"Americans have a desperate need to believe.We want to trust our government and leaders."

[JohnyCanuck]

The Exclamation Point at the End of the Story

By James Moore

Americans have a desperate need to believe. We want to trust our government and our leaders. Our default position is to accept without too much questioning the assertions of our presidents and the institutions of our government. Few of us are easily convinced yet today that America was involved in assassinations and the deposing of democratically-elected leaders of other nations, and as Hamas drops rockets into Israel and Israeli troops sweep through Gaza we conveniently ignore the incontrovertible fact that it was the policies of our outgoing president that put Hamas into power.

Our citizens are not big on context. When the Ayatollah Khomeini and his followers overthrew the U.S. puppet Shah Reza Pahlevi in 1979 and occupied the American embassy, we accepted the characterizations our leaders gave us that the Ayatollah was a madman. Perhaps, he was, but he was a madman of our own devise, whose foundational power grew from the CIA's overthrow of a democratically-elected leader in the early 1950s (link added by JC, not in original article), a man who was nationalizing energy company assets. The Shah became our boy, bought billions of dollars of our armaments, let us have his country's oil, tortured his opposition with U.S-trained forces, and was no real threat to Israel. High school history class, however, leaves out that part and the journalism that covered it, rare though it was, went largely ignored. The Ayatollah was a lunatic, our enemy, a threat to global peace, and that was all the American taxpayers needed to hear. Give us a bad guy so we can be good.

America's role as the unwavering good guy is a mythology that has sustained us but may ultimately be our ruin. We are not the knights of perpetual goodness on steeds of democratic glory saving the world from tyranny. Often, we have played the opposite role. Unfortunately, as the eight years of the Bush administration are coming to a close, we seem to still want to believe in our own righteousness, instead of scrutinizing our government's behavior in our name. The founders, of course, had a different construct in mind. The United States became a nation on the premise of the simple notion that there was nothing more patriotic than the act of questioning authority, and that is the only way it will survive as a country of free people.

Working people tend to turn to the media to handle this responsibility for our democracy. This is our mistake. There is, of course, as the wise man said, "no such thing as a free press unless you own one." America's media are generally owned by the corporate entities that have interests that do not serve the public. Consequently, when Brit Hume and Brian Williams and Wolf Blitzer intone their stenographic journalism based upon the White House's message of the day, we are all misled. Those who go further are shouted down or vilified as unpatriotic and ridiculed for not wearing flag pins on their lapels. Global conflict is reduced to the simplicity of a football game under the Friday Night Lights.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-moore/the-exclamation-point-at_b_155144.html

[el_bryanto]

1. I will say I don't think that's unique to Americans

But it does seem worse here in a lot of ways.

Bryant

[ShortnFiery]

2. With respect, it's time for the American People to NOT be fooled and WTFU from the M$M ether. eom

[JohnyCanuck]

3. "Family of Secrets," new book about the Bush family's shady background

The article in the OP goes on to mention a new book discussing the Bush family's questionable past and their behind the scenes influnce used to get a failure and incoherent, simple minded buffoon like Boy George into the Oval Office.

We cannot easily undo our failures as a democracy. We can, however, reduce the odds of repeating them, and the best place to start that process is by reading Russ Baker's epic new Family of Secrets. Baker is independent and unafraid, two characteristics needed for unfettered journalism, and he has been relentless in pursuing the damning details that other reporters have either misunderstood or ignored. Baker's investigation into the Bush family and its self-serving influence over American policy is profoundly disturbing and immediately important as the spinners try to reframe the disaster of George W. Bush's tenure in the White House. As an investigator and as a writer of compelling narrative, Baker has created, in my estimation, an almost unequaled standard in political reportage. He has refused to accept conventional wisdom regarding the Bush family and the failed son they made president. There is no way any reasonable person can reject what Baker reports.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-moore/the-exclamation-point-at_b_155144.html

From the book description at Amazon:

The long-hidden story of a family we thought we knew—and of a power-making apparatus that we have barely begun to comprehend.

After eight disastrous years, George W. Bush leaves office as one of the most unpopular presidents in American history. Russ Baker asks the question that lingers even as this benighted administration winds down: Who really wanted this man at the helm of the country, and why did his backers promote him despite his obvious liabilities and limitations? This book goes deep behind the scenes to deliver an arresting new look at George W. Bush, his father George H. W. Bush, their family, and the network of figures in intelligence, the military, finance, and oil who enabled the family’s rise to power. Baker’s exhaustive investigation reveals a remarkable clan whose hermetic secrecy and code of absolute loyalty have concealed a far-reaching role in recent history that transcends the Bush presidencies. Baker offers new insights into lingering mysteries—from the death of John F. Kennedy to Richard Nixon’s downfall in Watergate. Here, too, are insider accounts of the backroom strategizing, and outright deception, that resulted in George W. Bush’s electoral success. Throughout, Baker helps us understand why we have not known these things before. Family of Secrets combines compelling narrative with eye-opening revelations. It offers the untold history of the machinations that have shaped American politics over much of the last century.

http://www.amazon.com/Family-Secrets-Dynasty-Powerful-Influence/dp/1596915579/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1231140334&sr=8-1