In Chattanooga, learning to love
During weeks like this, I’m glad we don’t have cable. I don’t think I could take the endless headline news stomping around, filling up our space with its vibrato. Especially right now, after Mohammad Youssuf Abdulazeez killed five people. I live in Chattanooga, so I imagine CNN is full of clips with strip malls that I pass.
The pictures of shattered glass, bullet holes, and uniformed men are designed to make people fear. It is the easiest sort of market manipulation. When we are afraid, we feel out of control. But we understand that knowledge is power, so we keep watching, hungry for more details. We want to make sense of it all. So we keep looking at the same scenes over and over, like a puzzle that we cannot solve.
When we watch, the ratings go up. With more viewers, stations can demand more money for advertising. Making money is not a bad thing in itself. The news networks are doing their job. In fact, a lot of things depend on our fear. When our nation is in fear, we pay our taxes and keep our military in place.
