TakeYourMedicine

What took y'all so long? we want to ask our finally disaffected fellow citizens.

I was raised to think that we were the good guys. The history books I studied certainly didn't tell me any differently. That delusion died a long, slow death. That the government routinely lied to its citizens was the stuff of conspiracy nuts.

If I hadn't been a member of so many marginalized constituencies, I'd have had an even steeper learning curve. I have learned over the years how loath people of privilege are to recognize their privilege, and how resistant they are to surrendering any of it.

So it is with us Americans. We cling to the blinders that screen out the inconvenient truths of our global privilege, and the price at which it's been purchased.

I don't doubt for a minute that Islamists have some perfectly good reasons for hating us that have nothing to do with, as Dubya tells us, our Freedom. It's sad that only terrorists seem to want to tell us what they are.

In the meantime, we Americans need to create in ourselves and in our culture a greater capacity for inquiry. It seems that whenever we stumble historically or intellectually, we mumble "whatever," and change the channel.

Read Howard Zinn's essay linked above to learn more about our government's capacity for lies and the cultural assumptions that make it so easy for us to believe them.

# posted by Lulu Maude @ 5:01 PM