Know Jack #461 Need to Know

Massive Government Cover Up.  Here’s what you need to know. You’ve seen “news” stories that begin that way. My question is how does MSNBC et al, know what information I require? In my military days “need to know” was a device to withhold information from those not directly involved. I don’t think that changed when the media took up the motto.

So, what is the mass media withholding when they talk about my need to know? Current events seem to indicate the answer to that question is: almost everything. At least, almost everything needed to form an opinion that is different from the writer’s.

Need to know worked well in the military and even in the hospitals where I worked. That’s because, by and large, my job was to use my knowledge and skills to carry out the wishes of my employer.

I run into trouble with the concept when the context shifts to the government and individual rights. Contrary to what officials, elected and unelected, believe, they are not the populace’s employer. They are our employees, stand-ins for those who sent them to represent electorate’s wishes.

The keystone of the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution written upon the principles of that document, is that all power is derived from “We the People”. I remember in the dark ages we had to be able to recite the preamble of the Constitution. For those not so blessed it goes like this:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

The people of the states sent men to confer. They wrote the present constitution. Then, they went home and tried to persuade the people where they lived to accept what they had written as law. Only after that was accomplished, and a Bill of Rights promised, did the Constitution take on the powers enumerated within it.

Take it from a writer of fiction, when someone tells you “this is what you need to know” there’s a world of information he’s not sharing with you. We writers call it backstory. We add it in bits (and never, never in total) so you can follow where we lead you and you get the only story we want to tell. Congresspersons, Senators, and their allies in the media do the same.