‘The conflict between corporations and activists is that of narcolepsy versus remembrance. The corporations have money, power, and influence. Our sole weapon is public outrage. Outrage blocked the Yaccan Dam, ousted Nixon and, in part, terminated the monstrosities in Vietnam. But outrage is unwieldy to manufacture and handle. First, you need scrutiny; second, widespread awareness; only when this reaches a critical mass does public outrage explode into being. Any stage may be sabotaged. The wold’s Alberto Grimaldis can fight scrutiny by burying truth in committees, dullness and misinformation, or by intimidating the scrutinizers. They can extinguish awareness by blinkering education, owning TV stations, paying “guest fees” to leader writers or just buying the media up. The media — and not just the Washington Post — is where democracies fight their civil wars.’

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David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

These are the words of Hester Van Zandt, an activist in the book. Reading it reminded me of the Matt Taibbi piece in Rolling Stone about the blantant corruption and the massive cover-up accompanying the Foreclosure Settlement (see While Wronged Homeowners Got 300 Apiece in Foreclosure Settlement, Consultants Who Helped Protect Banks Got 2 Billion - Matt Taibbi), and the news about the Koch Brothers buying up regional newspapers.

We are now in the postnormal, where our defining emotion will be a sense of resigned curiousity, that remembrance that Mitchell’s Van Zandt was getting at. The narcoleptic nostalgia of the postmodern is burning away in the heat of our growing outrage.