20/20 Gonzo 38: Sift Through The Garbage

Even the Maoist rejected the Struggle Session after 1978.  The scripted, intentional, and humiliating public shaming used to destroy people's lives, supposedly the oppressors, supposedly the powerful, supposedly for some intellectual and cultural utopia.  This was way before all the Wal-Mart contracts, millions of manufacturing camps, the one daughter limit, and British Petroleum.  Commies always working some angle, always stirring up the easily stirred.  Lingering class resentments, common envy, and revengeful justice, Stalin's useful tricks.

Hard to notice an actual journalist these days, they've mostly taken sides, usually the side of the boss, the paycheck signers. Imagine the modern newsroom, a collection of zoom heads, seeking ways to push the news, provoke some news, make some news, manipulate some news, make a name, gather followers.  The news is news to them, industry vanity virus.  The actual journalist will write what they learn, they will learn by curiosity, the best will ask the best questions.  Of others and internally, that ever-present 'Hmmm, but...?', that refined logic of space and timeline, that series of events, those possible probable realities.

There's no shame in clarity.  The patient can take the medicine, the citizen can take the actual story, the good citizen will sift through the garbage anyway, there is always some truth, dumpster diving can yield some dinner before it hits the landfill.  The things folks will trash!  Throw it all away, out of sight, out of mind, discard liberally, waste.  Because no waste is really wasted in the end, bugs have to eat too.