Americans don’t believe the truth unless it’s proven to them beyond a shadow of a doubt over and over, and then with more evidence than anyone should need.
American Exceptionally Dumbism
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The Final Countdown" talk show on Radio Sputnik. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
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Americans are like master-adoring dogs, responding to presentation and tone of voice, and yet unable to make sense of the content of the master’s words, other than approval or disapproval.
But let them sense a non-master-worshiper’s presence and the the cute little puppy personae start snarling, showing their teeth, and barking in their feeble atrophied voices, still not able to discern for themselves the meaning of what they have just heard themselves say or repeat, or where they first heard it.
Victims all of the world’s finest educational and propaganda systems.
Yep, just think of Blondi or Wulf (her offspring) back in the 1940’s….
🙁
Ya! Negus and Stasi too.
The reason that The Big Lie works is that it’s just too … too … unbelievable that Our President would get thousands of Americans killed for no reason. It’s much less disturbing to believe the official story than it is to contemplate what a horrible thing it would be if it was a fabrication.
Look at the way we collectively turned away from Iran-Contra. “We don’t negotiate with terrorists” – we say so all the time, yet here we had a freaking state governor negotiating with terrorists! Was he negotiating to bring the hostages home? Oh, Hell no – he was negotiating for the terrorists to KEEP our people until he took office. Nice guy, huh?
Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq – (Cambodia, Laos, Pakistan …) All based on lies, all supported wholeheartedly by the MSM (on those rare occasions where they bother to report it at all) Thousands of Americans dead, MILLIONS of “other people” dead, and we’ve still got half the country asking, “Why do they hate us?”
Gore Vidal said it best–United States of Amnesia.
Or George Carlin –
“It’s called the American Dream because you have to be fast asleep to believe it”
Or maybe you prefer Ronald Reagan, denying the Iran-Contra Affair, November 1986 –
“In spite of the wildly speculative and false stories of arms for hostages and alleged ransom payments, we did not—repeat, did not—trade weapons or anything else for hostages, nor will we.”
Or maybe you prefer Ronald Reagan, admitting the Iran-Contra Affair, March 1987-
“A few months ago, I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that’s true, but the facts and evidence tell me it is not.”
Hard to believe/accept, but the international, illegal operations were run out of the basement of the White House. Ronnie’s stumblemumble excuses got him off the hook. The intelligence community learned much that is being applied today, only on a grander scale.
Or Gee Whiz Bush, when we went into Iraq, he sent a letter to congress explaining that the move was authorized by the bill to hunt down anybody related to 9/11.
Later on, caught with his pants down – he said, “I never said Saddam had anything to do with 9/11”
George Carlin got it right! And don’t think that the USA is the only country on earth where this pathetic phenomenon occurs. Wherever you have a mass of people who’s basic needs for water, food, shelter and entertainment are fairly well satisfied, you will find complacency And, most of these people, not wanting to seem completely ignorant, have there own personal gripes and issues that they will devote inordinate amounts thought and speech to – gas prices, changes in local and state policies and laws, etc. They have to be deprived of the basic necessities of life before they will respond much further, and even when they do, they will often not spend the small amount of time to learn what is driving or causing the problem, but instead adopt the latest news soundbites regarding it, or simply blame someone who really can’t do much about it. The constant barrage of propaganda and spin from the media – especially the Internet, just makes this worse, and numbs people to what is important, and what isn’t.
Eisenhower is supposed to have once expressed shock that 50% of all Americans had IQs below 100. (The joke being that IQ is normalized at 100, and by definition, half of all people have below 100, just like half have above 100.)
I argue that a new IQ scale be employed. Not on “emotional intelligence” (the soft science equivalent of “she’s got a great personality”) or any of the other huckster bullshit. My NewIQ(TM) system works like this.
You either have intelligence or do not.
If you believe in any sort of afterlife, you do not have intelligence.
If you believe that vaccines are dangerous, you do not have intelligence.
If you believe global warming does not exist, you do not have intelligence.
If you do not actively criticize presidents, governors, senators, mayors, police officers, all administration officials, etc., you do not have intelligence.
If you don’t read books — I don’t count Danielle Steel’s smearings as books, no one does — you do not have intelligence.
If you can’t do basic math, such as figuring out how much you’ll end up paying on a 12% mortgage for $400,000 paid over 30 years, you do not have intelligence.
If you can’t calculate a budget, you do not have intelligence.
Intelligence is not a scale. It’s an absolute. You either have it or you do not. So, Jesus saves and all that happy shit, but at the end of the day, there’s always gonna be three people standing around saying, “Well, if God IS all powerful, why doesn’t he give the priests money? Why do I have to give it to them and why don’t they have to pay taxes.”
Alas, in this respect people are all very much alike, all over the world. It’s that outsize military budget that allows people in the US to persist in, not to say worship, their ignorance, while being ripped off by the domestic powers that be….
Henri