Pit | Us and Them: Part Four
In Part Four of Us and Them, Shahid Bolsen makes one thing absolutely clear before going further: when he says "them," he means everyone in Western society. Not just the elites. Not just those in power. Not just white people. Everyone. Rich, poor, black, white, brown — everyone submerged in that culture has been shaped by it, and no one gets to claim exemption by pointing to their position in the hierarchy. Then Bolsen turns to the mechanism. Six corporations control approximately ninety percent of what three hundred million people consume as information. In 1983 it was fifty. The education system installs the mythology from birth — Johnny Appleseed was a land speculator; the founding fathers were slaveholders writing declarations of freedom; every atrocity is an anomaly until the anomalies become the unbroken pattern. This is not metaphor. This is not rhetoric. This is a deliberate, inter-generational, institutionally enforced project to produce human beings incapable of thinking outside a pre-approved set of conclusions. You know your history is a lie. What you haven't reckoned with is what that means — that your cultural genetics are what they are, and no amount of Disneyfication changes what will reproduce. You have been catfished by your entire civilization. You were looking at a picture of White Jesus and thought it was a mirror.
In Part Four of Us and Them, Shahid Bolsen makes one thing absolutely clear before going further: when he says "them," he means everyone in Western society. Not just the elites. Not just those in power. Not just white people. Everyone. Rich, poor, black, white, brown — everyone submerged in that culture has been shaped by it, and no one gets to claim exemption by pointing to their position in the hierarchy. Then Bolsen turns to the mechanism. Six corporations control approximately ninety percent of what three hundred million people consume as information. In 1983 it was fifty. The education system installs the mythology from birth — Johnny Appleseed was a land speculator; the founding fathers were slaveholders writing declarations of freedom; every atrocity is an anomaly until the anomalies become the unbroken pattern. This is not metaphor. This is not rhetoric. This is a deliberate, inter-generational, institutionally enforced project to produce human beings incapable of thinking outside a pre-approved set of conclusions. You know your history is a lie. What you haven't reckoned with is what that means — that your cultural genetics are what they are, and no amount of Disneyfication changes what will reproduce. You have been catfished by your entire civilization. You were looking at a picture of White Jesus and thought it was a mirror.