Because we Say so - Democratic Underground

Time for change

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Tue Apr-22-08 04:08 PM
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Because we Say so

Edited on Tue Apr-22-08 04:16 PM by Time for change

Anyone who has been raised in an authoritarian household is quite familiar with the phrase “Because I say so”. It is the ultimate way to cut off a conversation, as it leaves no room for argument.

In a democracy, the leader of the nation can’t say “Because I say so”, because it would sound childish and too authoritarian for a democracy. But there are other, more subtle ways to accomplish the same effect. By encouraging certain assumptions, a nation’s leaders effectively limit debate to such a narrow framework that it has almost exactly the same effect as saying “Because I say so”.

David Edwards, in an article titled “The Limits of the Possible”, explains how this kind of process turns a democracy into something less than a democracy:

Today we are living in a society that creates the powerful impression that barring a few issues of inequality and distribution of wealth, freedom has been more or less fully attained for the majority of people… As a result, the majority of us feel little urgent need to strive for freedom…

While it is true that we in the West have largely escaped the physical chains and violence of state control, these have been replaced by psychological chains which are, in many ways, even more effective if only because they are invisible and thus far more difficult to perceive. Because we are talking here about manipulation of thought…

Edwards goes on to list the types of thought manipulation that our leaders use on us, including the following:

 Misinformation and withholding of information
 Leading us to believe that “the search for truth is the business of ‘experts’”
 Presenting us with “the spectre of awesome enemies”
 Using scapegoats
 Encouraging us to “idolize some all-powerful father figure”
 Taking advantage of “our need to belong with the herd”

Many of these methods were on display in last Thursday night’s Democratic Presidential debate in Philadelphia, moderated by two puppets from ABC “News”. Let’s take a quick look at some examples:

The use of thought manipulation in the April 17th Democratic Presidential debate

In a recent post I discussed numerous ways in which two ABC stooges, George Stephanopoulos and Charlie Gibson, used the April 17th debate as an attempt to destroy Barack Obama’s candidacy and to push some of ABC’s favorite right wing talking points. Here are some examples of their attempt at manipulation of the American people.

Misinformation
Gibson repeatedly lectured Obama on the “fact” that raising capital gains taxes lowers government revenue, when in fact most economists believe that it does just the opposite. Gibson’s purpose in doing this was clearly to make Obama look ignorant for his promise to raise capital gains taxes, and perhaps more important, to misinform the American people on this subject.

Telling us that we should leave the search for truth up to the ‘experts’
Gibson asked Obama a question about the Iraq War which was really more of a dogmatic statement than it was a question. Basically, he was lecturing Obama that his plans to end the war are ill advised, and that as President he should do whatever his military commanders tell him to do:

If the military commanders in Iraq came to you on day one, and said, this kind of withdrawal would destabilize Iraq, it would set back all of the gains that we have made, no matter what, you're going to order those troops to come home? General Petraeus was in Washington. You both were there when he testified. Saying that the gains in Iraq are fragile and are reversible. Are you essentially saying: I know better than the military commanders here?

The question of whether or not to continue a war is not just a matter of military tactics and strategy. It has tremendous moral implications – implications that bear upon where we as a people want our nation to go and what we want it to be. Only in a military dictatorship do civilians unquestionably accept and act upon whatever the military tells them to do. Yet, here we have a high level representative of a major “news” network telling the American people that we should do exactly that.

Presenting us with the spectre of awesome enemies
The above noted statement by Gibson, which if acted upon could condemn us to continuing the Iraq War indefinitely, is predicated upon instilling the fear of so-called “Islamic Fascism” into the American people. Because of that fear we are expected to accept war against a nation that posed no threat to us when the war began and still poses no threat to us. No reasonable explanation for the war has ever been provided to us. Yet, based on fear alone, we are expected to accept the utter devastation of a sovereign country and their people (and our soldiers too), in our name, using our money.

Use of scapegoats
Given our current recession, 47 million Americans with no medical insurance, 3% of Americans facing foreclosures on their homes, unaffordable education costs, and increasing poverty levels, one might have thought that a Presidential debate hosted by a major news network would have included one or more questions on those subjects. Instead, we get a question directed at the one black candidate in the race, asking him how he would prevent wealthy black people from taking advantage of affirmative action programs.

The Iraq War as a prime example of thought manipulation taking advantage of herd mentality

Of all the types of thought manipulation used by those who hold power in our country, perhaps the most effective and sinister is that which takes advantage of “our need to belong with the herd”. This takes the form of teaching us from a young age to believe that our nation is intrinsically so morally pure that to question the motives of our leaders in matters pertaining to war is “unpatriotic” at best, and treasonous at worst. Unquestioning allegiance to our leaders is the very definition of “patriotism” in this view.

Noam Chomsky uses a straight forward, euphemism-free style to make this point in the starkest of terms, in his book, “What we Say Goes”:

The United States is an outlaw state, and it is accepted by the intellectual class here that it should be an outlaw state… There is no criticism of this… There is a huge debate about the invasion of Iraq, but no question about whether we have a justification to do it. Of course, we have the automatic justification to do it – because it’s us. We have a justification to do anything. In fact, if you look at the so-called debate about Iraq, it’s at approximately the level of a high school newspaper commenting on the local sports team. You don’t ask whether the team has a right to win, you just ask how they can win… The question of whether the United States has a right to win in Iraq is unthinkable.

If you doubt the accuracy of Chomsky’s statement, ask yourself how many U.S. politicians have questioned the morality of our invasion and occupation of Iraq. The only 2008 Presidential candidate who even mentioned this was Dennis Kucinich, when he had the courage to tell the American people that the motive for the Iraq War was (and is) to gain access to Iraqi oil. Even John Edwards, who I supported for President when it became evident that Kucinich had no chance, would not dare to question the motives of an American President. It’s ok to criticize the war and George Bush’s conduct of the war based on practical grounds. But to question it on moral grounds would be to cross a line that only a rare politician dares to cross. To do so would be to invite accusations of lacking “patriotism”, and it would be one of the greatest risks that a politician could take.

That raises an interesting and important question. Now that I support Obama for the Presidency, and given that he is all but certain to be the Democratic nominee, would I want him to be forthright in discussing the moral reasons why we should cease our occupation of Iraq? On the one hand, I hope to God that he really does have moral objections to it, and that he’s just holding them back for political reasons. But would I want him to take the political risk of voicing those objections, knowing that the consequence could very well be a McCain Presidency? The answer to that question of course depends on how great one believes the risk to be. At this time I judge it to be too great to be worth taking that risk. I hope Obama doesn’t do it – until he is elected.

The consequences of our lack of moral compass

The most direct consequence of our nation’s failure to ever question its motives or its morality is that we develop a view of our motives and actions that is greatly at odds with reality. Chomsky explains:

When you conquer somebody and suppress them, you have to have a reason. You can’t just say, “I’m a son of a bitch and I want to rob them.” You have to say it’s for their good, they deserve it, or they actually benefit from it. We’re helping them. That was the attitude of slave owners. Most of them didn’t say, “Look, I’m enslaving these people because I want easily exploitable, cheap labor for my own benefit.” They said, “We’re doing them a favor. They need it.”

Thus, the failure to question ourselves means that we have an extremely distorted view of ourselves. Arrogance breeds arrogance, which is accompanied by blindness.

And that means that, unless we somehow adopt a different attitude we will continue on this path until it destroys us, and world civilization along with us. Chomsky explains our predisposition that will lead to World War III unless we somehow develop the ability to look into our own eyes and see what we have become:

It entrenches the fundamental principle that we have a right to use violence anywhere we like and nobody has a right to deter it…The presupposition is that the United States owns the world. If that’s not the case, if you reject that, then you can’t debate whether Iran is interfering in Iraq… Only if you accept the assumption that the United States rules the world by right can you then ask whether someone else is interfering in a country that we invaded and occupied… One corollary is that the only thing that matters is the costs to us.

Conclusion

Only the morally blind could believe that our invasion and occupation of Iraq is morally justified. George Bush and Dick Cheney claim that we are doing it for the benefit of the Iraqi people. Any idiot could tell you that if we did it for their benefit we wouldn’t have killed 4% of their civilian population, made refugees out of 20%, left 90% of the remainder with a desire to see us leave, and devastated their infrastructure. And then our leaders act outraged over the fact that the Iraqis won’t cooperate with us “after all we’ve done for them”.

Therefore, it is evident that as a nation we have become morally blind. Our nation was founded upon the idea that all men are created equal and have an inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Most of our citizens claim to adhere to a religion that tells us to treat others as we would like to be treated and to love our neighbors. Yet, we behave as if we own the world, and that we have the right to do whatever we want to any of the world’s inhabitants in order to attain the mysterious purposes that our leaders say we need to attain – for whatever excuse they think they can get away with.

That is not to say that all, or even necessarily most Americans feel this way. Many are simply blissfully ignorant. Many others simply don’t have the capability for independent thought necessary to resist the barrage of thought manipulation that we’re subjected to. Still others use psychological denial to avoid facing truths that they can’t emotionally handle. And many others do in fact recognize the immorality of our nation’s imperial activities, but they feel powerless to do anything about it. How many fall into each of these categories? How would we know? Pollsters never ask questions that address these issues. They simply ask whether we are for against the war, without daring to address the reasons for being against it. These issues are never discussed by our national corporate news media. David Edwards sums up this mystery in the last paragraph of his article:

In short, we can be manipulated in any number of subtle ways… The consequence of this is that it is not enough simply to succeed in unearthing the facts about, say, our government's complicity in human rights atrocities abroad, because fundamental areas of our belief system may have been subject to the same influences which made the recovery of those facts so difficult. We may have gained the facts, but not the belief that is up to us to do anything about them; either because we are not "experts', or because truth, compassion and understanding seem a side issue and even a hindrance in our lives… The world is full of examples of individuals who have glimpsed the horror of what is being done in their name in the Third World, or who have collided with the limits of justice and freedom in their own lives, but have turned away for exactly this reason.

What is the answer to our way out of this situation – which will destroy the world if not reversed? I can’t answer that. But I do like what Chomsky had to say about this on the last page of his book, as at least a partial answer:

I don’t think it’s even a question of taking risks. It’s a matter of being decent. Love of people? Yes, of course, or at least commitment to them and their needs.