A lazy American public? — Paul Craig Roberts' perspective

© 2019 Peter Free

 

25 September 2019

 

 

Speaking of censorship (as I did yesterday)

 

I make it a habit to read material that I will probably not agree with. Sometimes, I change my mind after thinking about the "forbidden" perspective.

 

Censorship, voluntary or forced, is arguably not good for the soul.

 

 

In that vein — my respect for Paul Craig Roberts

 

Roberts is a "conservative" curmudgeon. I'm an arguably "liberal" one.

 

Yesterday, Roberts published a column that will irritate most liberal consciences. It is about race relations in the United States.

 

He draws on his memories of growing up in the American South to argue (essentially) that outside agitators generated hate between southern blacks and whites, where previously there had been little of it.

 

Having grown up under similar conditions myself, I think that Roberts significantly overstates (or misinterprets) his case.

 

Nevertheless, his concluding observation about the American public's intellectual laziness is accurate.

 

Facts and reasonably correctly remembered history, he says, matter:

 

 

What I have learned over the decades that I have spent explaining events as an Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury, as a professor in the classroom and lecture hall, an editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal, Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, Creators Syndicate, columnist for European newspapers and magazines, and principal writer for this website is that very few want to know.

 

It is too much trouble and takes too much time for people to inform themselves.

 

They haven’t the stamina to learn that they have been hoodwinked. They prefer to be amused and to have their existing beliefs confirmed.

 

Gossip is more interesting to them than facts.

 

One consequence is that people have lost the ability to tell the difference between fiction and fact.

 

This creates a perfect world for governments to be free of control by citizens. Control passes to organized interest groups and oligarchies who control the explanations.

 

“Truth” becomes whatever serves their agendas. Truth is what the insouciant brainwashed population hears on the news.

 

In the United States today, indeed, throughout the Western World, the best way to destroy yourself is to tell the truth. Look at Julian Assange, at Ed Snowden, at Manning, at CIA whistleblowers.

 

How does Western Civilization recover from this situation?

 

When it is far more advantageous to lie than to tell the truth, when ideological and material agendas are more important than justice, morality, and truth, what becomes of life?

 

© 2019 Paul Craig Roberts, We Are Jeopardized by the Creation of False Realities, Unz Review (24 September 2019) (paragraphs split)

 

 

American democracy is dead for exactly that reason

 

To answer Roberts' question about the triumph of mendacity and ideological agenda over Truth — reality's figurative tigers will eventually get us.

 

In one unpleasant way or another.

 

Ergo, the demise of 1789's allegedly democratic experiment.