TG,

”Without claiming much accuracy, about 50%-50% of the American public seems very gullible or aware of what's going on. You're right about it being a war on it's own citizens. People just don't get Bush was a demagogue who spouted some clinches at them, and used them for his own political purposes.”

I don’t put too strong of a blame the American public. A lot of factors have turned people’s lives inwards, towards things that really only serve to benefit themselves. It’s not selfishness either. We have 600 channels of nothing, global sporting events that some people waste their lives following (as opposed to just being interested), the internet for people like us who have an interest and can now finally interact with other likeminded people on a grand scale that weren’t really there before. Our level of distraction just keeps rising. There is simply too much information. There are also factors that may or may not have been planned such as, as I’ve mentioned before, the privatization of pretty much everything which goes with the thinking “why should I spend my money (taxes) on someone else (eg. elderly)”

”Gullibility is a psychological problem involving how integrated the personality is. What are you going to do? Send several million people to psychologists for 8yrs., against their will? “

This is one of the reasons why I’ve taken up learning about psychology. These are just new facts to me so I could be getting them wrong. But ask a group of people to do anything, approximately 18% will agree to do your request without much of any coercion. So here’s a start. The second idea that I fond interesting that’s related to this is people in a group tend to generate polarized positions and are pressured by the group to conform. However if you generate just a little bit of decent it frees up people to make more personal decisions in general. So if you want to help free people from external pressures a few differing opinions (vocalized!) go a long way. This effect during the start of the war in Iraq seemed to be fought against by, most notably in my mind, Bill O’Really’s “Just shut up” campaign calling upon everyone who disagrees with the war to just shut up. People like me who take an interest in these issues roll their eyes and logically tear those ideas to shreds. Person X with 1 newborn baby to take care of and one in collage and bills to bay etc might agree because they don’t care and in their defense too busy to care. That and if you ask anybody which issues not to bring up to save good relations you always hear “religion and politics.” Religion I can understand because it’s usually an inalterable position. Politics, people need to learn have a healthier attitude towards in general and not do their part in destroying their country by not supporting political talk.

Oh, and another interesting factoid that I have learned. People who do no more than write something down saying they support X are more likely to work much harder in support of X than those who don’t. Something to remember next time you fill something out in which you align yourself with a political party.

”I found your last paragraph fascinating and surprising. I didn't realize our good will abroad was so bad before Bush came to office, and I was one of the ones blaming him for our disastrous international standing. I hope you elaborate because you certainly have got my attention.”

It’s not obvious by any means. It makes sense that it wouldn’t be considering the US is the super power of our age. Nobody wants to piss you off. I won’t go into everything but here are some things that come to mind right away:

The US has veto power in the United Nations and, in my opinion, is quite addicted to using it whenever its interests might be threatened by a resolution (including some that deal with human rights). If you look into UN records and see who vetoed what the US appears a good 90% of the time (my estimate). But than again, that’s not to blame the US too much, the other dominant powers did it when they had their spotlight after WW2.

Add that the US really hasn’t done anything recently to really improve anything, except for the agreement between the US and Russia that it’s probably a good idea to think that something should be done about the loose nuclear weapons that exist after the collapse of the Soviet Union. This little bit of inaction is also a bit of proof that America’s War On Terror (tm) is somewhat of a sham. Oh and Africa is still in shambles.

Than there’s the fact that many bits of foreign aid and whatnot are usually played in such a way to benefit the US. And not in terms of stability or the good feeling you get when you help someone. It has more often than not made the country worse off than it would have been if they were left alone.

I’ll leave it at that as the facts are out there for those interested. Start reading anywhere and you’ll be taken down a rather interesting rabbit hole.

”You've got to spell that one out. You can't leave with that tease as your parting comment. Do you mean our naivety and feeling of self-importance? “

America’s a big country with lots of stuff going on. I tend not to blame people and rather shift blame to the situation. Not to mention it is THE international super power currently. Like the elephant and the mouse. The elephant, because of its size and invulnerability to external factors pays no attention to them. But the mouse, who the sick elephant can fall on cares greatly about it. So that can at least partially explain why I’m interested. But that’s not really the deeper issue that needs to be resolved.

As far as my opinion goes it’s the corporations hand in everything that is one of the major issues. Add that to the fact that this connects the media, business and government in one big chain that needs to be broken to improve the situation.

How major and what are the other issues? I don’t know. Which is part of the reason why I didn’t expand on my “teasing” remark, I simply don’t know.

”Ocean_Soul, what did you do? Open a can of worms?”

Maybe. But I think it’s one worth having open.