Thanks Julian Assange and Bradley Manning for Wikileaks...for solidifying what many already suspected - that our government lies - or at least fails to disclose the truth - about the most important issues facing the nation and that multinational corporations are even more dishonest and greedy than government. After reading some articles about Wikileaks I wonder how the public will react - with shame, horror and embarrassment or with the usual lackadaisical indifference.
And all of this revelation of how deceitful the U.S. government is brings to mind a lesson from economic development. I remember discussing a theory in class about the 'problematization' of poverty which states that poverty is relative and thus, people do not consider themselves poor unless they can make frequent comparisons between their situation and that of someone else. So in many areas of the world there are people that we consider poor but that do not necessarily consider themselves poor because everyone they interact with is relatively equal to them.
So, I argue this same theory applies to government. You do not know how bad your government is unless you can compare it to another government. And, unfortunately, in a society were most people are informed of the outside world through mass media, mass media only shows the worse cases. We are told that our government is the best, the strongest, most democratic, most transparent and so forth (of course, do the research, it isn't, but who does research these days? Your mom? Your dad? Not mine). We believe what we are told, why shouldn't we - things don't seem so bad... but wait, now we have Wikileaks giving undeniable evidence that our government is NOT what we thought...is government problematized now?
If we all clearly knew, without a doubt - I mean given a solid, undeniable example - of a better government that was more just, fair, equal, honest and accountable, and we had to compare our government to this government everyday and live knowing exactly what we could have but don't, what would we do? How would we react then? With shame, horror and embarrassment or with the usual lackadaisical indifference?
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