“Easy does it” is the ironclad adage that wrenched itself
into past tense to become an epitaph for Americans, that is,
for the world’s people, (unless DNA is fake news, too.)
Americans welded the fourth estate onto the mass media machine,
then let it fall into the richest hands, which halts the slow parade of the
human race, away from the solitary clutch of unknowing nightmare,
toward neighbor lighting the way for neighbor, in wakefulness.
Reason illuminated the race, it erected the first libraries in caves between
the first learners’ ears; “Shhh,” is the first word, “I’m thinking” is the foundation
of education, the illuminated sign of intelligence that leads away from ignorance.
Reflection is the gift that invites humans to higher and deeper experience of life
than animals achieve, even if cats seem most reflective of all living beings.
Americans reached apogee in the 1960s, when they typically read morning, afternoon,
and Sunday papers, books, weekly, monthly magazines and old farmers’ almanacs.
Overnight, it seems, record-playing radio morphed into picture-showing television,
which, at first, spent little more than fifteen evening minutes to tell the national
and world news, but twice that for local news, weather, and sports. Born as entertainment,
grown into info-tainment, TV was swamped in the wake of disruptive technology.
In the blink of history’s eye, still, quiet printed pages are overwhelmed as wave after wave
of talking heads pitch easy solutions: soap to make sheets soft, shots to make women thin,
pills to make men hard, loans to manage debt, so easy is it to capitalize on hopes and dreams
from inside homes of people who hope and dream.
Monomaniacal capital captured television and collapsed it into infinite, monetized,
palm-sized screens that imprison sleepy minds and liberate rich, uncouth felons.
Dave Read