What do we have a right to
know? In this web-based age, where we can Google almost everything,
you'd think we would be better informed than we are.
We have Freedom of Information
laws and a President who has promised transparency, offering some details
on what he's doing on an easy to access website.
Yet, there is much more that we still don't know, and maybe never
will
At long last, a report on CIA
abuse of detainees came out, but years after the fact, and in a heavily
"redacted" form--i.e. censored. Already the prosecutor chosen to
prosecute says there's not enough information there to do so. Duh?
The Presidents "Pay Czar"
is afraid to release what he's found out about corporate compensation
for fear it might lead, heaven forbid, to naming "targets of populist
anger."
Reuters reports, "Kenneth
Feinberg has said he is uncertain how much information will be made
public. Privacy laws and fears that highly compensated executives will
become targets for populist anger argue for limiting such disclosure.
"Feinberg, speaking on Martha's
Vineyard on August 16 in his only public remarks since becoming President
Obama's point-man on executive pay, called the issue of disclosure 'a
serious problem.'
"'There is a tension between
not wanting to put on the front page of every newspaper in the country
the specific compensation packages of these individuals ... versus the
public's right to know,' he said."
What are they afraid of? Apparently,
embarrassing protest. Here's the worry cited: an earlier disclosure
sparked criticism of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner "and
prompted left-leaning groups to organize bus tours to visit the homes
of AIG employees."
OMG, Oh no!
Sometimes the scales of justice
tip in the public's direction. A judge is ordering the Federal Reserve
Bank to reveal information it has insisted on keeping secret. That's
a good thing.
Bloomberg reports,"Manhattan
Chief U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska rejected the central bank's
argument that the records aren't covered by the law because their
disclosure would harm borrowers' competitive positions. The collateral
lists 'are central to understanding and assessing the government's
response to the most cataclysmic financial crisis in America since the
Great Depression,' according to the lawsuit that led to yesterday's
ruling." No doubt the Bank will appeal!
The absence of information,
pervasive media misinformation and the spin control exercised by powerful
lobbies influences what people know, think, and think about.
Or, more likely, don't think about!
It gets even worse when people
cling to beliefs even when they are not true, as if there is a need
to believe, facts be damned.
James Howard Kuntsler has been
tracking the financial decline. He writes, "The key to the current
madness, of course, is this expectation, this wish, really, that all
the rackets, games, dodges, scams, and workarounds that American banking,
business, and government devised over the past thirty years--to cover
up the dismal fact that we produce so little of real value these days--will just magically return to full throttle, like a machine that has
spent a few weeks in the repair shop. This is not going to happen, of
course."
Sounds right, but will people
who so want the economy to miraculously bounce back accept this reality
or do they prefer ambiguity and denial?
A new study even says that
many of us lean towards comfortable truths, and reject uncomfortable
ones.
One Journal reports: "In
a study published in the most recent issue of the journal Sociological
Inquiry, sociologists from four major research institutions focus
on one of the most curious aspects of the 2004 presidential election:
the strength and resilience of the belief among many Americans that
Saddam Hussein was linked to the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Although
this belief influenced the 2004 election, they claim it did not result
from pro-Bush propaganda, but from an urgent need by many Americans
to seek justification for a war already in progress.
"The findings may illuminate
reasons why some people form false beliefs about the pros and cons of
health-care reform or regarding President Obama's citizenship, for example.
"The study, 'There Must
Be a Reason: Osama, Saddam and Inferred Justification' calls such
unsubstantiated beliefs 'a serious challenge to democratic theory
and practice' and considers how and why it was maintained by so
many voters for so long in the absence of supporting evidence."
So, our culture not only forges
consciousness but also manufactures false consciousness.
Take the idea of equality.
We think our country is embracing more equality when, in fact, facts
point in another direction, i.e, towards greater and greater economic
inequality.
Writing in the London Review
of Books, Walter Benn Michaels challenges our illusions on this issue
in an essay on "Who Cares about the White Working Class?"
edited by Kjartan Pall Sveinsson:
"An obvious question, then,
is how we are to understand the fact that we've made so much progress
in some areas while going backwards in others. And an almost equally
obvious answer is that the areas in which we've made progress have
been those which are in fundamental accord with the deepest values of
neoliberalism, and the one where we haven't isn't.
"We can put the point more
directly by observing that increasing tolerance of economic inequality
and increasing intolerance of racism, sexism and homophobia--of discrimination
as such--are fundamental characteristics of neoliberalism. Hence
the extraordinary advances in the battle against discrimination, and
hence also its limits as a contribution to any left-wing politics. The
increased inequalities of neoliberalism were not caused by racism and
sexism and won't be cured by--they aren't even addressed by--
anti-racism or anti-sexism....
"Thus the primacy of anti-discrimination
not only performs the economic function of making markets more efficient,
it also performs the therapeutic function of making those of us who
have benefited from those markets sleep better at night."
The truth is: we continue to
live a world of delusions. See Chris Hedges' new book, Empire of Illusion, for
more detail.
The fight for transparency
and more information is critical, but it has to be accompanied by an
effort to explain "the facts" and connect the dots. That's the
only way to find truth.