Yes, I used to be a
journalist ... I used to be one of those
people that wrote out the news so that everyone else could
understand, interpriting and
condensing the world so much that even the average
American with his or her ten-second
attention span could understand what was happening in the world. I felt
good - I felt like I was doing a
service - bringing the world to the
level where everyone could understand. I felt like I was doing all of
you a
favor.
So ... why did I stop?
Because I had to gloss over the horrific things that human beings do to each other, making them sound like flukes of fate, accidents, or the product of a deranged mind. I had to make you believe that, really, these people were nothing like you.
I had to lie, making the world sound like a better place than it really is, pretending that we really weren't miserably losing the War Against Drugs, the war against the "Commies" or the war against the pagan, heathens in the world that threatened how we lived.
I could not tell everyone how fucking selfish we are ... how unbelievable bitching about not having a car is compared to not having any food.
Because I had to tell myself, just like everyone else, that everything was ok, even when I knew it wasn't. And I got to a point, when I could no longer handle the knowledge that I had, that I felt I had no other way to go but to stop. So I did.