Introduction
It's very difficult to step outside one's own experience to give an objective assessment of current times. Good histories don't really emerge until years after events, when enough information is still available about them combined with a better understanding of how they fit into the context of the world. For example, some left-wingers were ready for the Bush administration to bring on some radical new world order in which we all marched in chain gangs under the yoke of authoritarian corporatism. Also, some right-wingers were ready for President Obama to resurrect every idea in the Communist tradition and sadistically and systematically destroy the American economy by this point in his presidency. Time soothes these notions and reveals truth.
However, revisionist history is one of the more painful things for the student of history to deal with. For various reasons, the caretakers of historical knowledge decide to alter their insights into past realities to avail their conscience and draw false connections between the past and present. The Civil War is one of the prime examples of this revisionism that much of the time is based in an errant pursuit of "political correctness". In my experience in history classes, the Union side is always subtly taught as the morally and politically justified side in the war, just because of today's shifting views on the need for a larger central government and greater equality. At the time, however, nothing was this clear cut, and the North was as guilty as the South in fomenting the conflict. A good historian should try at all costs to avoid falling for the traditional "the winners write the history books" mentality.
Today and Yesterday
With that in mind about perspectives and history, how is our present cultural and social state different from the past? Nostalgia for the the mid-20th century could well be considered revisionism. Undoubtedly, every time period has its shortcomings. In the early 21st century, however, we have seen an unprecedented rise in globalization (or westernization) and cultural collision. As Fareed Zakaria talked about in The Post-American World, the fall of the USSR brough the United States into a unique position of unipolarity unrivaled since the height of the British Empire. American ideals and values have spread with every McDonald's and Starbucks that gets thrown up in a foreign country. Of course, there are other countries putting their unique imprint on this new globalism, as well as ones fighting for a larger piece of the pie. This has bred a sense of cultural superiority and apathy among many Americans that could come to harm us in the future. This is not the first time I'll make a comparison between the late Victorian era and today.
The engines of this mechanical West-driven globalism are powered primarily by economic influence. The collapse of Western banking and regulation systems notwithstanding, the average joe in a foreign country knows many of the same things Americans do about popular culture. A good example is American words that are copied in other languages, such as "los jeans" in Spanish meaning (ta da!) "jeans" in English. It takes huge economic engines to power this globalization process, so we have seen a rise in corporate multinationals. This is what makes the modern era distinctly different from the past.
Media Multinationals
Google is always a quick and easy resource for a blog, and I found this Columbia Journalism Review resource on major media companies. Time Warner, CBS, and Disney own an enormous share of the media market, sometimes nearly monopolizing appealing coverage of things like sports or news. This control allows these multinationals great control over what they report and the information they pass on. The average news-watcher won't know any better when ESPN comes to gobble up local sports reporting stations or something similar occurs.
Traditional media is not faring well either, as the Media Daily News reported in February:
"Traditional media's 26% drop will be from $141.3 billion in 2008 to $112.4 billion in 2013. That segment stretches from newspapers to TV to out-of-home."
This means that there is statistical proof that we will only continue to see the rise of larger media congolmerates with the sustained decline of traditional information services. Here is yet another change evident in today's world.
The Gilded Age of Information
This control of information has reduced standards of accountability, especially in journalism. Many news anchors today (especially male ones) wear more makeup than credibility. CNN Headline News has become about as valuable as the magazine rack in the grocery store checkout line. ("Celeb Talk and Gossip = News!! OMG!") The best analysis I have heard on television of the reasons behind today's economic problems and the subprime mortgage crisis that touched it off came from the strongly Christian conservative "700 Club" anchor Gordon Robertson, not CNN, MSNBC, ABC, FOX, or any other network that claims news it its first priority.Instead, the media outlets look inwardly to the celebrities and tabloid material, making the death of Michael Jackson more important than any world event in several years and continually reporting on the unfolding drama from lawyer battles and manslaughter investigations instead of discussing the implications of significant world events outside of well-worn sound bites. Does this maybe again sound like the cultural decay of the late-Victorian, unipolar world of the Gilded Age British Empire?
Moreover, an idea that gets thrown around a lot is the declining sophistication of news reporting. This is also assuredly a sign of increased apathy among the run-of-the-mill news watchers. This is evidenced in everything from comic strips to presidential debates. Calvin and Hobbes cartoonist Bill Watterson said in 1995 that comic strip changes "have now gone so far as to take a serious toll on the art." The vice presidential debates between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden in 2008 had a grade-level reading average of 7.8 for Biden and 9.5 for Palin.
However, this average was skewed by sentences such as "What I would do, also, if that were ever to happen, though, is to continue the good work he is so committed to of putting government back on the side of the people and get rid of the greed and corruption on Wall Street and in Washington," and "The middle class under John McCain's tax proposal, 100 million families, middle-class families, households to be precise, they got not a single change; they got not a single break in taxes." Since these sentences technically registered highly on reading level, they dragged up both candidates' overall speech sophistication average. Meanwhile, the eloquent and understandable Gettysburg Address by Lincoln in 1863 registered an 11th grade reading average without any political mishmash. Overall it seems like there is a certain degree of dumbing down in the spread of information, still resonating with the apathy and cultural stagnation of the Gilded Age.
Opinions and Facts
Based largely on personal observation, many of the apathy-facilitating news outlets have consistently blurred the line between where they report on facts and when they give opinions. Gone are the paragons of television reporting like Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow who distinctly said things like "that's the way it is" when reporting facts, and carefully discerning their own opinions from these facts. It seems that many mainstream news sources today are concerned with only presenting opinions before carefully approaching known facts. This is another change in today's world.
Hope?
With the decline of local news sources, there are still some accessible news outlets that operate independently of the large, dumbing-down tendencies of the large media groups. However, some of these sources prefer radicalism and the preaching of disillusionment instead of actual progress.
The greatest hope I see for this kind of situation is Americans that wish to be informed is to diversify the news sources they read and to actively discern between rational fact and possibly irrational opinion. There still exist many credible news sources available, it's just slightly harder than plopping down on the couch and whipping out the universal remote.
With that in mind, I would like to believe it's possible to overcome the worrying changes evident in the presentation of mainstream information. Otherwise, it may take some cultural shock from the course of world events in the future to make many Americans come to terms with the insular attitudes that have begun to develop among them.
