There is NO EXCUSE for American Ignorance

[Stand and Fight]

Over the last six years we have seen this country take a turn for the worst. Since the tragic events of September 11, 2001, the country has experienced a lost of many of its most valued civil liberties and traditions. We have seen the re-emergence of the imperial presidency that claims the right to subvert the law in the interest of national security. We have seen the national debate become bogged down in partisan bickering rather than what is best for America. Very often I have been given to wonder why Americans seem to be all too complacent in this fiasco. I have looked at the corporate media and whether or not it has played a part in serving up warm slices of propaganda to the masses…

Conversely, it is also one of those things that has been pondered by many; however, I have come to the conclusion that it is the not the media who is to blame for the state of the Republic. It is not the government of George W. Bush or a gaggle of “neo-conservatives” and/or “religious fundamentalist who have been chief in what seems to be plot to overthrow our traditions of liberty and freedom. Don’t get me wrong – there is no debating the fact that Bush and his cronies and the media are benefiting from the chaos that has taken hold. However, as controversial as this may be, the responsibility should be assigned to the perceived victims – the American people.

Some have asserted that the people are not to blame because they could not possibly learn everything they need to know due to time constraints. They have essentially asserted that there is so much to learn that it would take an investment of hours per day for someone to educate themselves. That argument is an aberration of what it means to participate in a free society and to be American. The reality is that there is plenty of time for the masses to educate themselves. Furthermore, there are ample contradictions in the nightly news and the words of our leaders that something is amiss, that something is terribly wrong with our system. While it should not take a Katrina level event or 9/11 to wake people up, the fact is that it’s all been right there in front of the collective faces of Americans for years. The question is, “Why have they ignored this reality?”

There’s an ugly truth that must be spoken about Americans. They are intellectually lazy and therefore seemingly devoid of critical thinking skills. It pains me to say this, as I ardently believe that America is still representative of the best hope for a truly free and open society. However, even a cursory viewing of the nightly television news – either network or cable – should be enough to cause any thinking individual to say, “Hey, that makes no damn sense whatsoever!” Scanning the newspapers of even the most conservative rags will give one pause to stop and think. Take for example the often cited Bush administration inference that Iraq had something to do with September 11, 2001. Allow me to digress by explaining as to why this woke me up to the truth.

I had my turn around in circumstances similar to that of the OP and sought out the truth while serving in the Army as an active duty NCO. Shortly after Bush was selected and then inaugurated as president, rumors began flying around – even BEFORE 9/11 – that we would be going to Iraq. However, these rumors were brought to bear while I was watching CNN in mid-2002 to early 2003 – a network that I had previously valued. I was struck when it was stated, despite well-known facts at the time, that Iraq had something to do with 9/11. It was already known by that time that Iraq had no formal ties to Al Quida or anything to do with 9/11. Of course, I begin to conduct my own research in Iraq’s purported weapons of mass destruction, and it wasn’t long before I figured out that there was no basis in the claim. (Coincidently I also found DU about this time, but would continue to lurk until late November 2004. We all know why I came out of lurking at that time.)

I have to reiterate that I was able to figure this out while serving as a full-time active duty service member in the Army for the love of God! All the pieces were there to be discovered even if one only watched the network and cable news shows briefly. It became alarmingly apparent that something was terribly wrong even though I was often gone on extended training exercises. I was in a combat MOS, so if I was able to seek the truth despite a high-operation tempo. It seems to me that the average American could very easily do the same – even without the Internet.

The fact of the matter is that Americans are more focused on the silliness of MTV, VH1, and cable and network news gossip. They are more focused on trivial "reality" television, who is sleeping with whom in Hollywood, petty materialistic pursuits, and trying to run from the ugly reality of life through living vicariously through pop shows. An assortment of other meaningless past-times serve to keep Americans locked in a self-imposed prison of the mind. There is no excuse. If Americans lose their way of life it will not be the fault of some silly-ass boogeyman called Osama bin Laden or a corrupt and deceitful Neo-Con named George W. Bush and a complacent media -- it will be because Americans chose to tune into fantasy and tune out of reality.

There is one quote that I think it aptly applies to what I am saying. "If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention."
In order for there to be a change the responsibility must be laid at the feet of the American people. At the founding of our country Thomas Jefferson and others believed that governments only rule "with the consent of the governed." Americans have abrogated their responsibilities by refusing to withdraw their consent from those who have usurped our way of life and government. Until Americans stand up and face the ugly truths and realities caused by their laziness and irresponsibility, this Republic will continue to languish and one day it will die.

[Stand and Fight]

1. Kick n/t

[PATRICK]

2. Tempting but

this does not explain the skew of those who are expert and "wise". The problem is widespread deflection.
An uneducated pebble can be deflected, a rocket improperly built of intentionally mis-targeted. it is easier to blame the small fry but to ignore the large scale failure all over the top leadership of the world in most fields of knowledge? Tradition, national interests, compartmentalizm, specialization, some assortment of breakdowns and change?

Liberals traditionally think that education and knowledge will transform society through the enlightened and liberated individual. religion thinks something along those lines except with a longer, sadder experience that some things are much stronger than that credo and the strength of truth, the value of knowledge. Kurt Vonnegut can say of celebs and authors that none of their correctness, commitment or knowledge was worth a damn. And it was available to the general public- lazy or not and especially available to the war planners and the institutional wonks working hard to keep Vietnam a going concern.

Traditionally the people try to protect their own at their own level and serve the blather about patriotism by stubbornly going about their business. Stopping them going about that business or upsetting their mindset is no more an aspect of laziness alone than trying to change the DLC or those Conservative rags one should supposedly see through. Another way of seeing this weakness of the proletariat is as the sole remaining strength left to it and they HAVE shown startling signs of persevering against the propaganda, forcing the Coup to keep stealing elections even as no one dares act on their stealing from the general coffers.

Humanity is to blame in a descending pyramid this time around, with less excuse from invincible ignorance for anyone but moreso for those weighed down at the bottom. Now comparing Americans to Euros for example remember what they are stuck with for all their past bloody experience. Conservative, deceitful managers who play against the truth more modestly and competently. That gives this sordid lack of quality leadership the appearance of savvy and sophistication when it simply is middle management for mega corporations who sometimes remember their duties to civil government- unlike our frauds. Our country is not simply lazy but afflicted because too comfortable a sitting target.

How about Spain? A military coup(as in Russia against Gorbachev) without shining PR attacks the government openly. Would the people have risen up as if it mattered they understood what it meant? It took the courageous refusal of the Spanish parliament and the King to make it go away(or Yeltsin mocking bullhorn and rifle). The scary state of affairs show the power of public knowledge APPEARS invisible, COULD be powerless and complicit and is easily MANIPULATED by the few on top one way or the other. When the evil is stupid and stood down(one out of two applies in the US) the general human condition can be ignored as AOK. When the few rescue them, all is well. When the few are fascist tyrants, the nation is diseased. It is all very much the same still, but increased knowledge makes a difference. The few can rally people if the cause is just, even if the media is skewed. The educated are TOO MANY to send to Siberia or assassinate or cow. It is not the same utopian vision as the liberal faith in education but it is making a difference in lives lost and longevity of evils.

While the North was almost losing the war through simple incompetence, most of the undrafted youth went about their sports and careers in such unreflective numbers as to make the war an issue in doubt and much longer. The frustrating lack of full commitment is a bitch to live through and never seems to instruct about human nature and society. And the South could have won with total mobilization and unstinting commitment. perhaps the people in their instinctive mob unthinking way knew it was more important to go about the business of simple living than engage in a contest of total annihilation.

In the modern age this strength of the people, better educated and informed, will not suffice against the greater evils that can be unleashed by the truly stupid idiots who force themselves to the top of imaginary pyramids. The stakes have been raised. Now we might have the untenable choice of total war from the bottom up or massacre policies from the top down. Where can the popular instinct to entrench survive now? The race to a better humanity crawls, events race, the issue is in doubt and the truth is frustrating and humiliating enough without pointing more fingers. Enough to try to get rid of the surface scum with too much deadly power.

And those who think themselves most in control of the deflection are the most self deceived. The corollary of this complaint is that there is a non-lazy elite who do better. It is larger than any of us and all will suffer and then we will see the true quality of national character, not in heroic citizenship or smart strategies, but in ordinary ways we missed for all the shouting.

[Stand and Fight]

7. "Expert" and "Wise" are Subjective terms.

Objectively even the most brilliant can be swayed by propaganda and intellectual laziness. The average American is neither expert or wise, but they've access to a pool of sources for information. If football, reality televsion, and shopping take precedence over a government that seeks ever increasing powers, then Americans are to blame because they CHOOSE to ignore the facts and to go on with their delusion.

[PATRICK]

13. They make less choice under more

peer group deception from topdown misinformation that the more active and committed people on top, including Democrats and non partisan advocates and advisers. To deny primacy to facts is easier than just being lazy or tricked. Amazing but true. And the words expert and wise are wisely bracketed. on the plantation is the slave as dumb as the master, in the same way? To blame? I think in the aggregate the people are less lazy despite being overworked in a stressed, broken social order, but relaxing in front of the TV news is physically setting a stage. Also the resistance of people to the abuse of PR when it goes to far or too long IS greater and education makes a broad though dissipated difference. Just not fast enough. And yes anyone who flunks the test of facts and crises elicits a lot of anger and blame which is why most Christians pray heartily not to be tested. America can be termed a civic horror show but is there enough here and there to save the day- someday? Just because IMHO I believe so doesn't mean I know the future.

We all know certain things instinctively besides the distasteful realization that football means more than war and peace and the death of one's pet emotionally more than child blown apart for Halliburton. We know to worry when Dems are put to the test. We know this mess is unsustainable and the dark side cannot get what it wants in the long run. We know the various particular blindnesses among all concerned, even, remarkably, our own. We know the people are turning against Bush and have always opposed the consequences of his true agenda but in a non active fog vulnerable perhaps to another manipulation or shock. We know the vast majority will not readily mobilize for one side or the other and that people who consider themselves activists still might give equal time to personal entertainment or the humdrum or enjoy facts of personal choice over the seeming demands of social crisis.

So whip away. In a way it is correct, maybe stimulating, prophetic, but try not to despair even in apparent defeat and shame. The bad guys are not that good, the facts available, the situation overextended, the momentum already swinging inexorably against the recently entrenched fraud. No, the worse thing that is still apparent is that the global situation in crisis will not necessarily be overcome with the single defeat of Bush and praise for those in no way personally responsible for his fall.

[LiberalAndProud]

3. Who's Alito?

: blank stare :

[PATRICK]

5. Of course when CNN scrolls

"Ailto" as it did recently some might get confused.

[Humor_In_Cuneiform]

19. Hehe

:rofl:

I think it's a side dish.

[Soloflecks]

4. Obviously there's something wrong with you.

Your domestication programming didn't take. Please go immediately to the nearest re-education facility.

Okay, kidding aside, what would you have us do? Storm the Capitol? In case you haven't noticed, our so-called representatives have not listened to the will of the people. And in line with your reasoning, they have no excuse. It's not like they couldn't read a few of our letters and e-mails, ya know.

[Stand and Fight]

6. I agree... to an extent.

The reality is that DU is not representative of the majority. Therefore, I don't expect DUers to do anything but join in discussion and maybe try to inform those they come in contact with. People here may be informed and engaged in the political process, but the majority of Americans are far from that. That is the problem. We -- that is, DUers -- may write letters and conduct campaigns, but do you unhonestly think that our much publicized efforts are not upset and offset by the site that cannot be named? Right. To paraphrase Newton, for every one of DU's actions there is an equal FReeper reaction.

[Soloflecks]

10. I hear ya on that.

And our educational system isn't geared to getting us to think. Call me conspiranoid, but I see a deliberate dumbing down of our populace in general. Plus all that catapulting of propaganda over the years has lulled many into believing anything the US does is A-okay and that we must be doing it for a good reason. There's a lot that's wrong, and I just cannot blame the unsuspecting citizens. They have no idea that the wool has been pulled over their eyes.

[Stand and Fight]

11. I guess I can agree on that...

But I don't necessarily feel they are blameless. Americans are just as complacent in this nonsense as the Germans were in Nazi Germany. Does that mean they should be tried right along with the crooks in a world court? No. But should more Americans intervene to stop the insanity? A resounding, yes.

[MadHound]

8. Yes, you were a full time, active duty NCO

Add in another part time job, a couple of kids who you have to raise, and try to have at least a little quality time with, and a spouse, who is also working, raising kids, etc, and you have the average American family. Stressed out, with very little free time and hardly no down time. The only way these people get their news is when they plop down in front of the television and turn it on, for the most a half hour, since that is all the time they have before little Johnny or Susy needs something with them.

And what do we have in the MSM? Six corporations that control 95% of it, half of whom have a direct, vested profit interest in this war. Thus, all they're going to do is pass on the spin and RW talking points. Hardly a good source for news, but that is all the time a lot of people have for perusing the news. The internet takes time, and even if they have the time, half of US households don't have access to the Internet, much less a computer. The radio? Again, spin and blather, even from that traditional bastion of quality journalism, NPR.

I agree that a great many Americans are intellectually lazy, but I just don't think you can easily discount the time constraints faced by a modern American family. We're a country running short on time and long on sleep deprivation. Given the choice, most Americans are willing to forego that hour needed to find out what's really going on, and instead use it to make up for the twelve hours of sleep the didn't get last week.

I think that this is a problem of many facets, and one not easily solved. Diversifying and breaking up media monopolization is one step. Paying a living wage to families so that they have more time is another. And the re-introduction of critical thinking skills to our education system is a third. To lay this soley at the feet of American laziness though is wrong, and gives a pass to many other problems that come into play with this question.

[Stand and Fight]

12. My feelings hold steady on this matter.

I was full-time in the Army, an NCO, enrolled in college full-time, served as a mentor at a local junior high, and also employed part-time at a mail center. Conversely, I was dating quite often, went out for misadventures with my buddies, and a majority of the time, married.

The time-constraints ARE an excuse. It doesn't take long to pick up a newspaper or catch the news. Most Americans are therefore intellectually lazy if they cannot squeeze in a few minutes to be informed. As a student of history, I cannot bring myself to make excuse for the Germans under Hitler, and I will not make excuses for Americans either.

Now I agree with you that this is a problem of many facets, but I think a large part of it is that Americans are not willing to face up to the responsibilities of having a thriving and free republic. They want all the benefits, but they don't want to do the work involved, and so they've had their authority usurped by the like of Fox News, CNN, AOL, Bush, the Neo-Cons, and many others.

You're right that a living wage would make a difference so that people have more leisure time, but time is not the issue as to why they are uninformed. Let's face it -- Eisenhower's program for the highways in this country would have meant nothing if Americans had not had the time for leisurely vacations.

As for your deduction regarding our education system, I wholeheartedly agree that it is also to blame.

However, American laziness is at the root of the problem. I found out that I could get my wife essential medicine for free not by merely lamenting the fact and DOING NOTHING, but by ACTIVELY seeking out a solution. Unless Americans actively seek out solutions, they are the ones to blame for ever worsening conditions in this country because they have to engage the politicians who SERVE us.

[MadHound]

14. Trouble is, picking up the newpaper or catching the news

Won't clue them in to what's really going on anymore. The newspapers and the MSM news are party of that 95% of the media conglomeration that I spoke of earlier. Sure, they can(and many do) pick up the local or regional paper. That just gives them the same old pap that they're seeing on television. If you want to find out what is really going on, you have to search it out, either on the internet or in a library, in the foreign papers or obscure ones. And again that takes time and resources that most Americans don't have.

If you have two kids that you've barely interacted with all week due to working two jobs, and you have a half hour to spare today, what are you going to spend that time on, your kids or on the 'net? Yeah, that's right, your kids.

Hell, most people are so pressed for time that they don't even realize that the MSM is a problem, or if they do, they just simply repeat the talking point that the picked up in passing, the myth of the liberal media.

I don't discount that Americans are intellectually lazy, there is plenty of evidence of that in our society. However I think that you are discounting just how pressed for time the average American household is, and how few resources there are out there to get real news. Going out on the internet is impossible for many Americans, at least getting there from their home. Almost half don't have internet access. Likewise with going down to the library, especially in rural areas, where libraries are miles and miles away, and very poorly stocked.

You can be intellectually alert and active all you want, but if you don't have the resources to follow through, you're screwed. And that is a problem that many people face today.

[PATRICK]

15. Laziness may be an opening

for the swindler or oppressor but the problem may be larger and at the same time overstated. I have veterans at work obviously formed by Nixonian opinion forming included in the military training. From there they are lead to the civilian sector espousing the same views and the same emotional triggers. Despite that, if self informed they add onto that better facts, often holding both incongruities simultaneously. Brainwashing doesn't cover this mess. Underneath the guy is decent and has values leaning on Conservatism and rugged individualism which in some ways contradicts military mindsets.

People going online, with a lot of experience here, waver when they confront the "mainstream" or return to the hypnotism of the tube. It is almost physically hard to know better much less keep acting on it against the flow. The frustration of trying to correct the skew deflection is more than discouraging when the deflection goes all the way to the top of the party and people who supposedly know better are conditioned by mixing it with the flow to fight it and get by simple laws of physics, caught up in it.

Reasons are not excuses and Americans have fewer than Germans who lost a generation of youth in a humiliating defeat then a weak scapegoat caretaker left wing government whose self deception and betrayals by the resurgent RW never taught them to survive, then a Depression on top of implacable war reparations. The Nazis had been in the military and were able to turn resentment against the loser military into a tool to gain the support of that institution. There were real physical powerful reasons, few having to do with too much leisure time or disinterest. the things triumphant here came later and in doses. The emotional response pro and con to Hitler grew until it didn't matter. Both worked in his favor. Here, in wartime, the inertia is apathetic and pathetic in comparison, on its face. The self defeat is so much denied that only the crazy RW is the most actively engaged in false blame and fear, because they rightly feel there is very little and very shallow support for 99% of what they are and do. The Dems follow the people's lead possibly because they also know that is true and don't want to risk losing the silenced majority through action.

So how did it come to this if not a total social breakdown in some vast aggregate that everyone participated in or was swept along with? The RW has proved to be very consistent, even if nuts and false, in its drive while the vast deflection of the nation never confronted it steadily in its entirety. They usurped a side of every argument wherever there was practicality, self interest or unwarranted trust involved and in America money makes its own persuasive argument. The failures of the decent have been legion, too vast to be termed simply lazy. Maybe spoiled is better word, but not just materially. Spoiled by peace and prosperity despite or because of huge disturbances and red flags like war, civil rights fights and simply disruptive progress itself. And being too humble and proud in all the wrong proportions to even be able to realize someone is conning and taking our wealth and power by lies.

Part of the mass deflection is to fight those we most contact in the crush of the tide, the froth bubbling onto the rocks. The general pattern overseas is to import our strange victimization process overseas by a tested imperial corporate model not completely abused in true ignorance to the point of complete backfire in complete denial. What works here is killing that pernicious influence overseas, rather slowly and incompletely too, but much more than here. What is inescapable is that the short term
gaffes of the RW abroad means long term defeat for their goals too easily obtained here- and here their victory will be proved in fact just as shallow.

The RW needs and cannot get long term solutions to the strengths American have but do not employ against them. Too many young men, too unemployed, too educated, too stressed now by those inescapably responsible in power. And they are not drafted- which would not help enough now, they would as likely destroy the conservative military culture sopping up the desired RW mindset. And they cannot be brought into the pyramid scam now- no room. And they are becoming as frustrated as the prosperous, educated young Saudis. Unemployment is a great radicalizer of those outside if those teeming youths have frustrated potential looking at selfish incompetence and oppression. It doesn't mean we will control or like the results which cannot make a perfect world as they undo this shining path to RW brain-dead, portfolio full nirvana. Thanks to Bush, the course correction can be made against the fullest exposure of their fraud and limits casting a light as it does unintentionally back on all history and forward to a true future.

Other nations may flatter themselves before this sorry grandiose spectacle, but the mirror is not flattering- only by present contrast.

[Ksec]

9. Lots of them are educated ignorant

They watch propaganda outlets like Fox and believe its the American way to allow ourselves to be abused by our leaders
ie Real patriots dont question bush,
only the terrorist Democrats do that..

[baby_mouse]

16. Then the cognitive base of that strategy must be teased out and removed.

I agree that the ignorance is wilful, representative of the hated opposition have come close on saying exactly that, many instances of open refusal to examine alternative sources of information can be found through word of mouth, taking the form: "I don't NEED to see it".

It is certainty that the American public desire, not change, not progress. This is not because they have any particular investment in the status quo but because alternative models of social construction have rarely been thoroughly explained to them, and American society being very competitive and in constant flux, and in a constant state of crisis since the 50s exacerbates percieved uncertainty which is then conflated with the rugged individualism mythos. This mythos hypersensitizes the American psyche to external efforts to engage it in more balanced relationships with itself and the world, it perceives these as control freakery and this brings any desire for positive, inclusive social change into disrepute, not on the merits or demerits of individual proposals but on their very perceieved challenging nature itself, attempts to persuade the beast to be at peace are rescanned as the exact opposite, attempts to pick a fight.

There is another problem, Americans are not trained to discpline their intellects and regard high intelligence as something almost alien to the human experience, regardless of the very large number of well-developed and highly productive super-intellects and their extraordinary and all-human-life enrichening effects throughout human history. An entirely ordinary consequence of having a well-developed intellect is subjecting not only external material but interal, subjective material to carfeul criticism, many Americans, left AND right live in a very strange world where they are half-surrounded by extraordinary people who keep thinking the wrong things, and yet despite these numerous examples of poor brain product make no attempt to check the produce of their own brain, assuming that it must work, and this assumption rests for the most part on nothing at all. Brains produce large volumes of information, substantial chunks of which are rubbish.

Criticism of bad produce has in other countries and times lead to logic, systems that have been derived partially from internal examination and partially from external observation, but never has any part of logic been achieved simply through suppression of emotion, which the larger part of the lesser educated American public appears to believe logic *IS*. Logic has rules which are routinely flouted in the American consciousness, which feels itself tremendously logical, primarily because it thinks A Lot about Stuff.

Criticism, particuarly public criticism of brain produce is at all times in discourse involving a large proportion of American participants instantly supposed to be predicated on secondary agendas. Rarely is criticism applied to a subject rebutted on the grounds it is made. The preferred method of avoiding embarassment, which is utterly paramount to these participants, is to shift the subject to something apparently passively related but not in fact actively pertinent, attack the critic on some unrelated topic, broadly classify the mode of the criticism and completely dismiss anything stated in that mode, or anything at all rather than treat the criticism as a necessary tool to hone the theory.

Science is concerned with an objective reality, and objective reality is of less interest to average Americans than internal fantasy. This is by no means a unique national trait, but it is the American Way to follow internalised fantasies, to follow ones dreams. Where the fantasy is actually applicable as an external strategy, such as in developing a new a business model or writing a movie, this is in many cases wildly successful as the imagination is much more flexible than the critical intellect and can skip outside systemic congestion and make new connections. But the imagination is not at all as successful as the critical intellect in handling crisis.

This reliance on the imagination to construct and avoidance of intelligent criticism to hone is a very deeply entrenched aspect of the American psyche. I think it unlikely to disappear within the next century.

Nations think far more but far more slowly than people.

Of course, I'm not talking about ALL Americans, here... :)

[Stand and Fight]

17. kick n/t

[omega minimo]

18. These may help

“WE MUST DISENTHRALL OURSELVES, AND THEN WE SHALL SAVE OUR COUNTRY.”

Al Gore
1-16-06

It is the pitiful state of our legislative branch which primarily explains the failure of our vaunted checks and balances to prevent the dangerous overreach by our Executive Branch which now threatens a radical transformation of the American system.

I call upon Democratic and Republican members of Congress today to uphold your oath of office and defend the Constitution. Stop going along to get along. Start acting like the independent and co-equal branch of government you're supposed to be.

But there is yet another Constitutional player whose pulse must be taken and whose role must be examined in order to understand the dangerous imbalance that has emerged with the efforts by the Executive Branch to dominate our constitutional system.
"We The People" are -- collectively -- still the key to the survival of America's democracy.
We -- as Lincoln put it, "even we here" -- must examine our own role as citizens in allowing and not preventing the shocking decay and degradation of our democracy.
Thomas Jefferson said: "An informed citizenry is the only true repository of the public will."

The revolutionary departure on which the idea of America was based was the audacious belief that people can govern themselves and responsibly exercise the ultimate authority in self-government. This insight proceeded inevitably from the bedrock principle articulated by the Enlightenment philosopher John Locke: "All just power is derived from the consent of the governed."

And it is "We the people" who must now find once again the ability we once had to play an integral role in saving our Constitution.

Lincoln's memorable call during the Civil War is applicable in a new way to our dilemma today: "We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country."



http://www.boingboing.net/2005/08/24/diy_bullshit_protect.html