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That seems to me to be the biggest danger that we face.
People ask where all the people who voted for Bush went, not understanding that most people would have enough trouble with a transparent media, let alone one that is a cheerleader for the administration and propagates lies.
Most average folks -- even those who get a college education these days -- go on to do pretty average things. Even people with degrees can end up being plumbers, insurance salespeople, store managers, salesfolk at car dealerships. They really trust what they read in their newspaper, usually their local or metropolitan newspaper. Perhaps they watch the evening news while cooking dinner or supervising their children's homework. They are not all over the blogs like some of us are, frantically seeking shreds of truth. They think they have it or as close as they can get to it given the amount of time they have to expend upon it.
I taught college freshmen English (writing really, at a community college and a public university) and in most of the courses that I taught, in order to do truly well, to get a deserved 'A' thinking was necessary, looking at contrasting viewpoints, spotting logical fallacies, research, supporting the chosen thesis.
If I had not awarded certain undeserved 'A' grades, I wouldn't have had a job. There was significant pressure to inflate grades and it didn't come only from clamoring students; it came from my department head who got his pressure from the administration.
Our public high schools are not doing their jobs and they were not doing so long before No Child Left Behind. The typical high school student cannot read critically. The typical high school student has a mind filled with popular culture and a desire to impress by means of items owned rather than knowledge attained. Typical high school students who manage to get admitted to some form of high education think that they are owed a certain grade as long as they are "trying" and sometimes even when they are not. They also do an amazing amount of both knowing and unwitting plagiarism.
Until we actually begin educating pupils in grade school, junior high, and high school, we will not have an American populace smart enough to spot when they are being lied to. We teach all sorts of things in public schools, from art to sex education. However, there are certain things that we don't really teach: Real science, which includes an understanding of evolution; real history, which includes the controversies as well as the patriotism; real writing skills, which require real thinking; and critical thinking skills, which must be avoided at all costs, lest we produce students smart enough to question what they read and the information which is given via press release by our government, which the media too often regurgitates to be swallowed whole by educated fools.
Yes, I do sometimes believe that our government does not want to see people educated to the point where they recognize propaganda when the read it or hear it or see it. Advertising would lose much of its advantage over consumers, and people would actually understand what interest rate they are being charged, and people like Bush would have been tossed after one term -- for sheer incompetence if nothing else.
What does all this have to do with Obama? He may very well turn out to be a marvelous president. I hope he is. However, during his campaign, transparency was not really his forte. Too often in letters here at Salon, when his ardent supporters were questioned as to his professed policies, all they could reply was to go to his website.
Now, his website has been purged of all those lovely past plans. Now, we have the new era. I am not suggesting that we should not have elected Obama. I am merely suggesting that he was elected by the exact same people, adding in a few younger voters who were voting in their first election -- THE EXACT SAME PEOPLE WHO ELECTED GEORGE BUSH TWICE.
I have little sympathy for people who now claim Obama is betraying the left. He never said that he was a leftist. By his AIPAC speech and by his betrayal of his promise to fillibuster telecom immunity and by his lack of true universal health care plan, he indicated his willingness to be far more practical than ideological. Folks, if you had wanted a leftist, you could have supported Kucinich.
It is not absurd when people say that they have been lied to, yet if they have been lied to and could have easily discovered the lie, then one has less sympathy. However, when one has been told the truth yet refuses to believe it, that is not just a failure think. People should be ashamed to conduct their choices on the basis of faith and then claim that the facts eluded them.
