Thoughts on Militant Ignorance

Most people close to me and people not so close do not want me to talk about “political” issues. It is considered impolite and rude to express yourself in that area. I can talk about cars, lawns, kids, and so on but politics even more than religion is not something you can discuss. Why? Because most Americans of all social classes and almost all political viewpoints do not know how to conduct a discussion or have a rational argument. But even more to the point the information on which political arguments are based are based on an increasingly false Narrative out of the mainstream news outlets who are now fully transformed as official State propaganda outlets. The media is, collectively, the virtual Ministry of Truth. Their “reporting” comes straight out of the permanent war state. Reporters today never check any statement made by the U.S. government for truth—if the CIA says Assad used chemical weapons then he did—no reason to check. If the CIA says Russians hacked the U.S. elections then they did it—no reason to check facts—it is enough that the government said it.

The only real discussion we should have is that the information we receive from the media does not follow the very standards the media gives us. When you check facts you cannot go to the Washington Post who evaluate the truth claims—because their criteria for truth claims because they are part of the political wrangling within the Washington swamp. Their senior editors are and have been since the 1950s political operatives for various interests—certainly the CIA, certainly the arms industry. You cannot go to Snopes for “the truth” because they to are an organ for the permanent government aka “The Deep State”, “The National Security State” and so on. I’m not saying these organs are always wrong just not reliable.

The only possible way to arrive at the truth of any situation is to observe various news outlets, commentators, and reporters over time. Who reports accurately and who has been proven wrong? Seems logical, yet the vast majority of liberals actually take what the read in the NY Times as Gospels Truth when the evidence, over the years, is that they are almost always wrong in their reporting of facts when it comes to national security policy and war. The NY Times as an organization has backed every single military action the U.S. has ever undertaken as have most of the media. NPR, the other sacred liberal outlet has a similar record and has earned its nickname of “National Pentagon Radio.”

Still, checking sources of information may seem obvious but most people don’t operate that way. The reason why liberals trust the NY Times, NPR, and MSNBC is the same as why conservatives trust Fox News and The National Review. Human beings are mainly social beings no individuals. They tend to need to identify with a group of some kind. To belong to a group there has to be a common narrative for that group an intellectual framework that give meaning to the group and the individual within that group. This is not an option for people—it is real. That intellectual framework I call a “mythological framework” because people identify not with some scientifically arrived at truth but with stories that provide a structure for thinking about life and meaning which is myth. This is why the media, during the early part of the Iraq War, if you recall, glorified the story Jessica Lynch which was, in fact, a complete fabrication (one of many around that war). Bottom line you are fool and a chump if you believe anything the mainstream delivers to you without carefully checking it out.

The other part of the problem of not wanting to talk about politics or really anything of importance in social setting lest we “upset” anyone is the “Xanification” of American culture that has been steadily progressing. It marries three tendencies that have always been present in American culture.

First, is that the U.S. as a culture tends to dislike intellectuals and intellectual inquiry because it believes that intellectuals use knowledge to “put down” ordinary people. Knowledge is seen as a way to achieve status as a kind of cheat—that is, the only valid status determinant is and ought to be wealth. In many popular movies villains are often presented as hyper intelligent while heroes are seen as ordinary guys of incredible courage and “common sense” who always mindlessly and irrationally function on sheer intuition and shoot first and ask questions later. Personally, I have been continually and consistently condemned socially by people for being “arrogant” or a “know-it-all” and “talking down” to others. The assumption here is that if I know more about, say, sociology or biology that by attempting to share my knowledge with others I am insulting them. The idea is that the only reason I am doing that is to enhance my social status at the expense of others. The only exceptions to this rule is if you are talking about children (if you are a woman) or cars and sports if (if you are a guy) that’s OK to show off knowledge in those areas as long as you don’t, if you’re a woman, go off into social science or if you’re a man go off on the physics as it relates to high performance cars. One must always pitch conversation to the lowest common denominator.

Second, Americans are increasingly becoming obsessed with “escape” whether it is TV or gaming or cruising the internet on the one hand, or drug or sex addiction on the other hand. The desire to escape is a key element of most people’s lives. First, of course, escapism relieves the tension of living in a multi-cultural society where social tension rides high since you have to be so aware than spontaneous speech can be offensive to others even close friends are easily insulted. In addition, there are all the unresolved psychic ills that stem from past abuse suffered as children, the confusing and contradictory moral messages, the insanity in the news, the constant manipulation by the media through fake-news and endless advertising to buy usually useless products and just the sheer mass of information you should probably look into but are too psychically exhausted to evaluate. So you batten down the hatchets focus on work and family and try to not think too much.

Third, we Americans are usually focused on the surface of life and try to put a smiley face on everything. This can be a good thing—after all, “positive thinking” is a unique cultural contribution of America. The problem comes when we ignore reality and live only on the surface of life. To go deep may mean looking into the mirror and looking closely at our tendencies to avoid any possibility of cognitive dissonance. A positive demeanor is a survival tool to maintain confidence despite appearances. This is the theme of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. Another part of this tendency that brings us problem is that it also makes us very easy marks for swindlers and swindles. Living on the surface makes it hard to see deeply into others.

So those who wish to take advantage of the public have a fairly easy job convincing that public of the most absurd and clearly false ideas imaginable. Whether it is a fraudulent product, service, or government propaganda Americans tend to believe in it blindly if it hits the right “notes” in terms of American mythology. For example, American will tend to favor war only if the government can either make them believe the country was attacked (often through fraud) or, like the lead up to the first Iraq War making up a story about Iraqi soldiers bayoneting babies in incubators. The fraud stretches back to the Spanish American War through to WWI and false stories of German atrocities to Pearl Harbor, the Vietnam War and the Gulf of Tonkin incident and, of course, 9/11.

The incredibly simple idea of following the money and finding out who benefits from this or that government policy is rarely even thought about so that obviously ridiculous stories like Assad’s gas attacks are believed without any evidence and, most strikingly, the fact Assad having already won his battle and just about won the whole civil war in Syria suddenly would use gas to invite foreign intervention. As I write this this absurd idea is taken as clear establish fact by the mainstream media again with no evidence supporting that notion and much evidence pointing in other directions. But this story is possible because 1) anti-intellectualism and contempt for logic, reason and science; 2) escapism, not wanting to face the unpleasant truths of American policies; and 3) accepting surface explanation without delving into motivations, finding out who benefits just accepting, on faith, that the American media provide us with the truth because we are the “good guys” and everyone who disagrees with us are the “bad guys” not for any reason but just because America is a America.