This is what journalism use to be like. Insightful, clear, concise and thought provoking. The article is a really good read. Unfortunately, it was his last and it would seem perhaps, the last of it's kind. Follow the link for yourself. The quotation is from the providing website, which is why I chose this link. (easy to search the internets for the material though) If you are skeered of random links, I also added a "probable" work of his below to give you an idea of his writing prowess.
Charley Reese's final column - 545 vs. 300,000,000 People
Just a Friendly Reminder
A very interesting column. COMPLETELY NEUTRAL
Be sure to Read the Poem at the end.
Charley Reese's final column for the Orlando Sentinel.
He has been a journalist for 49 years.
He is retiring and this is HIS LAST COLUMN.
Be sure to read the Tax List at the end.
This is about as clear and easy to understand as it can be. The article below is completely neutral, neither anti-republican or democrat. Charlie Reese, a retired reporter for the Orlando Sentinel, has hit the nail directly on the head, defining clearly who it is that in the final analysis must assume responsibility for the judgments made that impact each one of us every day. It's a short but good read. Worth the time. Worth remembering!...
Disclaimer: I have not been able to 100% verify this other, probable, work of his, but it seems consistent and on point
Don't let them.
It is easier than you think to control people indirectly, to manipulate them into thinking what you want them to think and doing what you want them to do.
One basic technique is to keep them ignorant.
Educated people are not as easy to manipulate. Abolishing public education or restricting access to education would be the direct approach. That would spill the beans. The indirect approach is to control the education they receive.
It’s possible to be a Ph.D., doctor, lawyer, businessman, journalist, or an accountant, just to name a few examples, and at the same time be an uneducated person. The difference between true education and vocational training has been cleverly blurred in our time so that we have people successfully practicing their vocations while at the same time being totally ignorant of the larger issues of the world in which they live.
The most obvious symptom is their absence of original thought. Ask them a question and they will end up reciting what someone else thinks or thought the answer was. What do they think Well, they never thought about it. Their education consisted of learning how to use the library and cite sources.
That greatly simplifies things for the controller because with lots of money, university endowments, foundations, grants, and ownership of media, it is relatively easy to control who they will think of as authorities to cite in lieu of doing their own thinking.
Another technique is to keep them entertained. Roman emperors did not stage circuses and gladiator contests because they didn’t have television. We have television because we don’t have circuses and gladiator events. Either way, the purpose is to keep the people’s minds focused on entertainment, sports, and peripheral political issues. This way you won’t have to worry that they will ever figure out the real issues that allow you to control them.
Just as a truly educated person is difficult to control, so too is an economically independent person. Therefore, you want to create conditions that will produce people who work for wages, since wage earners have little control over their economic destiny. You’ll also want to control the monetary, credit, and banking systems. This will allow you to inflate the currency and make it next to impossible for wage earners to accumulate capital. You can also cause periodic deflation to collapse the family businesses, family farms, and entrepreneurs, including independent community banks.
To keep trade unions under control, you just promote a scheme that allows you to shift production jobs out of the country and bring back the products as imports (it is called free trade). This way you will end up with no unions or docile unions.
Another technique is to buy both political parties so that after a while people will feel that no matter whether they vote for Candidate A or Candidate B, they will get the same policies. This will create great apathy and a belief that the political process is useless for effecting real change.
Pretty soon you will have a population that feels completely helpless, and thinks the bad things happening to them are nobody in particular’s fault, just a result of global forces or evolution or some other disembodied abstract concept. If necessary, you can offer scapegoats.
Then you can bleed them dry without having to worry overly much that one of them will sneak into your house one night and cut your throat. If you do it right, they won’t even know whose throat they are cutting.
- Charley Reese
See? With just a little effort -- you too can use your head for more than a hat rack
