Swatting at the Swarm, Part II: Reviewing the Usual Suspects
In Part I of this series, I noted that our stories, the conversations we have with ourselves and use to frame the world around us in a fashion we can understand, are being hijacked. Yes, I said "hijacked," as in forced to go where they would not otherwise go. While this should be no surprise to any longer term readers out there, allow me to explain once again what I mean and provide some recent examples to back my argument.
I first quickly mentioned the Overton Window over three years ago. To review, Overton is a political strategist who during campaigns floods the airwaves and print media with opinions far to the right of the conservative position he supports. This way, people reading and listening are given the mistaken impression that the views being expressed have some how become more mainstream, and adjust their own views accordingly. Overton's media blitzes get people talking about issues; thanks to Source Amnesia and the Repetition Effect (aspects of the Overton Window effect I covered more carefully in The Whispers and the Early Screams), the mean average political opinion shifts closer to the one desired by Overton's team.
To interpret the image, the opinion pieces and bias inserted by Overton's team during an election shifts the actual political center marked by the 0 (as determined by a survey of opinion before the campaigning begins) a couple of points to the right of that center simply by dint of repetition and paying for some to espouse far-right beliefs for the record in ways that fail to question how wide-spread those beliefs really are.
Got that?
Once you're aware that this is happening, it's really quite easy to find examples. All you have to do is follow the Long Green (to use my favorite euphemism for money from the movie Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!). I'll give you just a few examples you might not have heard about for illustration, but which may in the very near future affect us all. Let's start with the media with which we're all familiar, the news.
Today's broadcast news is corporate through and through, a business in the business not of informimg the populace but of showing a profit. Let me be very clear on this point: it does not matter what the truth might be; if faced with diminishing revenues, a major news agency will probably not follow a story. When they do, they are quickly reminded who pays the bills.
Take the recent Toyota acceleration problems covered by just about everyone. ABC, it seems, covered the story just a bit too well. In retaliation, it further seems, Toyota dealers pulled most of their TV ads from ABC affiliates. From the story:
Toyota dealers in New York state have severely restricted their advertising on ABC-affiliated TV stations throughout the state because of what they consider unfair coverage of Toyota safety problems by ABC News. . . .
A station manager at a New York ABC affiliate said that a member of the dealers group told him they were "pressured" by the Toyota corporation to limit their commercial buys to no more than a 10 percent share in his market because of what the automaker perceived as "biased and unfair reporting by ABC'S Brian Ross related to the Toyota acceleration issues."
Here's a question: Was this reporting "biased and unfair"? I honestly don't know, but do know that it doesn't matter. This ploy by Toyota has been seen for decades. Ever wonder why news agencies don't do stories actually asking why we Americans haven't been able to buy an affordable electric vehicle for almost a hundred years? Really, I watched the events depicted in the movie Who Killed the Electric Car unfold on-line as it happened, read with horror the stories of leases pulled and cars crushed. And all of it went uncovered, or at least unchallenged, by the press. All of it. Furthermore, ever wonder why no news agencies question why the US Smart car barely gets about 40 mpg, while the original version sold in Europe gets more like 60? And why Ford sells a 5 passenger sedan in Great Britain that gets 88 mpg -- not a hybrid! -- but the best Ford sells here gets barely 40?
To put a crude point on the issue, if the advertisers decide reporters must all acknowledge that Toyota has a huge penis (despite evidence that the penis is only average in size or, worse, minuscule), the first agency that doesn't gush with envy at the erect member's size and force its reporters to dream on-air about the joy of possibly suckling at that cock until their jaws ache and knees bleed will suffer the wrath of poverty and hear the bank vault slam shut. Whoever has the gold makes the rules.
All of the above is simply pointing out the obvious, that advertiser dollars drive the direction of news. There are other ways to drive the news without even involving the reporters directly, more insidious ways by far. Here's one: Astroturfing.
AstroTurf(TM) is, of course, fake grass. According to the Wiki, in politics this:
denotes political, advertising, or public relations campaigns that are formally planned by an organization, but are disguised as spontaneous, popular "grassroots" behavior. The term refers to AstroTurf, a brand of synthetic carpeting designed to look like natural grass.
The goal of such campaigns is to disguise the efforts of a political or commercial entity as an independent public reaction to some political entity-a politician, political group, product, service or event.
I think everyone by now has come to realize that the Teabagger Movement is Faux News astroturf, purely and simply. I won't do more than just mention that one here. It's too easy, too widely covered to be surprising. Instead, why not keep Faux News' catchphrase in mind as we go north of the border and focus on a single controversy currently being debated: the new Canadian Copyright Bill.
Professor Michael Geist (no, bleaknemesis, not that one) founded a group called Fair Copyright for Canada dedicated to alerting people about what the group members saw as abuses and infringements in the law currently being debated. Jesse Brown over at Search Engine -- the best podcast I've found yet covering digital rights and media -- noted that another group had recently sprung up . . . Balanced Copyright For Canada. Some digging revealed BCFC to be nothing more than a fully funded front group for copyright interests, including copyright lawyers and recording industry employees. It is, as this page reveals, a "Canadian Recording Industry Association production." I highly recommend you hear Jesse describe this on the Search Engine link. It's very entertaining, and does a great job pointing out the public opinion problem astroturfing organizations are designed to create.
If the Balanced group proves to have more political pull in Parliament than Geist's Fair group, one aspect of the new legislation will make it a felony (again, according to Brown at Search Engine) for anyone in Canada to break a "digital lock" on copyrighted material for any reason, even for reasons now considered "fair use". This will completely stifle creativity, journalism, any of the current practices just about all of us mucking about on computers enjoy. The money to follow comes, of course, not from those that create the copyrighted content -- the artists, writers, and other creative people seem to back Geist's Fair group -- but the purveyors of that content, the folks who actually collect the money from the creative efforts of others.
Will this happen? It's too soon to tell, from what I can determine. We'll see.
One can bring a reporter to heel with money and one can obfuscate a debate with false public groundswells of support. How else can one shift that window of Overton's? Why not create news?
Just as a group on the internet can be either comprised of genuinely concerned citizens or genuinely vested interests signing up because their boss wants them to, news reporting in general should be held in skepticism. Yes, most reporters are just as professional as we assume them to be from old movies about reporters. We still have the Woodward and Bernsteins out there. We also have feeds from "news" organizations that look just like news, but. . . .
Everyone's familiar with the Associated Press, a news agency without a formal outlet. Instead of publishing all of their content for the public themselves, reporters at the AP have their stories widely distributed to members and re-published by member newspaper, radio and television outlets. It's a cooperative, a means for member outlets to combine their efforts and not too heavily duplicate expensive reporting.
I won't go too hard on the members for overly relying on the AP wire stories, rather than hire local reporters to cover stories that can be covered. That's happening, especially now that all news agencies seem to be shedding their personnel. This reduces the eyeballs on any given story and can cause details to seep through the cracks. No, for this piece, I think I'll focus on other "wire" agencies. I caught this detail from Counterspin, one of the very best podcasts documenting corporate media mistakes, abuses and attempts to influence public opinion through reporting.
Peter G. Peterson is a billionaire, a man who formerly worked in Nixon White House as Secretary of Commerce. He cashed in his company and founded the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, a group dedicated to reducing the federal debt and deficit. On the face of things, this is an area I would applaud. Debt is going to destroy this country if it is not dealt with soon. Ah, but Mr. Peterson would probably much more likely like to cut spending than to increase government revenues as I would prefer. And the spending he really likes cutting, according to Counterspin, is our country's social safety net; Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare.
All well and good, you say? We're each entitled to our opinions, you say? I would agree. But. . . .
Mr. Peterson has also created a "news" service, something called The Fiscal Times. He has hired reporters who file stories on issues an organization with "fiscal" in its name might find interesting. We get into murky waters, though, when (as pointed out by Counterspin and Fire Dog Lake) newspapers of some repute like The Washington Post publish Fiscal Times pieces without noting the ideological bent of the organization. Here's a sample of the problem as noted by Fire Dog Lake:
(The piece by FT run by WP) told readers that: "On the fiscal commission, Stern [Andy Stern, former head of the Service Employees Internation Union, one of members highlighted in the peice (sic)] is already looking for ways to break through the ideological camps on deficit-reduction." In fact, individuals who are not motivated by ideology would note that the country’s projected long-term deficit problem is driven almost entirely by the broken U.S. health care system.
If per person health care costs were the same in the United States as in any other wealthy country, then the projections would show huge budget surpluses rather than deficits. It also should be possible for the people in the United States to take advantage of lower cost health care systems elsewhere even if the power of special interests like the insurance and pharmaceutical industry prevent reform here. This basic fact should feature prominently in any discussion of the long-term deficit that is not motivated by ideology. It is never mentioned in this piece.
This wire piece is just, as FDL points out, bad reporting at best and a stealth opinion piece at worst, but it's being run as if it is just another piece of the morning news.
And the Window shifts to the right.
Finally, this next controversy has gotten me a bit worked up not just because of the long-term implications it could have for residents of Washington State, but for the fact that, until three days ago, I knew nothing about it. It reflects what happens when the monied interests could report a story, but rather choose not too.
Goldie is the handle chosen by a local blogger at Horse's Ass. He's been covering a recent story, and, perhaps more importantly, noting how little coverage this constitutional crisis is getting elsewhere.
Some background: The folks over at the Okanogan County Public Utilities District have decided to build a high-tension power line. All well and good. They have, however, chosen to condemn lands owned by the State of Washington to build the line. Our current Public Lands Commissioner Peter Goldmark doesn't like this, not at all, and has asked the State Attorney General Rob McKenna to sue Okanogan PUD to prevent this. After all,
Okanogan PUD’s bifurcation of public trust lands with transmission lines and maintenance roads will reduce the value of the land and the income it produces to the state, while increasing both the fire risk and the cost of maintaining and patrolling it. This takes money out a public trust that has generated over $3 billion for public school construction over the past several decades.
What's weird, what's new, what is very probably unconstitutional, is that McKenna refused. Goldy points out the obvious:
Let’s be clear: it’s not McKenna’s job to determine the merits of the case or weigh in on the policy decisions guiding it. He’s DNR’s attorney, not it’s judge or jury, and his ethical and legal obligation is to represent his client to the best of his ability. And that, he is clearly failing to do.
Here we have a major attempted usurpation of the State Constitution, a county regulatory body attempting to condemn lands owned by the state in what the right-wing land rights crowd calls a "taking." In a following article, Goldy continues:
The issue at the center of this dispute is whether a local government agency, the Okanogan Public Utility District, can condemn state Common School Trust land through eminent domain, an action for which there is little if any precedent, but the precedent the Attorney General seeks to set in refusing to represent DNR on appeal could be much more far reaching. Indeed, it essentially boils down to who gets to set policy priorities in Washington state: elected executives like Lands Commissioner Peter Goldmark and Governor Chris Gregoire… or the Attorney General himself?
And even though the dates on these two articles are separated by two days (June 9 for the first, June 11 for the second) . . . nothing happens in the press. Here's Goldy a few days later on June 14:
On Friday I warned my friends in the media that they were missing the big story in the escalating dispute between Lands Commissioner Peter Goldmark and Attorney General Rob McKenna. And after a sunny weekend and no further headlines, I feel compelled to raise the alert one more time.
Hey media… you’re missing a big story!
They still miss it two days later. And two days after that. In fact, this issue (according to Goldy) got no press at all until June 22, when McKenna was scheduled to appear on a local NPR call-in show. Furthermore, no newspaper touched the issue until, apparently, the Wenatchee World did . . . on July 1st.
For you readers living outside Washington, Seattle is our state's most populous city and my residence of many decades. In this fair city a newspaper called The Seattle Times has published for many, many years. (I won't give that rag any Google juice with a link.) Founded in 1891, it is still locally owned by an heir of the founding Blethen family. Frank, this Blethen owner, appears to be, according to just about every editorial and opinion piece he publishes, very conservative. Years ago, the shenanigans in which McKenna is currently engaged probably would not go so very unreported. A year ago, though, the Times' only major competitor, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, was driven by the Blethen family right out of the print business. It still remains as a ghost of its formal self on-line only, with only a splinter of its former investigative staff still drawing a salary.
Now the only widely read paper-of-record in Western Washington, apparently the Times can now report only what news it sees fit to report, possibly even allowing challenges to our state's constitution to pass without even a whisper. This "oversight" smacks to me of sheer chutzpah.
I don't claim to have exhaustively cataloged how that Window gets shifted when money is involved. There are undoubtedly more strategies to shift public opinion with an injection of cash than can be named in even a single document. The above merely dabs at the edges of the wound in our social fabric.
Worse, I haven't yet begun to describe how these and other phenomena might converge to deny us of our ability to protect ourselves from a truly chaotic future. That comes later.
I first quickly mentioned the Overton Window over three years ago. To review, Overton is a political strategist who during campaigns floods the airwaves and print media with opinions far to the right of the conservative position he supports. This way, people reading and listening are given the mistaken impression that the views being expressed have some how become more mainstream, and adjust their own views accordingly. Overton's media blitzes get people talking about issues; thanks to Source Amnesia and the Repetition Effect (aspects of the Overton Window effect I covered more carefully in The Whispers and the Early Screams), the mean average political opinion shifts closer to the one desired by Overton's team.
To interpret the image, the opinion pieces and bias inserted by Overton's team during an election shifts the actual political center marked by the 0 (as determined by a survey of opinion before the campaigning begins) a couple of points to the right of that center simply by dint of repetition and paying for some to espouse far-right beliefs for the record in ways that fail to question how wide-spread those beliefs really are.
Got that?
Once you're aware that this is happening, it's really quite easy to find examples. All you have to do is follow the Long Green (to use my favorite euphemism for money from the movie Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!). I'll give you just a few examples you might not have heard about for illustration, but which may in the very near future affect us all. Let's start with the media with which we're all familiar, the news.
Today's broadcast news is corporate through and through, a business in the business not of informimg the populace but of showing a profit. Let me be very clear on this point: it does not matter what the truth might be; if faced with diminishing revenues, a major news agency will probably not follow a story. When they do, they are quickly reminded who pays the bills.
Take the recent Toyota acceleration problems covered by just about everyone. ABC, it seems, covered the story just a bit too well. In retaliation, it further seems, Toyota dealers pulled most of their TV ads from ABC affiliates. From the story:
Toyota dealers in New York state have severely restricted their advertising on ABC-affiliated TV stations throughout the state because of what they consider unfair coverage of Toyota safety problems by ABC News. . . .
A station manager at a New York ABC affiliate said that a member of the dealers group told him they were "pressured" by the Toyota corporation to limit their commercial buys to no more than a 10 percent share in his market because of what the automaker perceived as "biased and unfair reporting by ABC'S Brian Ross related to the Toyota acceleration issues."
Here's a question: Was this reporting "biased and unfair"? I honestly don't know, but do know that it doesn't matter. This ploy by Toyota has been seen for decades. Ever wonder why news agencies don't do stories actually asking why we Americans haven't been able to buy an affordable electric vehicle for almost a hundred years? Really, I watched the events depicted in the movie Who Killed the Electric Car unfold on-line as it happened, read with horror the stories of leases pulled and cars crushed. And all of it went uncovered, or at least unchallenged, by the press. All of it. Furthermore, ever wonder why no news agencies question why the US Smart car barely gets about 40 mpg, while the original version sold in Europe gets more like 60? And why Ford sells a 5 passenger sedan in Great Britain that gets 88 mpg -- not a hybrid! -- but the best Ford sells here gets barely 40?
To put a crude point on the issue, if the advertisers decide reporters must all acknowledge that Toyota has a huge penis (despite evidence that the penis is only average in size or, worse, minuscule), the first agency that doesn't gush with envy at the erect member's size and force its reporters to dream on-air about the joy of possibly suckling at that cock until their jaws ache and knees bleed will suffer the wrath of poverty and hear the bank vault slam shut. Whoever has the gold makes the rules.
All of the above is simply pointing out the obvious, that advertiser dollars drive the direction of news. There are other ways to drive the news without even involving the reporters directly, more insidious ways by far. Here's one: Astroturfing.
AstroTurf(TM) is, of course, fake grass. According to the Wiki, in politics this:
denotes political, advertising, or public relations campaigns that are formally planned by an organization, but are disguised as spontaneous, popular "grassroots" behavior. The term refers to AstroTurf, a brand of synthetic carpeting designed to look like natural grass.
The goal of such campaigns is to disguise the efforts of a political or commercial entity as an independent public reaction to some political entity-a politician, political group, product, service or event.
I think everyone by now has come to realize that the Teabagger Movement is Faux News astroturf, purely and simply. I won't do more than just mention that one here. It's too easy, too widely covered to be surprising. Instead, why not keep Faux News' catchphrase in mind as we go north of the border and focus on a single controversy currently being debated: the new Canadian Copyright Bill.
Professor Michael Geist (no, bleaknemesis, not that one) founded a group called Fair Copyright for Canada dedicated to alerting people about what the group members saw as abuses and infringements in the law currently being debated. Jesse Brown over at Search Engine -- the best podcast I've found yet covering digital rights and media -- noted that another group had recently sprung up . . . Balanced Copyright For Canada. Some digging revealed BCFC to be nothing more than a fully funded front group for copyright interests, including copyright lawyers and recording industry employees. It is, as this page reveals, a "Canadian Recording Industry Association production." I highly recommend you hear Jesse describe this on the Search Engine link. It's very entertaining, and does a great job pointing out the public opinion problem astroturfing organizations are designed to create.
If the Balanced group proves to have more political pull in Parliament than Geist's Fair group, one aspect of the new legislation will make it a felony (again, according to Brown at Search Engine) for anyone in Canada to break a "digital lock" on copyrighted material for any reason, even for reasons now considered "fair use". This will completely stifle creativity, journalism, any of the current practices just about all of us mucking about on computers enjoy. The money to follow comes, of course, not from those that create the copyrighted content -- the artists, writers, and other creative people seem to back Geist's Fair group -- but the purveyors of that content, the folks who actually collect the money from the creative efforts of others.
Will this happen? It's too soon to tell, from what I can determine. We'll see.
One can bring a reporter to heel with money and one can obfuscate a debate with false public groundswells of support. How else can one shift that window of Overton's? Why not create news?
Just as a group on the internet can be either comprised of genuinely concerned citizens or genuinely vested interests signing up because their boss wants them to, news reporting in general should be held in skepticism. Yes, most reporters are just as professional as we assume them to be from old movies about reporters. We still have the Woodward and Bernsteins out there. We also have feeds from "news" organizations that look just like news, but. . . .
Everyone's familiar with the Associated Press, a news agency without a formal outlet. Instead of publishing all of their content for the public themselves, reporters at the AP have their stories widely distributed to members and re-published by member newspaper, radio and television outlets. It's a cooperative, a means for member outlets to combine their efforts and not too heavily duplicate expensive reporting.
I won't go too hard on the members for overly relying on the AP wire stories, rather than hire local reporters to cover stories that can be covered. That's happening, especially now that all news agencies seem to be shedding their personnel. This reduces the eyeballs on any given story and can cause details to seep through the cracks. No, for this piece, I think I'll focus on other "wire" agencies. I caught this detail from Counterspin, one of the very best podcasts documenting corporate media mistakes, abuses and attempts to influence public opinion through reporting.
Peter G. Peterson is a billionaire, a man who formerly worked in Nixon White House as Secretary of Commerce. He cashed in his company and founded the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, a group dedicated to reducing the federal debt and deficit. On the face of things, this is an area I would applaud. Debt is going to destroy this country if it is not dealt with soon. Ah, but Mr. Peterson would probably much more likely like to cut spending than to increase government revenues as I would prefer. And the spending he really likes cutting, according to Counterspin, is our country's social safety net; Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare.
All well and good, you say? We're each entitled to our opinions, you say? I would agree. But. . . .
Mr. Peterson has also created a "news" service, something called The Fiscal Times. He has hired reporters who file stories on issues an organization with "fiscal" in its name might find interesting. We get into murky waters, though, when (as pointed out by Counterspin and Fire Dog Lake) newspapers of some repute like The Washington Post publish Fiscal Times pieces without noting the ideological bent of the organization. Here's a sample of the problem as noted by Fire Dog Lake:
(The piece by FT run by WP) told readers that: "On the fiscal commission, Stern [Andy Stern, former head of the Service Employees Internation Union, one of members highlighted in the peice (sic)] is already looking for ways to break through the ideological camps on deficit-reduction." In fact, individuals who are not motivated by ideology would note that the country’s projected long-term deficit problem is driven almost entirely by the broken U.S. health care system.
If per person health care costs were the same in the United States as in any other wealthy country, then the projections would show huge budget surpluses rather than deficits. It also should be possible for the people in the United States to take advantage of lower cost health care systems elsewhere even if the power of special interests like the insurance and pharmaceutical industry prevent reform here. This basic fact should feature prominently in any discussion of the long-term deficit that is not motivated by ideology. It is never mentioned in this piece.
This wire piece is just, as FDL points out, bad reporting at best and a stealth opinion piece at worst, but it's being run as if it is just another piece of the morning news.
And the Window shifts to the right.
Finally, this next controversy has gotten me a bit worked up not just because of the long-term implications it could have for residents of Washington State, but for the fact that, until three days ago, I knew nothing about it. It reflects what happens when the monied interests could report a story, but rather choose not too.
Goldie is the handle chosen by a local blogger at Horse's Ass. He's been covering a recent story, and, perhaps more importantly, noting how little coverage this constitutional crisis is getting elsewhere.
Some background: The folks over at the Okanogan County Public Utilities District have decided to build a high-tension power line. All well and good. They have, however, chosen to condemn lands owned by the State of Washington to build the line. Our current Public Lands Commissioner Peter Goldmark doesn't like this, not at all, and has asked the State Attorney General Rob McKenna to sue Okanogan PUD to prevent this. After all,
Okanogan PUD’s bifurcation of public trust lands with transmission lines and maintenance roads will reduce the value of the land and the income it produces to the state, while increasing both the fire risk and the cost of maintaining and patrolling it. This takes money out a public trust that has generated over $3 billion for public school construction over the past several decades.
What's weird, what's new, what is very probably unconstitutional, is that McKenna refused. Goldy points out the obvious:
Let’s be clear: it’s not McKenna’s job to determine the merits of the case or weigh in on the policy decisions guiding it. He’s DNR’s attorney, not it’s judge or jury, and his ethical and legal obligation is to represent his client to the best of his ability. And that, he is clearly failing to do.
Here we have a major attempted usurpation of the State Constitution, a county regulatory body attempting to condemn lands owned by the state in what the right-wing land rights crowd calls a "taking." In a following article, Goldy continues:
The issue at the center of this dispute is whether a local government agency, the Okanogan Public Utility District, can condemn state Common School Trust land through eminent domain, an action for which there is little if any precedent, but the precedent the Attorney General seeks to set in refusing to represent DNR on appeal could be much more far reaching. Indeed, it essentially boils down to who gets to set policy priorities in Washington state: elected executives like Lands Commissioner Peter Goldmark and Governor Chris Gregoire… or the Attorney General himself?
And even though the dates on these two articles are separated by two days (June 9 for the first, June 11 for the second) . . . nothing happens in the press. Here's Goldy a few days later on June 14:
On Friday I warned my friends in the media that they were missing the big story in the escalating dispute between Lands Commissioner Peter Goldmark and Attorney General Rob McKenna. And after a sunny weekend and no further headlines, I feel compelled to raise the alert one more time.
Hey media… you’re missing a big story!
They still miss it two days later. And two days after that. In fact, this issue (according to Goldy) got no press at all until June 22, when McKenna was scheduled to appear on a local NPR call-in show. Furthermore, no newspaper touched the issue until, apparently, the Wenatchee World did . . . on July 1st.
For you readers living outside Washington, Seattle is our state's most populous city and my residence of many decades. In this fair city a newspaper called The Seattle Times has published for many, many years. (I won't give that rag any Google juice with a link.) Founded in 1891, it is still locally owned by an heir of the founding Blethen family. Frank, this Blethen owner, appears to be, according to just about every editorial and opinion piece he publishes, very conservative. Years ago, the shenanigans in which McKenna is currently engaged probably would not go so very unreported. A year ago, though, the Times' only major competitor, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, was driven by the Blethen family right out of the print business. It still remains as a ghost of its formal self on-line only, with only a splinter of its former investigative staff still drawing a salary.
Now the only widely read paper-of-record in Western Washington, apparently the Times can now report only what news it sees fit to report, possibly even allowing challenges to our state's constitution to pass without even a whisper. This "oversight" smacks to me of sheer chutzpah.
I don't claim to have exhaustively cataloged how that Window gets shifted when money is involved. There are undoubtedly more strategies to shift public opinion with an injection of cash than can be named in even a single document. The above merely dabs at the edges of the wound in our social fabric.
Worse, I haven't yet begun to describe how these and other phenomena might converge to deny us of our ability to protect ourselves from a truly chaotic future. That comes later.