Masses Fixate on Single Images

A fourth estate researches facts, gathers data, and informs the world of human rights abuses. Does their simply exposing such abuses motivate those with enough power to take punitive actions against the offenders? Such reports often exclude a full understanding of the causal factors leading to such abuses. Thus exposures of human rights abuses which should encourage credible calls to action are diluted into quibbling over semantics.

The U.S. Empire uses propaganda that stretches and strains adjectives, creating self-serving rhetoric:

The character of human rights debates over Central America was quickly established. As the Reagan administration zealously defended murderous regimes there, human rights organizations exposed practices that few in the media or in Congress could comfortably support. In meticulously well research reports, they showed how the yearly State Department human rights reports were tailored to serve political ends, how "facts" were often gross distortions, how carefully chosen language exculpated favored leaders. "The amount of argument, the amount of battle that goes on in these [government] reports is unbelievable," Richard Holbrooke testified to Congress in 1983. "They are by definition false, because they are always calibrated to meet the existing overall bilateral relationships. The battles over the exact adjective with which to describe something that all of us privately know is appalling is unspeakable." [1]

This practice of stretching language to forge politically reasonable rhetoric that occurred during the Reagan administration still continues. Propaganda's power is enhanced by a public whose obsessive focus on a single and emotional point distracts them from using their critical faculties to comprehend the underlying hostility that leads to a pattern of tragic events:

As the national security managers well understood, media images simplify and dramatize reality, "disrupting the context of politics by focusing on an instantaneous present, and encouraging emotional reactions to events rather than reflective consideration of them," in the words of one NSC report. [2]

We fixate on a single moment packed with traumatic imagery, forsaking critical analysis that if undertaken could expose larger truths to us:

This photo is effective insofar it enables Americans to identify instantly a villain against who all rage is directed. Most Americans remember this photo. But ask them to recall the prosecution's case presented against the defendants, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols.

The Oklahoma City bombing shows one instance where Americans concentrate their indignation on a single person instead of examining a wider body of facts suggesting a more involved nefarious plot. Any such critiques of the single rogue actor is reflexively dismissed as "conspiracy theories."

In such a cultural setting tragedies thus can be understood through a single, distilled image. This certainly explains how many Americans react to tragic events, but this phenomenon has a history:

This imaged helped establish the image of Franco as a brutal dictator. Spain was equally brutalized by the various Marxists groups as well. Spain's civil war that begun in 1935 presented a morally clear imperative to George Orwell. But, he soon learned thereafter that reality was more complicated.

Similar to many events that generate any media attention, wars are seen through the observer's ideologically- distorted-eyes. In this setting, the observers somehow believe the subject war vindicates their worldview. Henceforth, these ideologues repeat more and more this apparent vindication of their worldview, quickly establishing it as the Truth. Orwell recounts in his memoir Homage to Catalonia that:

If you had asked me what I was fighting for, I should have answered: 'Common decency.' I had accepted  the News Chronicle-New Statesman version of the war as the defence of civilization against a maniacal outbreak by an army of Colonel Blimps in the pay of Hitler. [3]. 

In his initial view Spain was besieged by fascists, requiring good Socialists whose consciences should stir their defending their fellow travelers. Like all "civil wars" the social and political milieu is more complicated than that presented in many media exposes:

The revolutionary atmosphere of Barcelona had attracted me deeply, but I had made no attempt to understand it. As for the kaleidoscope of political parties and trade unions, with their tiresome names-PSUC, POUM, FAI, CNT, UGT, JCI, JCI, JSU, AIT-they merely exasperated me. It looked a first sight as though Spain were suffering from a plague of initials. I knew that I was serving in something called the POUM militia rather than any other because I happened to arrive in Barcelona with ILP papers), but I did not realize that there were serious differences between the political parties At Monte Pocero when they pointed to the position on our left and said: 'Those are the Socialists?', I was puzzled and said: 'Aren't we all Socialists?' I thought it idiotic that people fighting for their lives should have separate parties; my attitude always was, 'Why can't we drop all this political nonsense and get on with this war?' This of course was the correct 'anti-Fascist' attitude which had been carefully disseminated by the English newspapers, largely in order to prevent people from grasping the real nature of the struggle. [4] 

Orwell learned this lesson that the romantic intentions of the apparent moral clarity felt from "fighting Fascism...Hitler" is obscured by allied groups opportunistically devouring each other. This devouring results not from allied groups arguing over petty differences thereby conceding decisive advantages to their enemy. Rather, certain groups such as Stalin and the Communists deliberately armed and supported certain groups while excluding others all of which are members of a common alliance opposing Franco.

Today the Syrian "civil war" rages while several nations negotiate which combatants deserve to be classified as "terrorists." Groups identified as such will be excluded from the protection of a cease fire endorsed by the UN Security Council on December 18, 2015 and will remain legitimate targets. Their focus on identifying "terrorists" as a precondition for negotiating a political settlement ignores the fact that the U.S. and its allies' objective of regime change started this "civil war." But, the debate over who are "terrorists" enables the U.S. to continue expressing its "war on terror" meme. Their continued use of this meme prevents their disclosing how its policy of regime change is the main trigger of such tragedies that includes the Syrian civil war.

Single images exposed to the public induces their anger which is channeled toward accepting more draconian measures. The elite's justification for imposing such measures implies that you should sacrifice most of your freedoms to be free from terrorists...or something.

1.Peck, James. Ideal Illusions: How The U.S. Government Co-Opted Human Rights. Metropolitan Books. New York. 2010. Kindle version. page 101 of 372.

2. Ibid. page 106 of 372.

3. Orwell, George. Homage to Catalonia. Mariner Books. Boston. 2015. Kindle edition. location 2877 of 3710.

4. Ibid. location 2880-84.