Necessary Harshness

Things about our society that are summed up best with some cold, hard truth.

Commercialism & Capitalism:

-From the Cracked article The 5 Stupidest Lies Advertisers Expect You to Believe:

...Halloween is probably the worst time of year for it, though. Every local commercial is some dumbass auto dealership owner stuttering out monotone puns like "ghouls and boys." Or a furniture store with idiots in generic costumes, dancing around while the narrator tells you about their "spooktacular" savings... 

-From the Ezinearticles.com article The Truth About Capitalism:

 ...As students, we were brought up to believe the United States was a "Democracy." That we were supposedly a "pluralistic society" or (a belief in power). We were taught the "working class" had a say-so in elections and that power was widely distributed. This, however, is a myth. The fact is, power is held by only a few (an oligarchy). The elites in this oligarchy hold the power in big business and government offices and are not for the interest of the common people or "working class" whether it be health care, a good education, enough to eat, affordable housing etc...these elites or "owning class" are out for profit and will use the "working class" by paying low wages, outsourcing, cutting benefits, anything to make profits soar....

...These elites are not necessarily the rich alone. It is made up of what C.W. Mills coined the "Military-Industrial Complex" where there are three different groups of cooperating elites:
The Corporate or Business Elites - Which comprise of rich people with connections to corporations, CEOs, stockholders, people with big salaries. People like Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Nike founder Phil Knight.
Next are the Political Elites - President, Congress, Senators, Speaker of the House and Governors (who decide what government does on a more local basis).
Then there are the Military Elites - Joint Chiefs of Staff, Generals, and Heads of Services, basically, the "Brass of the Military".
All of these elites are connected to one another. The corporate elites lobby for the political elites to gain clout, change or make forced government decisions through lobbying and giving large amounts of money to political parties. And the military elites cooperate with corporate and political elites to gain prestige and hopefully be gainfully employed or somehow very well compensated once their term in the military is up. They sometimes act as spokesmen for corporate elites and/or gain seats in government administrations...

 
Literature:

-From the article 4 Famous Authors and Their Hip-Hop Equivalents:

...There's no point to this article. I'm not saying that writers are dead and rappers are running the literary world. I'm not trying to objectively argue that hip-hop is the new, like, "books," or whatever. There's no profound statement, here. Sometimes, if you spend enough time in libraries listening to rap music on your iPod, you notice a bunch of strange similarities, and even though you know these connections are just utterly meaningless coincidences and nothing more; you still want to share them with somebody. But of course there's no grand cosmic reason that several prominent American authors have bizarrely specific parallels in American hip-hop ...

... Unless there totally is...

Paparazzi:

-From the CNN.com article Why Paparazzi Are Wrong:

...They're totally out of control. It is crazy to have packs of people, whose full-time, quote, job, is to get the most embarrassing photo they can of a celebrity. How would you like to have a camera two inches away from your face, where the ... the stalkerazzi is daring you to push ... be pushed away? ...
Somebody's going to get seriously injured or killed in a car accident unless something is done about these car chases. That is the single worst thing about the abuse of these stalkerazzis, and it's got to stop. Can you imagine driving up or down the Hollywood Hills and having a team of ... desperate lunatics, one behind you, one in front of you, who are cutting you off purposely, playing chicken on the Hollywood Hills? It's dangerous. ...
Lindsay Lohan almost did get killed by some lunatic that purposely rammed her car. I mean, what kind of behavior is that?...

Medicine:

-From the Menshealth.com article The Truth About Prescription Drugs:

“Most people don’t realize that to garner FDA approval, a drug company only has to show the medication is better than nothing and the benefit outweighs harm,” says study co-author, Steven Woloshin, M.D., Professor of Medicine, Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice. “The initial studies are also often conducted over a short period of time—usually 6 months.”
Take, for example, the sleep aid Lunesta. While it’s been proven to help people fall asleep faster than if they’d taken a placebo, it only helped folks snooze 15 minutes faster, Dr. Woloshin says. Yep. And those who took the drug experienced side effects, like feeling drowsier the next day.

-From the Rodalenews.com article The Truth About Prescription Drugs:

...How much do you think the prescription drugs you take help you? Chances are, you’re giving them too much credit. Most people assume medications work better than they do—and worse, the average person isn’t aware of a drug’s limited benefits—New Hampshire researchers recently found...