DB: Let’s talk a little about the mass media in the US. You write that “thanks to America’s ‘free press’ sadly, most Americans know very little” about the US government’s foreign policy.
AR: Yes, it’s a strangely insular place, America. When you live outside it, and you come here, it’s almost shocking how insular it is. And how puzzled people are – and how curious, now I realise, about what other people think, because it’s just been blocked out. Before I came here, I remember thinking that when I write about dams or nuclear bombs in India, I’m quite aware that the elite in India don’t want to know about dams. They don’t want to know about how many people have been displaced, what cruelties have been perpetrated for their own air conditioners and electricity. Because then the ultimate privilege of the elite is not just their deluxe lifestyles , but deluxe lifestyles with a clear conscience. And I felt that that was the case here too, that maybe people don’t want to know about Iraq, or Latin America, or Palestine, or East Timor, or Vietnam, or anything, so that they can live this happy suburban life. But then I thought about it. Supposing you’re a plumber in Milwaukee or an electrician in Denver. You just go to work, come home, you work really hard, and then you read the paper or watch CNN or Fox News and you go to bed. You don’t know what the American government is up to. And ordinary people are maybe too tired to make the effort, to go out & really find out. So they live in this little bubble of lots of advertisements & no information.
Taken from The Chequebook & the Cruise-Missile by Arundhati Roy
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