Santa Clause

Aint Coming Home Tonight

An opinion editorial by Aleeza Kaplan and Cristina Melendez
Posted: May 5, 2015

ecall the moment you found out Santa Clause didnt exist.

How did you find out? How old were you? Did you tell your friends?
Well, I was 8 years old when my mom had let it slip that my
Christmas present from Santa was actually built by my father. I
remember feeling like my world, my reality, was a big fat lie. I
couldnt trust my parents anymore, first the Tooth Fairy and now
Santa Clause? The two people I had put my trust in had let me
down.
This is exactly what happened when Wiki Leaks was
launched in 2007 (WikiLeaks, 2011). Joseph Snowden, the founder,
was working for the United States government and had access to
private information that was being concealed from American
citizens (WikiLeaks, 2011). Snowden felt this was an injustice and
that citizens had a right to know. Therefore, he created a website
called Wiki Leaks which released all kinds of information that was
being hidden by the government.

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In both situations, there was an authority concealing truth

because they thought that this alternate reality was more pleasant to
believe. The problem with this theory is that at some point someone
was bound to discover the truth. Some way or another, I was going
to eventually find out that Santa Clause wasnt real. Just like
America was going to find out what was being hidden from them.
The question this raises is, why didnt the media outlets

It wasnt CNN, Fox News, or

inform the public about all these secrets? Why did it take one guy to

any American station that informed

expose the government? The answer to these questions is that the

America because the government

government censors the media. For example, the Obama

wanted to skew the perceptions of

administration recently tapped into the phone of the Chancellor of

citizens concerning their reputation.

Germany and this was discovered through a leak of documents from

the German magazine Der Spiegel (Sherwell, 2013). It wasnt CNN,
Fox News, or any American station that informed America because
the government wanted to skew the perceptions of citizens
concerning their reputation.

Perceptions shape actions. Lets break this down. Before I

found out my parents had lied, I would blindly do as I was told. If
they told me to eat my vegetables, I would. If they told me babies
were bought at Babies R Us, I wouldve believed them. However,
after I found out Santa Clause didnt come every Christmas, I began

to question their orders and their beliefs. This is what happened

before Wiki Leaks. People blindly trusted their government was
sharing the whole truth. But once secrets came out, the American
people began to doubt their intentions. Consequently, once there is
a breach of trust, people tend to look for answers among a series of
sources.

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The government is not going to stop censoring any time soon, the least we could do is get informed.
We can get informed by dissecting the facts from any given opinion. Next time youre watching your local
news, ask yourself, who is this coming from? Are they trying to get me to think a certain way? Or even worse,
are they trying to make me act a certain way? By asking these questions and looking for different sources, we
are able to destroy the medias ability to control us. Through this inquiry you wont waste gingerbread
cookies and milk on someone who will never come.