John Wise

Why are so many people choosing the state of Arizona as their next home? Most don’t know before arrival that they are actually moving to a state of Isolation. At first, they will assume that the neighbors have kept their distance out of consideration, allowing the newcomers to settle in. After a short time, most people will then make an effort to introduce themselves to the neighbors – if and when they are lucky enough to catch them during the 14.9 seconds their garage door is open. A year or more will pass before the transplants realize that no one wants to say hi and that this is a normal part of living here.

I don’t understand this mentality, though. I am at a loss as to why anyone would want to be so isolated. I question myself weekly, at times daily, why I am still living here. Anywhere else I go, people are friendly and ready to strike up a conversation, well, except for Las Vegas, that is. Come to think of it, I’ve not had many a conversation in Death Valley either. Maybe this is an issue of living in a desert.

With our near-barren landscape, we adopt a barren community mentality where just as cacti are spread apart and silent so then too will be the human inhabitants. Of course, this isn’t a rule but a fairly accurate generalization.

Wide swaths of the Valley of the Sun live under a cloak of silent transparency. Behind the gated entries lie our stealthier citizenry. These Arizonans can be spotted at dusk while visiting various establishments, still brandishing their invisibility-inducing dark glasses and human contact-repelling cell phones that, in combination, build an impenetrable fortress allowing for maximum anonymity. As quickly as they dart into the reality of space-time that is viewable by mere mortals, they are just as quickly gone and well-protected and hidden from prying eyes in their gated villas.

Clandestinely, the middle class who have yet to perfect their covert skills of movement without being seen are but amateurs at times forgetting to close their garage door or remove sunglasses at dusk, lose their cell phones, and, worst of all – live in homes on open streets where anyone might drive or walk right up and intrude.

As for the poor, hah, no skills whatsoever! They will answer questions from lost travelers, and ask how you are doing at dinner; heck, they have been witnessed to say good morning to strangers. I suppose ignorance goes with being poor, for if these unassuming, less fortunate amongst us had an ounce of sense, they would don the darkest glasses and, at a minimum, give the rest of us a talk-to-the-hand wave and quickly flicker out of existence into the vastness of the lonely desert.

We live here in Phoenix as moles. We have crawled into our little holes, and no one sees us, and we don’t even bother to come out at night. Our freeways are empty at 9:00 p.m. Monday or Saturday as the minimal nightlife and people venturing out of their caves is nearly an unknown quantity here.

Something is broken here: the heat, the sun, maybe the glare reflecting off half a million swimming pools causes some type of flare which is bouncing off what remains of the ozone layer, and evil waves are washing our brains, making us insipid, non-communicative shells of human beings who must escape the malevolent force which silences us to our neighbors.

Does a city require snow, blizzards, rain, hail, wind, tornadoes, earthquakes, or hurricanes for people to come together, befriend one another, and act like neighbors sharing in the culturing of a spirit to make the place they live in a happy, friendly, open, and caring community? Or are we dried up and shriveled inside from the heat that bears down on us two-legged raisins?

Having not watched television news for about two weeks following 9/11 besides the occasional silent news being shown in various restaurants, I was aghast at what I had seen over the past week on TV.

We still do not have television reception here at home by choice, so I have peeked in on other folk’s televisions to see what has been transpiring in New Orleans. Last Tuesday was the first look, and what I saw was the New Orleans black population running amok. Ten minutes was enough, and I moved on. Various conversations led me to realize that other people felt that only the blacks were looting, and the news had confirmed this for them. Curiously, I asked Caroline to phone her mother in Germany; in the German media, it was shown that both blacks and whites were looting – interesting.

By Friday, my curiosity was getting to me, so I made arrangements to visit someone to watch what a majority of Americans were seeing. On the way, I turned around, thinking that seeing the despair would lend nothing positive to my day. On Saturday, I could hold out no longer, and upon visiting a friend, I tuned in to Fox News and was shocked and astounded. Not by the images of the destruction of New Orleans but by manipulation from the media.

Fox News was playing melodramatic music, taking the news out of “news” and presenting a performance piece meant to wrench emotional reactions from its audience. Piecing together heroic and tragic pictures juxtaposed against dramatic music smacks of propaganda trying to manipulate a population of viewers into having particular “programmed” emotional responses. This must serve some purpose that the ‘powers that be’ within the corporate organization have found to be effective in attracting viewers; for me, I was repulsed.

Consider the definition of propaganda, quoted from Wikipedia, “Propaganda is a specific type of message presentation aimed at serving an agenda.” In this instance, the agenda is to reshape the views of the audience from that of betrayal through negligence from elected leaders into recognition that heroes are working to save the less fortunate, of soldiers and law enforcement taking a tearful-eyed victim on their shoulder, or a lonely boy hugging a trusted dog, all the while longing music kicks at the human reflex to feel sympathy – a radical manipulation if you ask me.

Next, from Wikipedia, regarding the purpose of propaganda, “The aim of propaganda is to influence people’s opinions actively, rather than to merely communicate the facts about something.” Excuse me, but the “news” is supposed to be about facts; even in this age of Fox News and the obvious slant to a conservative agenda, these people have an obligation to present the news as facts, with the audience deciding the meaning of those facts for themselves, instead what we have is music placed against heart-wrenching imagery causing viewers to reflect from an emotional stance instead of a purely logical one.

Hoping this was an aberration, I quickly turned off the sound and went about our visit with this friend. On Sunday, though, I found myself at my mother’s house, where my family was watching the events unfolding in New Orleans. The TV was tuned to MSNBC, and within minutes of our arrival, the “news” was being presented to the Coldplay song “The Scientist” with “moving” images from the disaster. This is beyond the pale; Americans are being manipulated by stupidity and yet continue to tune into this drivel.

When Hitler commissioned Leni Riefenstahl to present the images of heroism to a dramatic soundtrack and called the film “Triumph of the Will,” we denounced the movie as propaganda, thoroughly condemning the usage of such blatant manipulation. Today, our news organizations are free to use the same tactics against the citizenry of the United States so long as it builds patriotism and takes our collective mind off transgressions and weaknesses displayed by our government.

This is such obvious corporate protection of the images and feelings that the population might otherwise have of the government, and in exchange, the government throws tax breaks, shelters, and laws that benefit the wealthy who own and control these corporations so that a status quo allows both to thrive at the expense of us the less privileged middle-class majority of citizens who are all victims of our own stupidity to continuously be manipulated by such ugly propaganda.