Doing as Told

God spoke to me (see his notes to previous articles). He asked that I return to publishing more "....Intellectual..." pieces. Who am I to do otherwise - and so I humbly submit the following.

A number of topics are giving me pause. It's hard sometimes to keep them all straight. But then, any rational consideration would show how these topics weave together in so many ways.

One central question, however, consumes my thoughts: How has the mass brain-washing of the right come about? What do I mean by this? To start with, there is a lot of right-wing thinking which is simply unrelated to reality. There's probably a bit of unrealistic thinking on the left as well, but it doesn't have much policy impact these days so we'll keep the focus on here on the right.

A very simple and personal example: I was speaking with a conservative friend some weeks ago. He posited that the Capitalist system was the ultimate, that everyone else in the world envied us, and that this was because the median family income in this country was constantly on the rise. This individual is well educated, closely in touch with wide range of economic statistics (as part of his work), and absolutely believes what he told me.

The facts are these (per the White House and Census Bureau web-sites - which may be subject to a massive liberal conspiracy): median family income is at the same level as it was 20 years ago; and, median family net worth is at the same level as 20 years ago. The later statistic is interesting. We know that the average age of American's is growing. We also know that people grow their assets over time, and tend to be worth more later in life. So, we should see some growth in median family net worth when the population of the country is aging. That we don't could have many explanations, but, one can't help but question whether this statistic is a simple sign that we are collectively getting poorer.

My well educated friend believed that trickle-down was working - even though it wasn't - and he should know better. Is this a unique situation? I don't think so. So much of the conservative agenda is forwarded with a fundamentalist zeal, even by its leaders. For me, its a bit unbelievable that this agenda is merely a cynical mechanism to keep the People's eye off they ball while certain leaders screw us (which I'm certain happens). If this were such a conscious plot, too much information would have leaked out already. Look at how well we understand Karl Rove methods.

There's an interesting article here: www.consortiumnews.com/Print/2006/021206.html. This piece analyzes the right's (successful) efforts to politicize the CIA since the time of Nixon. As a result, they have forced a more hawkish foreign policy upon our collective shoulders by significantly over estimating the threats posed by our enemies and others. The economic cost of this is not calculated in the article, but must certainly be enormous. The moral cost, and loss of popular standing in the world, is even worse.

Nothing in the article suggests anything except that the leaders of these efforts fully believed in these crazy positions. These people were generally well educated (I'm obviously not speaking here of the vepe and Skippy). So, the question is why did they have such strong convictions? What predisposed them to so believe? I wish I was ready to posit an answer to this question, but I'm not.

What seems clear, however, is that when we focus our resources on fighting off non-threats, we lose the resources available to fight real threats. The slightly less obvious corollary to this is that in fighting off non-threats, we create real threats. Iraq being a prime example.

In the case of economic policy, its easy (although perhaps incorrect) to suggest that ignorance of the "facts" is based on zero-sum gaming mindset. That is, people may espouse policy that serves their immediate interests - even if they know that it doesn't serve the greater good, and should know that by hurting the greater good they may yet hurt themselves. For example, a policy may lead one to have a bigger slice of a smaller pie. If the pie become small enough, having a bigger slice doesn't help. Or, perhaps as the pie shrinks, some of the holders of bigger pieces get forced into the ranks of those with smaller pieces.

As we have discussed previously, those who are successful tend to credit themselves too much for their success while those that fail tend to blame the world too much for their failures. Hubris can cause any of us to choose narrowly self-serving policies. In this state we will not recognize how we may yet be hurt by these policies. It's somewhat like a child who insists on eating all the available chocolate - even if he's been warned that this will cause a stomach ache.

I don't believe that most folks really don't care about the welfare of anyone else. So some of the dichotomy between beliefs versus reality may be based on a need to excuse themselves from hurting others. But, there are too many cases of brain-washing that this doesn't explain.

Many people have voted to lower taxes for the rich thinking. What purpose did they think they were serving? Do they believe in trickle down? Did they think the cuts would be more equitable - but never check to see that Washington walked the talk? Did they believe that the cuts would be more equitable, but now are to wedded to the administration, or are too embarrassed at being made the fool, to challenge what's going on? Perhaps they're acting like an ostrich sticking their collective heads in the ground?

What has caused a generation of economists to suggest voodoo economics - and believe in them? What causes a nation that approves of abortion but dislikes it to elect a president who disapproves of abortion - yet has created policy that has raised the rate of abortions in this country?

The question of how people makes bad decisions is ageless. The likelihood of eliminating bad decisions is low. But, can we learn to be smarter and more often base our decision-making on facts and reality? I hope so.