AMERICA: Y UR PEEPS B SO DUM? by Joe Bageant

7/29/2019 AMERICA: Y UR PEEPS B SO DUM? by Joe Bageant

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AMERICA:Y UR PEEPSB SO DUM?ColdType

Ignorance

and couragein the age ofLady Gaga


2/10

2 | ColdTye |January 2011

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i l 2010 i Ausrli d h Uid Kidm, dls wih Amrics prm

whi udrclss, d hw i ws iilly crd. Ranw P is vilbl

fr prrdr frm Amz-UK d Amz-Cd. I Ausrli, h bk my

b rdrd www.scribpublicis.cm.u.Th bk will b rlsd i Nrh

Amric i Spri, 2011

J B, 2010

ColdTypeWriting Worth reading From around the World

www.coldtype.net


3/10

January 2011 | ColdTye | 3

AMERICA:Y URPEEPS B SO DUM?

itsel, and why it does what it does. Not

knowing shit about why your society does

what it does makes or a pretty nasty case o

existential unease. So we create institutions

whose unction is to pretend to know, which

makes everyone eel better. Unortunately, it

also makes the savviest among us those

elites who run the institutions very rich, orsae rom the vicissitudes that buet every-

one else.

Directly or indirectly, they understand

that the real unction o American social

institutions is to justiy, rationalize and

hide the true purpose o cultural behavior

rom the lumpenprole, and to shape that

behavior to the benet o the institu-

tions members. Hey, theyre a lump.

Whaddya expect us to do?

Doubting readers may considerAmericas health institutions, the

insurance corporations, hospital chains,

physicians lobbies. Between them they

have established a perectly legal right to

clip you and me or thou-

sands o dollars at their

own discretion. That

we so rabidly deend

I you hang out much with thinking

people, conversation eventually turns to

the serious political and cultural ques-

tions o our times. Such as: How can the

Americans remain so consistently brain

ucked? Much o the world, including

plenty o Americans, asks that question

as they watch U.S. culture go down like athrashing mastodon giving itsel up to some

Pleistocene tar pit.

One explanation might be the eect o 40

years o deep ried industrial chicken pulp,

and 44 ounce Big Gulp sot drinks. Another

might be pop culture, which is not culture at

all, but marketing. Or we could blame it on

digital autism ever watch commuter mon-

keys on the subway poking at digital devices,

stroking the touch screen or hours on end:

Those wrinkled Neolithic brows above the

squinting red eyes?

But a more reasonable explanation is

that, A we dont even know we are doing

it, and B we cling to institutions dedicated

to making sure we never nd out.

As William Edwards Deming amously

demonstrated, no system including the

American social system can understand

Ignorance and couragein the age of Lady Gaga


4/10

Joe Bageant


Cltraltpt mghtnt a,wr t nt lf-

rprcngan vral, anprn t plactp ppl ncharg

Thats a tall order or a squirrel brained

woman who recently asked a black president

to reutiate the NAACP (though I kinda

like reutiate, mysel). Cultural stupidity

accounts or virtually every aspect o SarahPalin, both as a person and a political icon.

Which, come to think o it, may be a pretty

good reason not to misunderestimate her.

Ater all, were still talking about her in both

political camps. And the woman OWNS the

Hungton Post, er Christsake. Not to men-

tion a ranchise on cultural ignorance.

Cultural stupidity might not be so bad,

were it not sel-reproducing and viral, and

prone to place stupid people in charge. All

o us have, at some point, looked at a boss

and asked ourselves how such a numb-nutscould end up in charge o the joint.

In my own eld, the book biz, the top

hucksters in sales and marketing, car sales-

man with degrees, are put in charge o pub-

lishing the national literature. Similarly, ex-

Pentagon generals segue rom killing brown

babies in Iraq into university presidents and

CEOs. Conversely, business leaders such as

Donald Rumseld, who ancy themselves as

battleeld commanders and imagine their

employees as troops to be deployed, ndthemselves happily arting behind Penta-

gon desks. On the strength o having mis-

taken Sun Tzus The Art o Waras a business

text, they get selected by equally delusion-

al national leaders to make actual war on

behal o the rest o us.

But the most widespread damage is done

at more mundane operational levels o the

American empire, by clones o the over pro-

moted asshole in the corner oce where

you work. At least one study demonstrated

that random selection or corporate promo-

tions oset the eect signicantly. Research

again conrms what is common knowledge

around every workplace water cooler in the

country.

Save my spot in the gulag,Im off to Wal-Mart

Cultural ignorance o one sort or another

their right to gouge us, given all the inor-

mation available in the digital age, mysties

the world.

Two hundred years ago no one would

have doubted that the sheer volume oavailable acts in the digital inormation

age would produce inormed Americans.

Founders o the republic, steeped in the

Enlightenment as they were, and believ-

ers in an inormed citizenry being vital to

reedom and democracy, would be delirious

with joy at the prospect. Imagine Jeerson

and Franklin high on Google.

The atal assumption was that Americans

would choose to think and learn, instead o

cherry picking the blogs and TV channels to

reinorce their particular branded choice o

cultural ignorance, consumer, scientic or

political, but especially political. Tom and

Ben could never have guessed we would

chase prepackaged spectacle, junk science,

and titillating rumor such as death panels,

Obama as a socialist Muslim, and Biblical

proo that Adam and Eve rode dinosaurs

around Eden. In a nation that equates

democracy with everymans right to an

opinion, no matter how ridiculous, this was

probably inevitable. Ater all, dumb peoplechoose dumb stu. Thats why they are

called dumb.

But throw in sixty years o televisions

mind-puddling eects, and you end up with

24 million Americans watching Bristol Palin

thrashing around on Dancing with the Stars,

then watch her being interviewed with all

seriousness on the networks as major news.

The inescapable conclusion o hal o heart-

land America is that her mama must cer-

tainly be presidential material, even i Bris-

tol cannot dance. It aint a pretty picture out

there in Chattanooga and Keokuk.

The other hal, the liberal hal, concludes

that Bristols bad dancing is part o her

spawn-o-the-Devil mamas plan to take

over the country, and make millions in the

process, not to mention make Tina Fey and

Jon Stewart richer than they already are.


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AMeRiCA: y uR PeePs b so duM?


Th Amrcanfn, nth rarccan

whn n ffr, rnrghl, Wll cmmatar, i antvr n awathp ani gt n Aank chan nth amnt.

s iv gt whatth gvmntcall plalnalt. Gfck rlf!

our sts and scream AAAAAAGGGGGH-

HHHH!)

As the old song says, Them that dont

know dont know they dont know. I venture

to say that even i they did, they would notknow why. Primary truths elude us because

o the junk auence and propaganda. We

get buried under a deluge o commodi-

ties that suggest we are all rich, or at least

richer than most o the world. A mountain

range o cheap shoes, cars, iPods, ridiculous

amounts o available oodstus, and the

entire spectacle o engorgement denes, and

is enorced as, quality o lie under mate-

rialistic commodities capitalism. The goods

we have in our clutches trump the philo-

sophical, or even the most practical consid-erations. I may die early eating unidentied

bee byproducts soaked in waste chemicals,

but Ill die owning a 65 inch HDTV and a

new ve speed automatic Dodge Durango

with a 5.7 L Hemi V8 under the hood!

Even the threat o toasting planetary

lie is not enough to shake Americans loose

rom this disconnect. As Proessor Emeritus

o Natural Resources and Ecology & Evolu-

tionary Biology Guy R. McPherson points

out, 79.6% o respondents to a ScientifcAmerican poll are unwilling to orgo even

a single penny to orestall the risk o cata-

strophic climate change. Scientifc American

readers undoubtedly are better inormed

than the general populace. And yet they

wont pay a thing to avoid extinction o our

species. Kinda makes you warm and uzzy

all over, doesnt it?

Let us pray the next generation is a tad

sharper.

Taser the totsThe American Liestyle, increasingly sus-

pect as it is these days, is heavily soldiered

and policed in the name o keeping we sel-

dened lotus eaters sae and secure rom

a jealous outside world. Which, according

to cultural consensus, is a world that is at

this very moment stung its underdraw-

ers with explosives and buying plane tickets

is sustained and nurtured in all societies

to some degree, because the majority gains

material benet rom maintaining it. Ameri-

cans, or example, reap huge on-the-ground

benets rom cultural ignorance especiallythe middle class Babbitry rom cultural

ignorance generated by American hyper-

capitalism in the orm o junk auence.

Purposeul inorance allows us to enjoy

cheaper commodities produced through

slave labor, both oreign, and increasingly,

domestic, and yet thank god or his boun-

ty in the nations churches without a trace

o guilt or irony. It allows strong arm thet o

weaker nations resources and goods, to say

nothing o the destructiveness o late stage

capitalismexhausting every planetaryresource that sustains human lie.

The American deense, on those rare

occasions when one is oered, runs roughly,

Well you commie bastard, I aint ever seen

a sweatshop and I got no Asian kids chained

in the basement. So Ive got what the guv-

ment calls plausible deniability. Go uck yer-

sel!

Uh, dont look now, but the banksters

own your ass, your country has become a

work gulag/police state and most o theworld hates you.

Such a thriving American intellectual cli-

mate enables capitalist elites to withhold

and ration vital resources like healthcare

simply by auctioning it o to the richest.

Americans ail to grasp this because the

most important act (that a helluva lot o

olks cant aord to bid, and thereore get to

die early) never gets equal play with capi-

talist political propaganda, to wit, that i we

give ree medical attention to low incomeclet palate babies, a wave o Leninism will

seize the nation. That is cultural ignorance.

We breathe the stu every day o our lives.

But when Americans too poor to buy

health care nevertheless vote to retain the

corporate auction process, that is cultural

stupidity.

(Let us now pause to clutch our hair in


6/10

Joe Bageant


Th trth that w lv na ct whchanctn m-

lctrctnf t wnchlrn n thgrn thatt nt fatal,an thrfrnt trlctrctn

any screaming and writing in our school

hallways. What are 50,000 volts and a little

nerve damage, compared to a shot at pay-

ing o the credit cards, upgrading the am-

ily ride, and maybe remodeling the kitchentoo?

But we gotta stick to the subject o cul-

tural ignorance here, mainly because I wrote

the title rst and am determined to main-

tain some illusion o a theme here, or at least

bullshit the reader into thinking that I have.

Soooo

It can be saely said that cultural ignorance

consists o the rational, sensible questions

that never get asked. But it also includes

the weird ones that are. For instance, one othe questions asked regarding tasing school

kids is: What is the allowable weight range

o a child to be tased? (Taser manuacturers

say 60 pounds). Somehow, by this geezers

prehistoric reasoning, that sounds like the

wrong question, not to mention one that by

its nature leads us away rom the cultural

truth.

The truth is that we live in a society

which sanctions semi-electrocution o its

own children on the grounds that it is not

atal, and thereore not true electrocution.

It springs rom the same streak o cultural

cruelty that deems semi-drowning by water

boarding not to be torture because it is sel-

dom atal.

This is not to be uncharitable to Ameri-

can communities willing to pony up tax

money or school tasers. Theyve amply

demonstrated their aectionate commit-

ment to their children by bringing creation-

ism and pizza-or-breakast into the schools.

But there remains the question, What kindo community comes up with the idea o

tasing its own children?

The information racketeers

It is the job o our combined institutions to

manage cultural inormation so as to deny

the harmul aspects o the rackets they

protect through legislation and promote

to Moline. Cultural ignorance dictates that

the best way to stop oreign terrorists fying

into the country is by humiliating Ameri-

can citizens fying out o the country. Go

ahead, grope me, X-ray my dick and or godsake dont let anyone bring a large bottle o

shampoo on board. In an obedient, author-

ity worshipping police state, physical insult

and surveillance is proo o saety.

Its protable, too, and not just or scan-

ner manuacturers. The brouhaha over body

scanners and crotch groping provide media

with titillating uel or ratings, thereby driv-

ing up TV advertising rates, which are passed

on in the price o products we buy. So we

pay to be insulted, have the hell scared out

o us, and to unknowingly have our behav-ior shaped. Under American style capital-

ism, this mobius strip o cultural ignorance

is called a win-win situation or everybody.

This also conveniently distracts us rom

the everyday human insult we practice on

one another, as a result o state manuac-

tured cultural misinormationear. Ten

years o orange alerts and post 9/11 ear

mongering have led us to draw some para-

doxical culturally conclusions.

Let us briefy careen o into one o theseparadoxes. For instance, that we can taser

our way to domestic security and tranquil-

ity. Yes, its an ugly business, but tasing

the citizenry must be done. And besides,

in these days o high unemployment, its a

paycheck or somebodyusually, the guy

who sat behind us in grade school happily

eating chalk.

With taser-packing police ocers in

thousands o schools, even grade schools (a

weird enough cultural statement to beginwith), needless to say, the resulting deaths

and injuries o school kids have personal

injury lawyers shouting eureka and contem-

plating new recreational sail crat moored at

Marthas Vineyard. Such are the rewards o

righteous works through cult-ignorance?

In any case, the chance at a juicy law-

suit is accepted as a satisactory oset to


7/10



An f nn fth wrk, thnf xl tm crnr

f crpacch a dalK, whr tcannt changth tatq, t can allha prf fr natnalfrm fxprn

The WikiLeaks aair is surely seismic to

those whose asses ride on the elite diplo-

matic intrigues. But in the big picture it will

not change the way the top lizards in global

politics, money and war have done businesssince the eudal age which is to say with

arrogant disregard or the rest o us. Theirs

is an ancient system o human dominance

that only shits names and methodologies

over the centuries. Two years rom now, lit-

tle will have changed in the old, old story o

the powerul ew over the powerless many.

In this overarching drama, Obama, Hil-

lary and Julian Assange are passing players.

Watching the sweaty, etid machinations o

our overlords with such passionate involve-

ment only keeps us rom seeing the big pic-ture that they are the players and we are

the pawns.

Still, I or one am in avor o giving Assange

the Mdaille Militaire, the Noble Prize, 15

virgins in paradise and a billion in cash as

a reward or his courage in doing damned

well the only signicant thing that can be

done at this time momentarily ucking

up government control o inormation. But

potentially stimulating a new age o U.S.

government transparency, (BBC) it aint.

Which brings us to back to the question

o cultural ignorance. For ten points, why

was Julian Assange orced to do what the

world press was supposed to be doing in the

rst place?

Bulletin: At this writing Amazon-owned

PayPal just caved to government pressure to

pull WikiLeaks PayPal account or contribu-

tions. However, the eds generously let Pay-

Pal keep its porn and prostitution clients.

The short bus goes airborneIt is a orm o cultural ignorance to believe

that at some point or other, we were more in

charge and that our government was some-

how more transparent in the past. Societies

declining into obsolescence understandably

resist looking orward, and hang onto their

past mythologies. Consequently, both lib-

erals and conservatives in America eed on

through institutional research. Thats why

research shows that cellphone microwaves

cause long term memory loss in rats, but do

not harm people. Evidently, we are o dier-

ent, more bulletproo mammalian material.Our hypercapitalist system, through

command o our research, media and politi-

cal institutions, expands upon and dissemi-

nates only that inormation which generates

money and transactions. It avoids, neglects

or spins the hell out o inormation that does

not. And i none o those work, the ino is

exiled to some corner o cyberspace such as

Daily Kos, where it cannot change the status

quo, yet can be ballyhooed as proo o our

national reedom o expression. Here come

the rotten eggs rom the Internet liberals.

Cyberspace, by nature, eels very big rom

the inside, and its anity groups, seeing

themselves in mutual sel reerence, imagine

their role bigger and more eective than it is.

From within the highly directed, technologi-

cally administrated, marketed-to and pro-

pagandized rat cage called America, this is

all but impossible to comprehend. Especial-

ly when corporate-owned media tells us it

is. Take the world recent shaking WikiLeaks

revelations o Washingtons petty miseryand drivel, which are scarcely revelations,

just more extensive details about what we

all already knew. Come on now, is it a rev-

elation that Karzai and his entire govern-

ment is a nest o raudulent double-crossing

thieves? Or that the US is duplicitous? Or

that Angela Merkel is dull? The main rev-

elation in the WikiLeaks aair was the U.S.

governments response which was to bring

US reedom o speech policy rmly in line

with Chinas. Millions o us in cyber ghet-

toes saw it coming, but our alarm warningswere shouted inside a cyberspace vacuum

bell jar.

Bear in mind that I am writing this rom

Mexico, outside the US borders and media

environment, where people watch the Wiki-

Leaks story unold more in amusement than

anything else.


8/10

Joe Bageant


What Amrcarall n a wall-t-wall ppl

nrrctn,prfrala n frcan far ffrc, th nlthng lgarchnrtan.An vn thnth arnt g

power and momentum on its side and moti-

vated purely by machine-like harvesting o

prots, reduce the aceless masses in its path

to slavery? Does a duck shit in a pond?

Meanwhile, here we are, American riderson the short bus, barreling over Grand Can-

yon. With typical American gunpoint opti-

mism, weve convinced ourselves were in

an airplane. A ew smarter kids in the back

whisper about hijacking and turning the bus

around. But the security cop riding shotgun

just strokes his taser and smiles. Not that

yours truly has the ass to take on the secu-

rity surveillance state. Hell no. I jumped out

the window when the bus shot past Mexi-

co.

The fifth freedom

GOP honcho Mitch OConnell says what

America needs is or Republicans to n-

ish beating the snot out o Obama, and

strengthen the already rich by eliminat-

ing taxes or them and shiting the burden

onto us. Obama says America needs to nd

bipartisan cooperation with the party o

ruthlessness. Elton John says that America

needs more compassion (Thanks, we never

noticed).

What America really needs is a wall-to-

wall peoples insurrection, preerably based

on orce and ear o orce, the only thing oli-

garchs understand. And even then the odds

are not good. The oligarchs have all the legal

power, police, jails and prisons, surveillance

and repower. Not to mention a docile pop-

ulace.

Shy o open resurrection, a nationwide

reusal to pay income taxes would certain-

ly shake things up. But broader America is

happy in the sense they know happiness,as an undisturbed regimen o toil, stress

and commodity consumption. Despite the

way it looks in the news, most Americans

remain untouched by oreclosure, bank-

ruptcy and unemployment. So risking loss

o their work-buy-sleep cycle in an insurrec-

tion looks to be sheer lunacy to them. Like

cows, they are kept comortable in the pure

myths o political action which died in Viet-

nam. The results are ludicrous. Tea Partiers

attempt to emulate the 1960s protest gath-

erings by staging rallies sponsored by the

richest beneciaries o the status quo. Forthe average TP participant, the goal, near as

I can tell, is to start a new American Revo-

lution, by wearing oodstus, screaming,

threatening, and voting or nitwits. Media

pundits proclaim the Tea Party a historic

populist movement. Neither populist, nor

authentic movement, the Tea Party may yet

prove historic however, by seriously ucking

things up more than they already are. Spun

entirely rom manuactured spectacle (and

thus void o cohesive political philosophy or

internal logic), the Tea Party lurches acrossthe political landscape bellowing at the

cameras and collecting the victims o cul-

tural ignorance in sort o a medieval idiots

crusade. But to the American public, seeing

the Tea Party on television is proo enough

o relevancy and signicance. Ater all, stu

doesnt get on TV unless its important.

Progressives also ancy a revolution, one

in which they participate through the Inter-

net petitions, and media events such as the

risk ree Jon Stewart Rally to Restore Sanity,

where no one risked even missing an epi-

sode o Tremaine. Seeing people like them-

selves on television was proo o ghting the

good ght. The Stewart rally was nonethe-

less culturally historic; we will never see a

larger public display o post modern irony

congratulating itsel.

In the historical view, cultural ignorance

is more than the absence o knowledge. It

is also the result o long term cultural and

political struggle. Since the industrial revo-

lution, the struggle has been between capi-tal and workers. Capital won in America

and spread its successul tactics worldwide.

Now we watch global capitalism wreck the

world and attempt to stay ahead o that

wreckage clutching its prots. A subservient

world kneels beore it, praying that plan-

et-destroying jobs will all their way. Will

unrestrained global capitalism, with all the


9/10



political problems that need to be solved.

Naturally, they are willing to do that or us.

Consequently, the economy is discussed in

political terms, because the government is

the only body with the power to legislate,and thereore render the will o the owning

class into law.

But politics and money are never going

to ll what is essentially a public vacuum

that is moral, philosophical and spiritual.

(The latter was instantly recognized by un-

damentalist Christians, disgured by cul-

tural ignorance, as they may be.) Not many

ordinary Americans talk about this vacuum.

The required spiritual and philosophical lan-

guage has been successully purged by new-

speak, popular culture, a human regimen-tation process masquerading as a national

educational system, and the ruthlessness o

everyday competition, which leaves no time

to contemplate anything.

Still, the void, the meaninglessness o

ordinary work and the emptiness o daily

lie scares thinking citizens shitless, with

its many unspeakables, spy cams, security

state pronouncements, citizens being eco-

nomically disappeared, and general back-

o-the-mind unease. Capitalisms acelessmachinery has colonized our very souls. I

the political was not personal to begin with,

its personal now.

Some Americans believe we can collec-

tively triumph over the monolith we so ear

and worship. Others believe the best we

can do is to nd the personal strength to

endure and go orward on that lonely plain

o the inner sel. It all depends on where you

choose to ght your battle. Or i you even

choose to ght. Doing either will take moral,

spiritual and intellectual liberation. But one

thing is certain.

The only way out is in.

animal sense to be milked or prot. Animal

comort kills all thoughts o revolution. Hell,

hal o mankind would be thrilled with the

average Americans present material situa-

tion.And besides, revolutionary history does

not exist or Americans. The 20th centurys

successul revolutions in Russia, Germany,

Mexico, China, and Cuba are wired into our

minds as historys evil ailures, because all

but one were Marxist. (The only successul

non-Marxist revolution o the 20th century

was Fidel Castros Cuban Revolution).

So i we are talking change through revolt,

were necessarily talking about decondition-

ing, because the thing we ear already has a

lie deep in our own consciousness. Decon-

ditioning rom cultural ignorance is at the

heart o any insurrectionary politics.

Deconditioning also involves risk and

suering. But it is transormative, reeing

the sel rom helplessness and ear. It is a

prerequisite to the th reedom, the right

to autonomous consciousness. That makes

deconditioning about as individual and

personal act as is possible. Maybe the only

one.

Once unencumbered by sel-induced and

manuactured cultural ignorance, it becomes

clear that politics worldwide is entirely

about money, power and national mythol-

ogy, with or without some degree o human

rights. America still has all o the above to

one degree or another. Yet or all practical

purposes, such as advancing the reedom

and the well-being o its own people, the

American republic has collapsed.

O course, there is still money to be made

by the already rich. So the million or sopeople who own the country and the gov-

ernment use their control to convince us

that there is no collapse, just economic and

Captalmfaclmachnr haclnz r

vr l. ifth pltcalwa ntprnal tgn wth, tprnal nw


10/10

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AMERICA: Y UR PEEPS B SO DUM? by Joe Bageant