Historic bill passes in the House: what have we learned about information?

Tonight, a history milestone in the continued politics of divisiveness has passed. In the House of Representatives, the Health Care Reform bill has passed. Next comes the Senate version.

The oponent sector wanted to preserve the status quo. We saw the various ploys used to discredit the proponents of change and reform. Misinformation and disinformation strategies were put in action. One of these ploys was the invocation (as in macabre--false rummor) of "death panels" that, according to the fiction of its proponents, would make decisions as to who would live or die as a result of the realocation of health care resources resulting from the passage of the bill. Another tactic used to discredit reform was the dissemination of propaganda that indicated that the passage of the reform bill would increase taxes and that its cost would be prohibitive as it would increase the national deficit astronomically and beyond recovery and belief.

The oponents of reform worked intensely and invested tons of money to defeat this bill. So, what can we learn from these various months of bitter debate and divisiveness?

I believe that we have learned that the forces with interest in maintaining the status quo are well funded and active, and will fight any attempt by anyone/anywhere to change it and make reforms.These forces will use marketing and propaganda, utilizing media to:

- disinform and misrepresent

- revise histoy

- discredit authority

- fabricate negative scenarios

In view of these circumstances, the public must remain well informed about the facts/issues. What are the facts? First, as part of the civic responsibility of a Democratic society, citizens and communities must remain well informed, or at least, maintain a basic interest and concern about the basic issues. We (in America) still have free access to public libraries where research can be conducted and where information professionals can be approached with questions whenever necessary. If the books or periodical/material is not immediately available there is interlibrary loan service to request these materials. We also have access (most libraries provide computer use free of charge, an free wireless access) to the Internet where we can conduct research and get properly informed about the facts. Information and analysis is our duty.

Posted via web from norwind's (beyond) posterous