Prison Industry Series

The Perpetual Prisoner Machine by Joel Dyer, 2000, Excerpts

The majority of Americans now base their worldview more on the mediated messages offered by television than upon their own firsthand observations. As a result, nearly 80 percent of the public now believes crime to be one of the biggest problems confronting America, despite the fact that most of us are safer now than we were in the 1970s.

The anxiety over crime that is driving a hard-on-crime direction is not based in reality. The war on crime is not rooted in rising crime rates but is rather the result of the rise in the public’s concern over crime, which has been wrought not by the criminals in the real world but by the images of the criminals who now break into our living rooms nightly through the window of television.

Distorted Crime Coverage

The news business makes a lot of money by increasing its ratings with sensationalized news coverage of violent crime. Sex- and violence- filled media offerings have become the second largest U.S. export in dollar amount. The majority of all television programs contain violence, much of it related to crime. The public’s belief in the “crime gap” is being inspired more by the quantity of our exposure to the images of crime in the media than by anything else.

Using violence to increase revenues in television and newspapers has been implemented across all media genres. Violent-crime coverage increases the number of viewers and readers for a TV station or newspaper. Ratings skyrocketed during the sensationalized Columbine barrage, and a single rating point can be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to a station. Sensational murders draw far more viewers/readers than the “usual” murder of a transient, a dope dealer, or a typical working stiff.

Based upon the chasm that now exists between what we believe about crime as a society and the facts regarding crime, America has entered into a new and dangerous age where communications technology has become more powerful than reality itself when it comes to shaping our attitudes and beliefs.

Societal Impact

There is a consensus in the scientific and public health fields that there are three primary harmful effects of viewing violence: [1] Learning aggressive attitudes and behaviors; [2] Emotional desensitization toward real world violence; and [3] Increased fear of being victimized by violence, resulting in self-protective behaviors and mistrust of others.

News and entertainment programming present a false image of the overall character and quantity of crime. In response to this constant and misleading crime message, the majority of Americans have been persuaded they are living in a much more dangerous and crime-infested world than they really are, and such an attitude is causing the nation to alter its behavior in a variety of ways.

Our growing fear – fear generated as a result of technologically experiencing crime on a daily basis –destroys the opportunity for justice by way of our endorsing hard-on-crime politics at the ballot box. Desiring to toughen the laws and increase the punishment for criminals is an understandable response for people living in a place where they witness dozens of heinous crimes every day – a place like, say, your living room, your den, or wherever you keep your television.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/books/04/27/ayn.rand.atlas.shrugged/index.html

27 Apr 09

Rand book sales are "going through the roof," said Yaron Brook, the president of the Ayn Rand Institute. According to Brook, "Atlas Shrugged," her most famous novel, has sold more copies in the first four months of 2009 than it did for all of 2008 -- and in 2008, it sold 200,000 copies. It's been in Amazon.com's top 50 for more than a month. Not bad for a 1,100-page doorstop of a book that came out in 1957, by an author who died in 1982.

"So many people see the parallels with actually what's going on, with the government taking over the banks, with the government kind of taking over the automobile industry, a president who fires the CEO of a major American corporation. These are the kind of things that come out of 'Atlas Shrugged,' " Brook said.

Even Hollywood is said to be interested, which is only fitting, since Rand was once a screenwriter. But developments have come in fits and starts. "Godfather" producer Albert S. Ruddy once wanted to make a film and talk of miniseries adaptations emerged in the '70s and '90s. In 2006, Angelina Jolie was said to have been signed to star as Rand's heroine, rail magnate Dagny Taggart, and names such as Russell Crowe and Brad Pitt have also been floated. However, as of early 2009, the status of the film remains unknown.

 Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, 1957

“Money is your means of survival. The verdict you pronounce upon your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life. If the source is corrupt, you have damned your own existence."

"To love money is to know and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men."

"Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not be consent, but by compulsion - when you see than in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing - when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors - when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you - when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice - you may know that your society is doomed. Money is so noble a medium that it does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot."

"Throughout men's history, money was always seized by looters of one brand or another, whose names changed, but whose method remained the same: to seize wealth by force and to keep the producers bound, demeaned, defamed, deprived of honor."

"To the glory of mankind, there was, for the first and only time in history, a country of money - and I have no higher, more reverent tribute to pay to America, for this means: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement."

During the 1950s and 1960s Alan Greenspan was a friend of author Ayn Rand and a proponent of her Objectivist philosophy, which among other things holds that reason, egoism and capitalism are the necessary cornerstones of a free and civilized society. He wrote articles for Objectivist newsletters, and contributed several essays for Rand's 1966 book Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal. In Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal, Greenspan wrote an essay strongly supporting the gold standard.

Money – Songs and Poems Selection

The Fear by Lily Allen

I want to be rich and I want lots of money
I don’t care about clever I don’t care about funny
I want loads of clothes and I want fuckloads of diamonds
I heard people die while they are trying to find them

And I’ll take my clothes off and it will be shameless
Cuz everyone knows that’s how you get famous
I’ll look at the sun and I’ll look in the mirror
I’m on the right track yeah I’m on to a winner

[Chorus]
I don’t know what’s right and what’s real anymore
I don’t know how I’m meant to feel anymore
When do you think it will all become clear?
‘Cuz I’m being taken over by The Fear

Life’s about film stars and less about mothers
It’s all about fast cars concussing each other
But it doesn’t matter cause I’m packing plastic
and that’s what makes my life so fucking fantastic

And I am a weapon of massive consumption
And its not my fault it’s how I’m programmed to function
I’ll look at the sun and I’ll look in the mirror
I’m on the right track yeah we're on to a winner

Chorus
I don’t know what’s right and what’s real anymore
I don’t know how I’m meant to feel anymore
When do you think it will all become clear?
‘Cuz I’m being taken over by The Fear

[Bridge]
Forget about guns and forget ammunition
Cause I’m killing them all on my own little mission
Now I’m not a saint but I’m not a sinner
Now everything's cool as long as I’m gettin thinner

[Chorus]
I don’t know what’s right and what’s real anymore
I don’t know how I’m meant to feel anymore
When do you think it will all become clear?
‘Cause I’m being taken over by fear