America: Land of the Deluded and Home of the Moderately Insane

I’m not entirely sure where to begin on this, so I guess that I’ll just dive right into it.

America has lost its collective mind.

Having said that, let me be clear that I don’t like generalizations. For instance, when Michael Moore referred to Americans as the “stupidest” people on Earth, I didn’t like it. Not because I think that he’s wrong, necessarily, but because he’s not talking about Americans per se, but rather about the American public consciousness. So it’s more an imprecise generalization than an incorrect statement.

Having said THAT, let me be clear that I’m sticking with my generalization. Because I’m not talking about Americans here… I’m talking about America’s collective consciousness.

So what do I mean by that? Well, take for instance our gullibility. Again, I’m talking collectively. I’ve spoken before about how badly our bullshit detectors have been damaged from all of the spin and advertising over the last thirty years. Mine still functions pretty well, but I seem to have been born without the gene that makes us susceptible to advertising and spin. And no, my conservative loved ones, that is not a partisan statement. For instance, in our last general election here in Washington state, we had a democratic candidate for representative named Darcy Burner. Ms. Burner stated in a debate that I watched with my own four eyes that she “liked economics so much” that she “got a degree in it from Harvard”. Her opponent’s campaign discovered that she did not, in fact, get a degree in it (economics) from Harvard. She got a degree in computer sciences with a minor in economics. When I wrote to Ms. Burner’s campaign about this misrepresentation, her representative sent an e-mail to me saying that Ms. Burner had been “quite clear” about her education, and that her opponent was trying to spin the statement. Balderdash. She had been quite UNclear about her education and was now trying to spin it.

A perfect example of this is a quote that I heard today from Steve Moore, an editorial writer for the Wall Street Journal. Now bear in mind, please, that this is America’s preeminent economical publication. Mr. Moore stated that the policies of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s new deal led to the great depression in America. This set my bullshit detector off, so I took all of about a minute to do the following research: I entered “stock market crash great depression” into Google and discovered that the stock market crash that prompted the great depression was in 1929. I then entered “Franklin Delano Roosevelt inauguration” and discovered that FDR was inaugurated in 1933, four years later. We were already deep into the depression by the time FDR came into office. But how many Americans would just accept that statement at face value?

By the way, if you study logic and debate, you discover that this is called an “argument from expertise”. In other words, he’s an editorial writer for our economic paper of record, why not believe him on this economic statement? The problem is, of course, that he’s utterly wrong.

Here’s another example… show of hands… how many of you believe that Bill Clinton was guilty of any wrongdoing in the Whitewater affair? Personally, I know at least two or three people who do. And yet, the Clintons were absolved of any culpability for that not once… not twice… but THREE TIMES, the last time by Clinton-hater Kenneth Starr. So why do Americans still believe this?

Bill O’Reilly would have you believe that America is a moderately conservative country. When Jon Stewart challenged him on this, O’Reilly stated that Stewart simply had to leave New York City to discover moderately conservative America. Yes, once you get past the cities and the suburbs, Americans tend to be moderately to extremely conservative. The problem with this argument is that the majority of Americans reside in cities and suburbs. So that would make the MINORITY of Americans conservative moderates. (A quick side note: I, personally believe that the majority of Americans are either moderate conservatives or moderate liberals. I think that the extremes of either of those views represent minority views.)

So why do we still swallow this stuff wholesale? I think that it’s largely education and isolation. As you leave the cities and the suburbs, you get into areas where the people are less-educated and more isolated. Take, for instance, a boy who is raised in rural America. Maybe a high school education. No internet. Almost his entire experience of anything other than his little rural pocket of America is television. He makes his first trip to the city, and what is he confronted with? Strip clubs, sex shops and homeless people begging for money or food. He has a very negative impression of city life that he then takes home to his rural community. There are exceptions to this rule, of course. I have the good fortune of having been raised by a man who has an excellent bullshit detector despite having lived most of his life in rural America and is also a high school dropout.

I said all of that, mostly, so that I could say this.

Here is a quote from Paul Broun, republican representative from Georgia. “"It may sound a bit crazy and off base, but the thing is, he’s the one who proposed this national security force. I’m just trying to bring attention to the fact that we may — may not, I hope not — but we may have a problem with that type of philosophy of radical socialism or Marxism. That’s exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany and it’s exactly what the Soviet Union did. When he’s proposing to have a national security force that’s answering to him, that is as strong as the U.S. military, he’s showing me signs of being Marxist.” Of course, later, Broun said that he apologizes if anyone “took offense” at this statement. In other words, he’s not sorry for saying it, he’s sorry that we’re not bright enough to understand what he was trying to say.

The problem is that he said it. Have you ever seen a TV courtroom drama where someone says something on the stand and the judge directs the jury to disregard it? It’s impossible. You cannot un-hear something that you’ve already heard. And then, of course, Fox news, lapdog of the far right, took that statement and ran with it. So how many Americans now equate President Elect Barack Obama with Nazi Germany and communist Russia? Probably the same number of people who still sincerely believe that Obama is a socialist Muslim terrorist. Too many, in other words. Personally, I think that if you want to compare a presidency to Nazi Germany, you have to look back at the last eight years, and even that is an imprecise characterization at best.

Here’s what the response of sane, rational people would be… a mass call for Mr. Broun’s resignation. He’s obviously a badly deluded person with an extremely ideological viewpoint. Is that really the type of person that we need representing us?

Turn your bullshit detector on and think about it.

Peace.

Randal