Reply #15: They didn't know, because most of them do not scour the Net

[tblue37]

the way we do for information. They get what news they get from the MSM and, in some cases, their pastors. When I tell people about stuff they are amazed, because they have never heard of it.

For example, one college student said we had to go to war with Iraq because Saddam wouldn't let the inspectors in, and that's why we didn't know he had no WMDs. When I explained that the inspectors were in Iraq and had unfettered access, but that Bush forced them to leave so he could start bombing, because he was afraid that if he let them compelte their job he wouldn't have any excuse to invade, the boy was astonished. He had simply assumed that since the president said it, and the major network news programs showed video footage of him saying it--and without saying anything to contradict what he was claiming--then what the president said must be true. I sent him links to read about the truth, and he went out and voted a straight Democratic ticket as a result.

It is very difficult for people raised in our educational system, where US history is jingoistic exceptionalist myth-making rather than history, to wrap their minds around the possibility that their president will stand in front of the nation and tell such a bald lie, especially since if it is a lie, it would be so easily refuted. It also doesn't occur to them that the MSM might let such a bald lie slide, without even bothering to refute it, even when they have all sorts of video footage and print records to show it to be blatantly false.