More on Truth

OK, here's a new paragraph. Does this sound fair and reasonable?

Moreover, when concerned people looked at inequality it seemed to be no temporary or accidental phenomenon. Inequality seemed to be deliberately maintained by those who profited from it. The powerful kept control of society in part by the use of crude physical violence but also, and more importantly, by control of information. John Stuart Mill had argued that the free flow of information and the interplay of rational argument would ensure that in the long-run the truth would emerge victorious over falsehood and superstition. On the contrary, in the 20th century people began to argue that what emerged as victorious in the marketplace of ideas were the ideas that had the backing of the moneyed classes. Wealth and not the objective worth of arguments determined what books were published and how many copies; what movies were produced and where they were distributed; etc. The world-picture painted by mass education, mass entertainment and mass communications seemed deliberately designed and controlled to justify existing inequalities. Wealth is the natural result of hard work. So the explanation of poverty is laziness. Thus, the rich deserve to be rich and poor deserve to be poor. This is the picture that the rich ensure is overwhelmingly reinforced in popular culture as being the truth. If the Enlightenment represented a new cosmopolitan faith, then the history of the 20th century represented a crisis of faith. Recognizing that the powerful manipulate ideas to protect their interests is enough to give truth a bad name. Thus, the most radical postmodern response is to reject the most central notion of the Enlightenment: truth itself.