Thursday, April 3, 2008

Trusting the Government...

Throughout this semester, I have been given the opportunity to draw connections between course materials for different classes. Arguments made in Megan Boler’s article, The Transmission of Political Critique after 9/11: “A New Form of Desperation”? are comparable to the recent films Why We Fight and Road to Guantanamo that were screened in my contemporary cinema class. These mediums center on the dishonest conduct of the American government regarding the coverage of news, the invasion of a country, and the treatment of prisoners of war, respectively. Both the article and the films go on to discuss the public’s reaction to those in command who have been labeled as untrustworthy. Boler writes,

What’s unique is that this insistence on the possibility of truthfulness is held in simultaneous contradiction with cynical distrust. The result is a paradoxical affective sentiment shared by many: the simultaneous belief that all truths are rhetorically constructed along with the shared certainty that we have been lied to, that this is wrong, and that there is a truthfulness that should be delivered. This demand is directed at the corrupted synergy created between media and politicians (Boler).

Those engaged in media must begin to question whether their longing for the truth is in relation to the behavior of the nation’s politicians or to the control of the media. Although I believe that both parties share some responsibility, it is the word of the nation’s politicians and not the way in which it is communicated that is most at fault. When evidence surfaces that George W. Bush’s reasons for attacking Iraq were primarily for economic purposes and that civilians were held at Guantanamo under inhumane circumstances, one must be wary of the people that shape the political system.

Boler, Megan. “ The Transmission of Political Critique after 9/11: ‘A New Form of Desperation’?” 10 Feb. 2008

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