed enough reality Amerikans will then treat themselves to the reality of the Amerikan version of the Nuremberg Trials and the Spandau Ballet. Now that is a reality most of the world would love to see and exactly why Amerikans will never see it.
