The High Price of American Gullibility
- From: periodistalibre@xxxxxxx
- Date: 29 Jun 2006 18:32:25 -0700
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS*
*Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the
Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street
Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He
is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at:
paulcraigroberts@xxxxxxxxx
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What explains the gullibility of Americans, a gullibility that has
mired the US in disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and which
promises war with Iran, North Korea and a variety of other targets if
neoconservatives continue to have their way?
Part of the explanation is that millions of conservatives are thrilled
at the opportunity to display their patriotism and to show their
support for their country. Bush's rhetoric is perfectly designed to
appeal to this desire. "You are with us or against us" elicits a blind
and unquestioning response from people determined to wear their
patriotism on their sleeves. "You are with us or against us" vaccinates
Americans against factual reality and guarantees public acceptance of
administration propaganda.
Another part of the explanation is that emotional appeals have grown
the stronger as the ability of educated people to differentiate fact
from rhetoric declines. The Bush administration blamed 9/11 on foreign
intelligence failures; yet, the administration has convinced about half
of the public that mass surveillance of American citizens is the
solution!
Many Americans have turned a blind eye to the administration's illegal
and unconstitutional spying on the grounds that, as they themselves are
doing nothing wrong, they have nothing to fear. If this is the case,
why did our Founding Fathers bother to write the Constitution? If the
executive branch can be trusted not to abuse power, why did Congress
pass legislation establishing a panel of federal judges (ignored by the
Bush administration) to oversee surveillance? If President Bush can
decide that he can ignore statutory law, how does he differ from a
dictator? If Bush can determine law, what is the role of Congress and
the courts? If "national security" is a justification for elevating the
power of the executive, where is his incentive to find peaceful
solutions?
Emotional appeals to fear and to patriotism have led close to half of
the population to accept unaccountable government in the name of "the
war on terrorism." What a contradiction it is that so many Americans
have been convinced that safety lies in their sacrifice of their civil
liberties and accountable government.
If so many Americans cannot discern that they have acquiesced to
conditions from which tyranny can arise, how can they understand that
it is statistically impossible for the NSA's mass surveillance of
Americans to detect terrorists?
Floyd Rudmin, a professor at a Norwegian university, writing in
CounterPunch (May 24, 2006) applies the mathematics of conditional
probability, known as Bayes' Theorem, to demonstrate that the NSA's
surveillance cannot successfully detect terrorists unless both the
percentage of terrorists in the population and the accuracy rate of
their identification are far higher than they are. He correctly
concludes that "NSA's surveillance system is useless for finding
terrorists."
The surveillance is, however, useful for monitoring political
opposition and stymieing the activities of those who do not believe the
government's propaganda.
Another reason for the gullibility of Americans is their lack of
alternative information to government propaganda. The independence of
print and TV media disappeared in the media consolidations of the
1990s. Today a handful of large corporations own the traditional media.
The wealth of these corporations consists of broadcast licenses, which
the companies hold at the government's discretion.
Newspapers are run by corporate executives, whose eyes are on
advertising revenue and who shun contentious reporting. The result is
that the traditional media are essentially echo chambers for government
propaganda.
The Internet and the foreign news media accessible through the Internet
are the sources of alternative information. Many Americans have not
learned to use and to rely on the Internet for information.
Many Americans find the government's message much more reassuring than
the actual facts. The government's message is: "America is virtuous.
Virtuous America was attacked by evil terrorists. America is protecting
itself by going to war and overthrowing regimes that sponsor or give
shelter to terrorists, erecting in their place democracies loyal to
America."
Sugar-coated propaganda doesn't present Americans with the emotional
and mental stress associated with the hard facts.
In National Socialist Germany, by the time propaganda lost its grip,
Germans were in the hands of a police state. It was too late to take
corrective measures. Not even the military could correct the disastrous
policies of the executive. In the end, Germany was destroyed. Does a
similar fate await Americans?
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