The truth is this: Americans are brainwashed
It's not that Americans hate the truth--though too few bother to seek it, even though about two-thirds of Americans have Internet access, the primary (non-Bible) instrument for truth seeking. It's that most Americans, as they have not trained themselves to resist, to turn-off, to wear the proverbial "b-s detector", have been driven to a state of total apathy or complete cognitive dissonance, the forerunner to brainwashing. Combine that with the fact that most Americans see themselves as part of some collective (and have the "us" vs. "them" mentality leaders like Bush can exploit), and you have a nation where people aren't stupid, but for the most part are brainwashed.
"Americans are brainwashed," you say?
"Yes," I answer, and here's the proof: fully 70% of the American people believed, prior to Iraq War II, that Saddam was responsible for 9-11.
Now, Bush and company NEVER claimed that Saddam was responsible for 9-11. After 9-11, the US invaded Afghanistan with the precise mission of finding and capturing Osama bin Laden, whose al-Qaida WAS responsible for 9-11, and getting rid of the Taliban government which supported bin Laden. That alone proves Bush and Co. believed bin Laden caused 9-11.
Thus, the American people, aided and abetted by the lying media, must have come to believe that (once the Afghan adventure was "over"--yet it isn't over, in fact) Saddam had something to do with Sept. 11, 2001. Remember, Bush and Co. never claimed Iraq had anything to do with it. So, here's where the lying media comes in: insinuate, insinuate, insinuate.
The media is a culprit, but so is the collectivist mindset of Americans. I offer the following as proof:
1. Amercians are like everyone else, particlularly, everyone else who has ever lived in an empire: they want their "national greatness" to last, and, to prop it up, become jingoist or ultra nationalistic. Sometimes this merely leads to insularity and feeling everyone else is inferior (for instance, the Brits felt this way during the Victorian age, or the French during their empire, which crashed and burned in the likes of Algeria, 1962), but sometimes this leads to fascism/nazism/Stalinism. To the degree that dissent is allowed by the general public will show whether or not the US becomes more like Britain or more like Hitler's Germany. But the fact is this, that most Americans do not want to hear that their country has done wrong. America is, after all, the only thing many Americans still have in which to be proud. When you know your living standard is in decline; when you don't know if you'll have a job next month; when your town is dying; when the only hope many American youth have for a bright future is in joining the military, law enforcement, or becomein a faceless bureaucrat; and when you contantly live in one state of fear or another, who can blame folks for wanting an antiwar commencement speaker off the stage?
