Reply #16: I've been thinking about it.

[PDJane]

I really do think that the answer isn't that Americans are lazy or stupid or indifferent.

I think the word I'm really searching for is brainwashed...and in an odd way, naive. The history books, the news, everything about the public discourse appears to be a total lie. Somewhere in there, add a tendency to acquiesce to authority; it seems to me that there's a complete desire for order and a tolerance for the kinds of daily insults that make up that order. That doesn't, necessarily, translate into a desire for law, which to me seems totally contradictory. And yes, I do think that the framework for fascism is either in its last stages or is fully in place.

People do tend to turn their face away from things that conflict with their pre-conceptions; that's human. However, Americans have taken it to an art form. If I look at the 9/11 tapes, for instance, I see something that looks like a controlled demolition. I hear the people in the towers talking about 'explosions' and I have more evidence for that scene. Americans listen to their government talk about 'arabs' and they become islamophobes instead of questioning the official story. President Kennedy gets shot, and there's a magic bullet theory...which would immediately alarm me, but it gets accepted, at least officially. It amazes me, and leaves me wondering if the whole thing is because no one wants the house of cards to fall down, so that they have to admit that the entire history is a myth? Or is it something deeper, something more child-like, that doesn't want to admit that the authority figures are completely insane? Is it the knowledge that the government has a whole bunch of weapons that could be turned on its own populace, and could really endanger that illusory safety? Is the desire to be safe so all-encompassing that anyone and everyone is the enemy, especially anyone who isn't the same 'kind' of person? It amazes me.

I haven't got an answer, and if someone has some credible ones, I'd like to hear them.