Talking to Ourselves
Americans Are Increasingly Close-Minded and Unwilling to Listen to Opposing Views.
As dumbness has been defined downward in American public life during the last two decades, one of the most important and frequently overlooked culprits is the public’s increasing reluctance to give a fair hearing — or any hearing at all — to opposing points of view.
A few years ago, I delivered a lecture at Eastern Kentucky University on the history of American secularism, and was pleased, in the heart of the Bible Belt, to have attracted an audience of about 150. The response inside the hall was enthusiastic because everyone there, with the exception of a few bored students whose professors had made attendance a requirement, agreed with me before I opened my mouth.
Around the corner, hundreds more students were packing an auditorium to hear a speaker sponsored by the Campus Crusade for Christ, a conservative organization that “counter-programs” secular lectures at many colleges. The star of the evening was a self-described recovering pedophile who claimed to have overcome his proclivities by being “born again.” (And yes, it is a blow to the ego to find oneself less of a draw than a penitent pedophile.)
It is safe to say that almost no one who attended either lecture on the Kentucky campus that night was exposed to a new or disturbing idea. Indeed, virtually everywhere I speak, 95% of the audience shares my political and cultural views — and serious conservatives report exactly the same experience on the lecture circuit.
Whether watching television news, consulting political blogs or (more rarely) reading books, Americans today have become a people in search of validation for opinions that they already hold. This absence of curiosity about other points of view is the essence of anti-intellectualism and represents a major departure from the nation’s best cultural traditions.
In the last quarter of the 19th century, Americans jammed lecture halls to hear Robert Green Ingersoll, known as “the Great Agnostic,” attack organized religion and question the existence of God. They did so not because they necessarily agreed with him but because they wanted to make up their own minds about what he had to say and see for themselves whether the devil really had horns.
Similarly, when Thomas Henry Huxley, the British naturalist who popularized Darwin’s theory of evolution, came to the U.S. in 1876, he spoke to standing-room-only audiences, even though many of his listeners were genuinely shocked by his views.
This spirit of inquiry, which demands firsthand evidence and does not trivialize opposing points of view, is essential to a society’s intellectual and political health.
Richard Hofstadter, in his classic 1963 work, “Anti-Intellectualism in American Life,” argued that among “the major virtues of liberal society in the past was that it made possible such a variety of styles of intellectual life — one can find men notable for being passionate and rebellious, for being elegant and sumptuous, or spare and astringent, clever and complex, patient and wise, and some equipped mainly to observe and endure. … It is possible, of course, that the avenues of choice are being closed and that the culture of the future will be dominated by single-minded men of one persuasion or another. It is possible; but insofar as the weight of one’s will is thrown onto the scales of history, one lives in the belief that it not be so.”
Hofstadter was of course using the word “liberal” with a small “l,” in the sense that the term had been used in the past — as a synonym for open-mindedness and concern for liberty of thought instead of as the right-wing political epithet it has become during the last 25 years.
When I recently spoke about the militant parochialism of American intellectual life on a radio talk show, a caller responded by telling me that there was nothing new about Americans preferring to bask in the reflected glow of their own opinions. Talk radio and political blogs, in his view, are merely the modern equivalent of friends — and haven’t we always chosen friends who agree with us?
Well, no. Tell it to John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, who certainly had many, often bitter disagreements about politics and whose correspondence nevertheless leaps off the page as an example of the illumination to be derived from exchanges of ideas between friends who respect each other even though they do not always share the same opinions.
“You and I ought not to die, before we have explained ourselves to each other,” Adams wrote Jefferson in 1815.
It is doubtful that today’s politicians will spend much time trying to explain themselves to one another even after they leave office. They are, after all, creatures of a culture in which it is acceptable, on the Senate floor, for Vice President Dick Cheney to tell Vermont’s Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy to “go [obscene verb] yourself”
There is a direct connection between the debasement of political discourse and the public’s tendency to tune out any voice that is not an echo. “Swift boating” can succeed in politics only because of the correct assumption that huge numbers of Americans lack the broad knowledge that would enable them to spot blatantly unfair attacks. If Barack Obama is the Democratic nominee, we will surely hear, from the slimier corners of the blogosphere, a renewal of the lie that he is a Muslim. John McCain got the same treatment from George W. Bush supporters in the 2000 campaign, when the rumor that his adopted child from Bangladesh was really his own illegitimate African American baby cost him votes in the Republican primary in South Carolina. Voters of any political persuasion who watch only cable news shows or consult only blogs that support their preconceptions are patsies for these kinds of lies.
Ironically, the unprecedented array of choices, on hundreds of cable channels and the Web, have contributed to the decline of common knowledge and the denigration of fairness by both the right and the left. No one but a news junkie has the time or the inclination to spend the entire day consulting diverse news sources on the Web, and the temptation to seek out commentary that fits neatly into one’s worldview — whether that means the Huffington Post or the Drudge Report — is hard to resist.
Genuine fairness does not mean the kind of bogus objectivity that always locates truth equidistant from two points, but it does demand that divergent views be understood and taken into account in approaching public issues. In re-reading Hofstadter several years ago, I was struck by the fairness of his scholarship, a serious, old-fashioned attempt to engage the arguments of his opponents and to acknowledge evidence that ran counter to his own biases. I had not noticed that when I read the book for the first time in the 1960s because fairness was, to a considerable degree, taken for granted in those days as an ideal for aspiring young scholars and writers.
A vast public laziness feeds the media’s predilection today to distill news through polemicists of one stripe or another and to condense complex information into meaningless sound bites. On April 8, for example, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the U.S. armed forces in Iraq, testified before the Senate in hearings that lasted into the early evening. Although the hearings were on cable during the day, the networks offered no special programming in the evening, and newscasts were content with sound bites of McCain, Obama and Hillary Clinton questioning the general. Dueling presidential candidates were the whole story.
Absent from most news reports was testimony concerning the administration’s ongoing efforts to forge agreements with various Iraqi factions without submitting the terms to Congress for ratification — a development with constitutional implications as potentially serious as the Watergate affair. No matter. Anyone who wanted to hear Petraeus bashed or applauded could turn to his or her preferred political cable show or click on a blog to find an unchallenging interpretation of the day’s events.
The tepid interest in the substance of Petraeus’ testimony on the part of the public and much of the media contrasts sharply with the response to the Senate Watergate hearings in 1973. All 319 hours of the first round of the hearings were televised, and 85% of Americans tuned in to at least some of the proceedings live.
I remember those weeks as a period when everyday preoccupations faded into the background and we found time, as a people, to perform our civic duty. An ongoing war may lack the drama of Watergate, but it is doubtful that anything short of another terrorist attack on our soil would convince today’s public that it ought to read the transcript of a lengthy congressional hearing or pay attention, for more than five minutes, to live news as it unfolds.
It is past time for Americans to stop attributing the polarization of our public life to the media, the demon entity “Washington” or “the elites.” As long as we continue to avoid the hard work of scrutinizing public affairs without the filter of polemical shouting heads, we have no one to blame for the governing class and its policies but ourselves.
Like Hofstadter, I yearn to live in a society that values fair-mindedness. But it will take nothing less than a revolutionary public recommitment to the pursuit of fairness, knowledge and memory to halt, much less reverse, the trend toward an ignorant single-mindedness that threatens the future of democracy itself.
Susan Jacoby is the author of “The Age of American Unreason.”
Copyright 2008 Los Angeles Times
As always Susan is the voice of common sense and reason.
Please let us hear more from her.
Well-said Susan.
Good points raised here but I don’t see the need to even pretend that liberals/progressives are as closeminded as conservatives.
to live in america in 2008 is to be constantly barraged with right wing points of view from all sides–especially on so-called “liberal media” outlets such as the new york times, npr, pbs etc who are engaged in what chomsky called “manufacturing consent.” with their combination of outwardly conservative columnists and insidious pro-military, pro-corporate viewpoints they make certain that political debate is contained within a tiny spectrum. there are very few voices that can accurately be called liberal or progressive within the corporate media and many of these can be counted on to sign corporatist memes whenever a free-trade agreement is up for discussion or the drums for war are beating. there certainly are NO voices that can be called leftist that are allowed anywhere near a microphone or editorial page in the corporate media. Often leftist viewpoints are even marginalized within the so-called “progressive” blogosphere as much debate begins and ends with the vicissitudes of the democratic party.
I get plenty of exposure to right wing viewpoints on a daily basis. I don’t need to make much of an effort to do so because it is omnipresent.
Progressives can speak to many of the “unconverted” by calling into right-wing radio shows, many of which will take respectful calls of dissent. http://www.850koa.com
Trollwiththepunches, well said. With the constant barrage of talks show hosts such as Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilley, et al, and such “fair and unbiased” reporting as Fox News, MSNBS, ABC all one needs to do to get a fair minded point of view is read news blogs such as CD, Alternet, or Smirking Chimp. Therein lie the balance.
I blame public schools as one factor. Though they have great promise teachers and students ability to think freely and creatively is closely held in check by a raft of curriculum requirements and phony accountability procedures (called standardized testing) that essentially dumb down the learning and teaching and orient it around jeopardy style fact dumping and fact collecting.
The end result: teachers are intellectually bored and students spend much of their time thinking about things other than ideas, academic interests and deep understanding of the subject matter.
I yearn to live in a society that values fair-mindedness. But it will take nothing less than a revolutionary public recommitment to the pursuit of fairness, knowledge and memory to halt, much less reverse, the trend toward an ignorant single-mindedness that threatens the future of democracy itself.
Nice article, but I don’t think its quite that bad yet. America is still has the most fair minded citizens of any country I’ve been in.
Hi trollwiththepunches
Good points raised here but I don’t see the need to even pretend that liberals/progressives are as closeminded as conservatives.
You must be joking. I think we may be worse than conservatives. Read Robinson’s article on “Learning From Cultural Conservatives” at CAF.
I think this says it.
“Heubeck and Weyrich were deeply worried about the insularity that too often sets into activist communities. “An excessive amount of intellectualization divorced from application in the real work is a kind of escape from reality, or the creation of a virtual reality. Thinking becomes tired, static, and inward-looking. People become more interested in creating mental utopias than having a real impact on society. Scholars become mere pedants; ideas are no longer creative and vital. Ideas interest us only insofar as they offer a guide to action. There is a place in society for abstract, academic discussion. This is not that place.”
Discussion lists, warns Heubeck, are too often traps for the unwary. (Blogs didn’t exist yet, but I’m sure that that if they had, he’d have included them, too.) We spend so much time sharing our esoteric enthusiasms, complaining about stuff nobody else cares about, and reaffirming each others’ worldview that we fail to do the real work of the movement, which is getting out there and winning new hearts and minds to the cause. We become hypersensitive (and sometimes downright surly) in the face of earnest questions from outsiders who don’t understand the secret language of our groupthink. We build up walls that keep new members out, and harden into a cloistered elite that has no room for newcomers.
If the goal is to build a mass movement, those developments are absolutely fatal. And the only way to avoid it is to insist that our groups stay open to new members and ideas, and actively engaged with work that promotes our ideas in the larger non-progressive world.
You must be joking. I think we may be worse than conservatives. Read Robinson’s article on “Learning From Cultural Conservatives” at CAF.
Thomas,
I trust (and hope) you are speaking for yourself here. If so the proper pronoun is “I” not “we”
The first thing that the right wing nut does when it wakes up in the morning is look for someone to obey.
In a fascist world, ideas are unwelcome. Conformity is. America seems to have around 290 million conformists. How else can Bush rule and fool so completely?
Someone needs to burst the American bubble, confront its people with reality and truth. America has become an extension of Hollywood!
Dangerous Creation.
Thomas,
I admit I can’t bring myself to read or listen to smirking, “gotcha” brand “conservatives” like David Brooks, William Kristol, Jeff Jacoby or Russ Limbaugh, but there are plenty of serious conservative writers on the pages of the New York Times, and I read what they have to say and think about it. I suspect a lot of people do, without even realizing they are reading a conservative. That kind of materialo is easy to find. As one letter above pointed out, it’s everywhere.
On the other hand, I keep meeting thoughtful, basically-aware working people who still don’t recognize the name Dennis Kucinich! People who basically aren’t seeing anything in the media about our real situation - and what we could do about it if we organize and act together - that really speaks to them; people who are disgusted and totally distrustful of anything they see, and have tuned out. People who’ve never seen anything real about labor history, who know nothing about the Green Party except snippets of Ralph Nader edited to make him look like Ichabod Crane on a rant.
Blaming us, the progressives and the common people, for the dumbing down of the American discourse is another case of blaming the victims!
I agree with trollwiththepunches. The entire matrix of our lives is right-wing. I hang out here cause I like to be around my fellow travelers. I don’t need to go to littlegreenfootballs to hang with yahoos.
The real question though, the one we should be talking about, is what are we going to do about it, how are we going to make ourselves heard?
part of doing something is addressing the issue of the media and recognizing the impact it has on the way citizens view the world. unless the only media you consume is common dreams, democracy now, the nation and leftward leading blogs you really cannot escape conservative thought. it permeates the entire corporate media and inundates all political thought in this country. take for example, the way that free trade is discussed in the mainstream media. those who oppose it are quickly labeled protectionists and are the object of ridicule and scorn. consider the fact that in the runup to the iraq war the percentage of anti-war voices on tv was less than 10%. consider the fact that the washington post admitted that it “buried” antiwar voices before the war
http://www.democracynow.org/2004/8/13/washington_post_admits_it_buried_anti
look at the total and complete corporate media silence on the recent “winter soldier” hearings where american soldiers gave testimony about war crimes in Iraq. Look at the mainstream media’s silence in the wake of a CBS (!) report revealing torture discussions took place at the highest levels. did that make it to the headlines of mainstream newspapers or did it receive more reportage on CBS or other networks?
simply put, to turn on tv, to pick up a city newspaper, to listen to public radio is to be exposed to conservative if not right wing thought and memes.
i could go on and on and on. there are endless examples of the extreme bias in the media that exists today. i go to lefty blogs and watch democracy now so I can hear about stories that are literally BURIED in the corporate media.
citing one article that suggests we could learn something from social conservatives does not in my mind come close to making an argument that somehow liberals are “even worse” than conservatives when it comes to narrow-mindedness.
like it or not (and i do not) I have no choice but to hear conservative arguments repeated ad nauseum on a daily basis.
and let us not forget that the goalposts have moved increasingly rightward in this country. in a country where political opinion is constricted between democrat and republican this means that the debate is now between conservatives and what would have been considered extreme right wing thought a generation ago.
neither of these democratic frontrunners are progressives. they would rightly be identified as conservatives in europe and both of them espouse political viewpoints that would have fit in nicely with the nixon administration.
SJ could easily be talking about Common Dreams which features items by the choir for the choir.
Maybe it’s time for CD and other choir sites to start presenting the POV from the other sides, too, in the way Jon Stewart invites guests from all spectrum angles.
Plus, it would really help us “win” if we knew what the “other side” was saying. Seriously, how many of us read the WSJ, or National Review, or Town Hall?
I try to listen to opposing viewpoints, but I have a hard time listening to the massive train of half-truths, spinning, and outright lies that often accompany the logical fallacies of arguments.
To be honest, I sometimes find those same logical fallacies on both sides of arguments. Public discussion seems to have become the property of rhetoric rather than reasoned debate. We attack the person rather than the viewpoint of the person.
“Ironically, the unprecedented array of choices, on hundreds of cable channels and the Web, have contributed to the decline of common knowledge and the denigration of fairness by both the right and the left. No one but a news junkie has the time or the inclination to spend the entire day consulting diverse news sources on the Web, and the temptation to seek out commentary that fits neatly into one’s worldview — whether that means the Huffington Post or the Drudge Report — is hard to resist.”
diversity is bad, is that true??? is being a news junkie so bad?? (i mean you develop reading skills and observe different methods of argumentation). if the average american can watch 4 hours of TV a day, it shouldn’t be difficult for a person to spend a few hours a day consulting various independent sources of news.
it’s challenging for americans b/c one in 5 of us is functionally illiterate and the vast majority of americans are obsessed w/ their own individual consumption and personal drama. the truth and cooperative values, leading to a world of peace and social justice, is not on the radar - most americans are oblivious of world geography or american history.
frank1569 (7:05)
good point, it is important to at least be aware of the thinking and positions that the other 90% of americans are consuming. in addition to the lefty sites posted above, i listen to the first hour of washington journal (listener call in program dem/rep/ind), NPR and the sunday talk shows on cspan (minus the commercials). i agree with a fraction of the commentary i hear, but i’m under no misconceptions that in many respects the ‘average’ american is reflected in MSM, as MSM is a reflection of american thought. it’s depressing…both the MSM news and the critiques.
…peace…
Galifray
Can you name some recent examples of “half-truths, spinning and outright lies that often accompany the logical fallacies of arguments” coming from a liberal perspective?
This is not a snark. I’m genuinely curious to know.
Some people want to be lied to. They want to be told that America is the best country in the world and that their dreams of conspicuous consumption represent the pinnacle of success. Those of us who lack the ignorance to swallow everything the MSM tries to feed us sit on the sidelines trying to get the attention of the herd.
“Hey, you guys are destroying the planet. Wait, don’t support that war, you’re being lied to. Don’t eat that, it contains additives that cause cancer.” And on and on.
The whole system is predicated on the notion that a citizenry that is distracted, busy, struggling financially, overwhelmed with information can be easily controlled. As long as we’ve got bread and circuses, the masses will continue to be fat, ignorant and pliable.
Doesn’t it occur to anyone to restore the Fairness Doctrine for the media?
For most of the history of the electronic media, opposing viewpoints had to be presented on all stations, and the polarization of outlets like Fox News was impossible.
Now people have gotten into the habit of tuning in or surfing to exactly what they want to see and hear, and it’s always echoes of echoes of echoes of whatever you already decided to believe.
The same message is constantly resonating with itself, and all the voices get louder and louder until there’s nothing left but screaming.
I think the author is trying to say that we need to find the truth about the events that are taking place. Like reading the congressional report of the Petreaus hearing, We cannot rely on the television news,or talking heads of the left or right, we already know that they are all about ratings. We cannot rely on our regular writers that we read daily. We must do some investigating on our own. Everyone has an agenda, and I have one too. Mine is to follow the truth. The truth is on our side,and freedom is not free, freedom requires responsibility.
Wow, boris, such disdain!
Can I be included in your exclusive club of people who “lack the ignorance to swallow everything the MSM tries to feed us?” Can I be one of the enlightened folks sitting on the sidelines trying to educate the gullible “herd,” the “fat, ignorant, and pliable”–are they unwashed as well, because that would round out your little adjectival trinity nicely?–”masses?”
Let me ask you a question: Would you consider yourself a leftist, because you sound more like a contemptuous Nietzschean?
Given what seems like your evident misanthropy, why do you bother “trying to get the attention of the herd?” Why not let the lemmings rush headlong over the cliff (an image I half-expected you to use as a followup to your “herd” reference)?
Perhaps the lack of political engagement of “the masses” has more to do with those other things you breezily refer to at the end of your post–financial struggles that force many of them to work two jobs and so on–rather than their gullibility or their desire to be deceived and controlled.
Three questions:
1) Even with a more attentive populace, are the needs of the communities systematically excluded from the corporate media ever going to come close to being adequately met by the likes of Newscorp’s Rupert Murdoch and the Tribune Company’s Sam (FY) Zell, (or PBS and NPR as currently constructed and funded)?
2) As vitally important as a free, open and neutral internet is to our democracy, will that alone create the kinds of ubiquitous public forums we need right now? You know, places trusted by persons of many varied viewpoints and perspectives to resolve disagreement through education, rational discussion, and ultimately, the search for truth so fundamental to a functioning society? (No, I am not talking about Common Dreams and Republican Town Hall!)
3) And, are there more fundamental and severely underreported solutions to our media problems beyond the important actions media activists have been taking to date?
No, No, and Yes.
Last question:
Will the auction proceeds from the ten to thirty billion dollars worth of publicly owned analog TV broadcast channels being returned next February 18th be used for the continuing occupation of Iraq and the murder of its people? Or will they be used to create a decentralized system of democratically run and better funded public and community media portals across the U.S.? Imagine - local public TV trustees elected on the November ballot - just like many municipal sewer boards!
Read more here:
http://themediastructurefailed.zoomshare.com/files/z_sept_07.pdf
Very few people seem aware of the efforts of media reformers, and it’s a Catch-22 as to how you’d compel the present MSM to give much coverage to its small band of organized critics.
Unless you believe that the internet is automatically going to solve the legitimation crisis, MSM reform will still be necessary for the rescue of democracy. But anymore, MSM reform can only start at a very basic, grassroots level. And here, you run up against an even more-prior problem to overcome: average people are so burned-out and overwhelmed, just at coping with their daily lives under a rat raced economic system, they can barely raise their kids wisely, let alone get into deep thoughts and direct action about fundamental reforms.
Of course we have to keep trying. And some of Sands suggestions, above, are good areas to place effort.
Note to Susan Jacoby and anyone here who thinks that somehow exposure to liberal ideas will have any impact on conservative types. Read Bob Altemeyer’s study on “authoritarians.”
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/
Fascinating work based on years of psychological studies involving a particular conservative whom he characterizes as “authoritarian.” Among his many findings, you would essentially have as much luck talking to a brick wall about liberal viewpoints and expecting it to adopt a broader worldview as you would trying the same thing on an authoritarian conservative. These people are hard-wired to embrace their viewpoints.
Eric,
does it ease your over-educated conscience to self-righteously rush to the defense of Joe Everyman?
Does it make you feel all warm and fuzzy to be so openminded that cynical expressions of disdain for strategies of the ruling class can be judged so harshly? I’m a misanthrope am I? Perhaps I am an elitist. Does that disqualify me from being a liberal? Perhaps I should run my comments by you first to insure that they are sensitive enough to the feelings of Joe Sixpack?
Get off your high horse buddy.
I’m with Boris, Eric
To quote HL Mencken
“No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people”
The pendulum never changes direction.
I believe the “lemmings” will rush over the cliff. And just before they all go over… the powers that be will put on the breaks. Why you ask? Because they will need to weed out the population, and they will need some survivors to do their “works” and we will be ever so grateful for the pitiful handouts that has save us from going over the cliff.
People are lazy and uniformed. However, they are NOT stupid. We are all isolated and feel powerless. The secret of change comes from our common needs.
Gandhi and Reverend King knew this. What is it that all people need in common? Look around you. You know the answers. Fighting for those things are what brings the people together. Taking to the streets together in numbers is the only way to bring about change.
Moreover, they know this and it terrifies them. How much are we personally willing to lose when we take to the streets? How comfortable are we? How brave are we? It takes special people to sacrifice themselves for the benefit of all.
Who will save us.
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0731-23.htm
From the aticle: “Americans are increasingly close-minded and unwilling to listen to opposing views.”
My first observation is that frequently, there are many rather than necessarily opposing views.
*
From the article: “…using the word “liberal” with a small “l,” in the sense that the term had been used in the past — as a synonym for open-mindedness and concern for liberty of thought instead of as the right-wing political epithet it has become during the last 25 years.”
I would say this is correct, but it is not just Americans who do this. In popular debates, there is little, if any, opportunity to unpack these labels. If I say people are Conservatives, do I mean members of the party, they are closed-minded, they hate freedom? Do they tend toward this? Were they always like this? This is why we study history — from several different sources.
*
From the article: “…the unprecedented array of choices, on hundreds of cable channels and the Web, have contributed to the decline of common knowledge and the denigration of fairness by both the right and the left.”
I would attribute this to the misuse of the wide variety of media available. People seem to be less inclined to check several sources to confirm whether something is true or to understand a different point of view.
*
From the article: “As long as we continue to avoid the hard work of scrutinizing public affairs without the filter of polemical shouting heads, we have no one to blame for the governing class and its policies but ourselves.”
Same goes for Canadians and everyone else.
*
I would add that in observation, I find Americans tend toward “black and white” extremes in discourse. Canadians find it frustrating that Americans want to discard the grey areas and I guess Americans are puzzled why Canadians try to keep the grey areas of discussion on the table.
As formernadervoter mentioned above, the crumbling and wilfull neglect of the public school system with too many restrictions is creating a generation of citzens who are not well-equipped to thinking for themselves and questioning actions and events that affect their lives and the lives of future generations.
to boris and troll:
It doesn’t ease my conscience at all. I’m appalled at your sneering disdain for “the masses” and “the herd” not because I feel guilty over my isolation from them here in my ivory academic tower but because I’ve actually talked with some of the “masses”–both here and abroad–and found many of them to be intelligent (even if not highly educated), aware of some of the larger issues affecting them, and capable of offering some critical insight on them.
Admittedly, this is all merely anecdotal evidence to refute your generalizing claims about the “fat, ignorant, and pliable” masses, but in my experience “the herd” isn’t as gullible as you make them out to be.
To trollwtp:
Thanks for the link to the Bob Altemeyer material. I haven’t read it yet, but I’ll be sure to do so. At first glance it looks like it is building on Adorno’s The Authoritarian Personality. Is that the case?
I hope that it overcomes some of the problems of that book (although I have a lot of respect and admiration for Adorno’s work, that book has its far share of flaws). How widespread is the “authoritarian” personality-type in U.S. society according to Altemeyer’s research, and what size sample group is he using to draw his conclusions?
your life is your life, not the state’s…you must decide to live it to the levels possible, in spite of the seductive comfort of the state…your interests are not the interests of the state…the state will not support you or educate you, it will only use you for your labor and money, to the degree you are willing or the state is able…all humans are flawed, even those you would look to for guidance, administration or salvation…take control of your own sensory inputs and your own internal thinking by selectively regulating and investigating outside sources of access and influence…continually exercise your mind and body…challenge your own positions and needs…reduce your own consumption and waste…trust to simplicity…slow down…allow yourself time to reflect upon your own reflections, and honestly question points of weak foundation…be aware of motivations, yours and others’…teach yourself and your children how to think and learn via observation, hypothesis and experimentation…time is the ultimate coin ~ how is yours spent? Grow food…the basics (language\math\science\arts) are the basics for a reason, and remain so, even in the face of vehement argument…wise to familiarize with opposing views and prepare for vehement arguing, though…fighting, too…finally, how would you survive without electricity? laws? what are the notions\skills associated with warfare, hunting, gathering and farming? one cannot sit down to a dinner of the patriotic sludge grown and harvested in one’s driveway or the street in front of one’s house…
More info for Eric J-D, borisshootnikoff, trollwiththepunches, and whomever else:
http://www.psychohistory.com/htm/06_politic.html
http://www.spinninglobe.net/againstschool.htm
We Americans are told, about every issue, that there are two (exactly two) views we can have - the conservative or the liberal.
No shades of grey, no rainbow of possibilities.
Just two views.
Read any newspaper .. they’ll let you know .. on any issue what the two acceptable views are .. and you will immediately know which is “yours” by the buzz-words used to describe the two acceptable views.
Reading the foreign press, especially the opinion columns, frequently shines a very different light on our own affairs.
But how many Americans bother to read the foreign press?