Because You Never Asked

THE DEMORALIZED ZONE  (DMZ)

            I was recently standing in line at a food store chatting with a friend when a lovely young woman, accompanied by her equally attractive younger sister, burst into our male consciousness. Being that the older sister knew my friend, she came over and introduced her sibling, such younger version being blond, pert, intelligent, and no less than a student at Harvard University (whatever happened to Smith . or was it Wellesley?). She was what my generation of collegians used to refer to as "cute", meaning we'd cross the Sahara Desert in a sand storm with only a bag of salted peanuts for the chance to get into her pants. In fact, she was cute enough to fall catatonically in love with in the hope of living happily ever after. As the rude experience of life has shown me, the catatonic love is much easier than the "happily ever after".

            So there I was, thirty years removed from that naive campus mentality, an experienced man who'd seen and done it all, thinking I'd cross the Sahara Desert in a sand storm . when my friend asked her what she was majoring in.

            "Public Relations" was the perky reply.

            Ooof! It was as if I'd just caught a solid body shot right in the gut.

            Perhaps one of the most lamentable aspects of Occidental culture is a growing tendency to muddle the difference between "truth" and "lie". What used to be a well-defined border clearly separating these eternally warring foes, has now become a disputed territory in a constant state of flux. This war has become so fatiguing in our overly competitive society --- where the "truth" has evolved into little more than a self-serving perversion for somebody's hustle --- that we've unconsciously set up a new kind of DMZ, or "Demoralized Zone", where the concepts "truth" and "lie" are simply not respected. It's a place where our consciences don't have to come into play and that annoying intruder called "guilt" is set aside. We don't explain it to ourselves in such a way, but we invent euphemisms like "advertising", "spin",  "marketing", and yes, "public relations", to deodorize behavior which is nothing more than what we now consider acceptable lying. If a Martian were to tap me on the shoulder and ask what "public relations" means, I'd say, "it is a calculated attempt to make some entity or person look better than it really is."

            Anything goes in the DMZ.

            I write this essay at the height of our political season, the elections of '96 being only weeks away. At this juncture in history, I find it easy to say that our electoral campaigns are fought almost exclusively within the "Demoralized Zone". The concepts "truth" and "lie" have been so obliterated that all we have left is a disorienting pea soup fog lacking any clarity whatsoever. As the incessant political ads bounce off each other like a long rally in a tennis match, those of us who still have enough optimism? naivety? foolishness? or just plain stubbornness to cast a vote, can only sit back and wonder if the English language can still be used to communicate information. Candidate Slick says something is white; candidate Sly says it is black, and they both go on to perfectly justify themselves and completely discredit their opponent. The difference between black and white, which we used to be very comfortable with, has now been put in doubt. The intellectual process now used to choose a candidate has been reduced almost exclusively to deciding on who is lying the least. We hardly even bother with who might be telling the truth; we don't believe anyone is.

            This year's electoral circus has made a celebrity out of a shady political strategist named Dick Morris. Morris was the chief "spin master" for the Clinton campaign when he was caught with an expensive erection and an inappropriate partner. Such an occurrence used to result in public disgrace, but nowadays, inside the DMZ, it means you can laugh it off and become a millionaire by writing a "tell all" book which nobody knows whether to believe or not.

            But Morris' escapade was perhaps not in vane. It helped us grunts outside the DMZ to understand the game a bit more.

            It seems that Morris was little more than a "hired gun" who'd worked for both liberal and conservative candidates with an equal amount of zeal and lack of scruples. As long as the pay was right, Morris didn't have any political convictions. If the Unabomber were running for office and the deal was finger lickin' juicy enough, he'd make him look like a visionary genius leading us all to salvation. This has left a bad after taste. Is this what we've come to?

            Should we really be surprised by this? Flip on the television. It won't be long before a "hired gun" of one sort or another will appear, giving their all for something they have absolutely no emotional attachment to, for something they probably know nothing about. Here's a well-groomed, attractive woman (ugly people are rarely permitted on TV commercials) passionately proclaiming the virtues of a pill for heartburn. Here's a sophisticated English gentleman preaching the fulfillment of your life's quest through the purchase of a certain luxury car. If we are not willing to call these people liars, we can at least admit they are showing a gross indifference for the truth.

            Dick Morris is everywhere and we've grown quite comfortable with it.

            It might be easy for someone reading this piece to say, "lighten up, c'mon, they're only commercials, how can you find so much evil in such familiar, average, acceptable behavior?" But that's just the point. We don't question these attitudes anymore. We've begun to consider infidelity to the truth as something normal. The concept "truth" has been so devalued that it is now a far cheaper commodity than "what we can make them believe", for which billions of dollars are spent every year. The "Demoralized Zone" is continuing to spread out and claim more territory. We might be approaching a future where it will absorb all the space that used to be occupied by "truth" or "lie", until there will only be the DMZ, which is another way to say "whatever you can get away with."

            Is that an emotionally healthy state of being?

Relevant Material:  "If things appear deformed and distorted, it's generally not because of books. It's more because of the movies, the press, the commercials on TV. Above all else, the latter! Who can now say for sure where information ends and where publicity begins (or vice versa)?" From the novel, "Regreso del Infierno" (Return From Hell), by the Spaniard, Jose Ferrater Mora.

 (The following quote makes reference to the "Chips" and the "Shops", which are fictional media companies similar to CNN and Fox.) "For two or three days, there were tense relations between the "Chips" and the "Shops", with an endless bombardment of editorials; finally --- and this is what they wanted --- the public didn't know what to believe."  From the classic satire, "La Princesa Durmiente Va a la Escuela" (Sleeping Beauty Goes to School), by the Spanish master, Gonzalo Torrente Ballester.     

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Email: JerryG@postcman.info