Date: Saturday, 20 July 2024
https://ericzuesse.substack.com/p/the-totally-fked-up-public-understanding
https://theduran.com/the-totally-f-ked-up-public-understanding-of-politics/
The Totally F—ked-Up Public ‘Understanding’ of Politics
Eric Zuesse (blogs at https://theduran.com/author/eric-zuesse/)
On June 20th, a Substack by Stephen Bryen headlined “The Second Shooter Theory Gains Momentum” and presented evidence that the U.S. Government is hiding crucial evidence about the Trump-assassination attempt or else is astoundingly incompetent. A reader-comment from a “Diamond Boy” asked “Does anybody trust the FBI? They are compromised.” I responded to that:
The record is clear that for a very long time now, the FBI (its decision-makers, NOT its investigators) has been misrepresenting evidence, and hiding evidence that ought to have been made public immediately. It's very heavily into the cover-up business. Furthermore, the major 'news' media have played along with and protected that — hidden it from the public, instead of themselves digging down and investigating it.
Then, a “jsarnak” replied to that:
Sooner or later Americans need to stop covering for the FBI. I get so angry when I hear it is not the guys on the ground. BS IF as an investigator I turn in reports that get buried or tossed in the garbage and I don't do shit about it. Then I am just as bad and just as guilty as the phantom 7th floor who you want to blame.
To this, I replied:
No, you are wrong, and “the missing 28 pages” incident proves this. The investigators did their jobs, but the higher-ups hid it instead of published it, because it implicated the President's (George W. Bush's) friend, Bandar bin Sultan al-Saud and his wife [identified in those 28 pages never by name but instead by “the Saudi Ambassador to the United States and his wife,” and “the Saudi Royal Family,” and “the Saudi Government”] as having been funding at least SOME of the 9/11 Saudis. What are you suggesting? — that those FBI agents should have been fired? How stupid is that? It's like: Blame the whistleblower.
This is just another of the countless examples of a frightfully prevalent misinformed public opinion, which falsely assumes that the bottom-level perpetrator or employee who carries out a crime for that person’s boss is MORE instead of LESS to blame for it than that person’s boss is. This public sentiment, in fact, is often so extreme that even an employee who “rats” on or even blows the whistle against and publicly exposes his/her boss for encouraging or even demanding that person’s subordinates to perpetrate evils, is more to blame for the entire matter than is the superior who has incentivized if not outright required that evil to be performed.
This is a prejudice in favor of the powerful and against the weak; in favor of the rich against the poor; in favor of the employer against the employee, and altogether against justice, because what justice is SUPPOSED to do is to ELIMINATE the natural “Might makes right” thumb on the balance-scale of the state’s moral and juridical judgments. Eliminating that natural thumb of the more powerful from pressing down upon the scale of justice, is precisely what justice in a democracy is SUPPOSED to be doing. But far too many people — perhaps even a majority — are deeply prejudiced against eliminating that thumb and instead want it to press even harder, in order to produce a government that institutionally favors the prosecutor against the defendant, and the rich against the poor, and the powerful against the weak. If this is what worship of “The Almighty” comes down to in political and governmental affairs, then it is a pernicious threat against democracy; but, whatever does produce this widespread public sentiment, is, indeed, a threat against democracy. It is inconsistent with, and acidic against, a democratic society.
To the above, an objector might respond by saying that I am wrong and that the boss and the employee in a crime are equally to blame for that crime. Indeed, the statement by “jsarnak” seems to have been assuming this, and to express the view that a whistleblowing employee has no reason to expect his/her career to be destroyed by the boss’s agents — nothing to fear from them by going public. However, as I argued at length in my “How to Reduce the Harms that Billionaires Cause”, the empirical evidence is overwhelming against that view. That is an empirically false view.
Democracy simply cannot exist where this misbelief is the norm. What that misbelief produces instead is a society in which obligations are only from below to above, and not at all from above to below. Above are the employers and the powerful; below are the employees and the weak; and any society that imposes only one-directional obligations, from the below to serve the above, and only one-directional rights, for the above against the below, is a dictatorship, never a democracy.
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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.
