By Edward Curtin
href="http://edwardcurtin.com/">edwardcurtin.com
"Cram them full of non-combustible data, chock them so damned full of 'facts' they feel stuffed, but absolutely brilliant with information. Then they'll feel they're thinking, they'll get a sense of motion without moving."
Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, 1951
"It is not only information that they need - in the age of Fact, information often dominates their attention and overwhelms their capacities to assimilate it".What they need , and what they feel they need , is a quality of mind that will help them to use information and to develop reason in order to achieve lucid summations of what is going on in the world and of what may be happening within themselves."
C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination, 1959
The main stream media's (MSM) ongoing narrative of the massacre in Las Vegas is clearly deceptive. This is nothing new. That is their modus operandi. Overwhelm people with a glut of information about a terrible tragedy and all becomes clear to people sick-at-heart over the deaths and injuries to innocent people. But it's a false clarity engendered to confuse. Tell the story big and loud, and tell it repetitively from different angles, and it becomes hard to think straight, especially with the addition of all the sad stories of the innocent victims' deaths and injuries. Who can forget the false official narrative that was spun amid the grief for all the innocent victims of the attacks of September 11, 2001. Few could think straight at the time.
The MSM tells us in detail about Stephen Paddock's gambling life, his houses and real estate dealings, how much he paid for them, his gun collection numbering 47, including all those in his hotel room (23), the alleged exact number of rounds he had in his car (1,600), how he shot from his hotel room windows, etc. We are told what his brother and girlfriend say about him: they are shocked; he was just a regular guy; they can't explain it. We are told how he got the room gratis, how long he stayed there, and that he was planning to escape (they say this with a straight face). Told how many people died (59) and how many were injured (527), we remember these numbers vaguely, especially the latter. A regular person just feels overwhelmed by all the information, the numbers; saddened and depressed for all the victims, and more afraid.
A mystery is created, an endless mystery that can be pondered and pseudo-debated ad infinitum: why would a seemingly normal, if slightly eccentric, man do such an horrendous thing? Why did he "snap"? Was there something wrong with his brain? But if he "snapped," why did he buy so many guns over a long period of time? Is snapping consistent with long-term planning? Was he mentally ill? The national "conversation," as they like to call it, will revolve around guns and mental health, and the MSM will keep the story going with endless experts offering their opinions. And that endless conversation will divert the public's attention from the essence of this case and other matters we are not supposed to be focused on at the moment.
What the media do not say is that there is video and witness evidence that there were at least two more shooters, maybe more, one from a lower floor and another at the Bellagio Hotel that was locked down. This means that there was a conspiracy involved. They don't mention this so that someone like me can do so and be branded a "conspiracy theorist," the term created by the CIA to besmirch anyone questioning the official narrative of the JFK assassination. You will notice that I am not -- purposefully -- linking to this evidence that I assert exists, nor am I raising more of the many questions surrounding this case. I am hoping that readers will research these matters themselves, and if they discover that there is evidence proving that there was more than one shooter, then, just as with the magic bullet absurdity in the JFK case, they will conclude, ipso facto, that the MSM are involved in a cover-up of a conspiracy, which is itself a conspiracy -- a factual conspiracy, not a conspiracy theory. And if that is so, they will ask why, and who is being protected. Cui bono? Why would the MSM push this narrative of the lonely crazed gunman?
People need to realize that they must be immediately skeptical of such official narratives and do their own research, and they will learn that there are excellent alternative websites that are doing real journalism and are seeking truth for truth's sake.
While this brief article is not a "lucid summation," as Mills suggested we need, I offer it as a concise provocation to anyone reading this to develop their own sociological imaginations to achieve such lucidity at a time when propaganda is king and the pawns are being swept off the devil's chessboard.
One might end up asking: Who's the devil? And answering their own question?
Edward Curtin is a writer whose work has appeared widely. He teaches sociology at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. His website is http://edwardcurtin.com/
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