Just recently, I had the pleasure of hearing a discussion laced with mystification at the rest of the world's displeasure with the wonderful United States. These opinions are espoused in an information vacuum lovingly prepared by U.S. media and a will to believe. I was able to offer that "they hate us for our freedoms", which was swallowed whole and agreed with enthusiastically. There is no individual effort to determine whether there may be reason behind the mystifying dissatisfaction with the U.S. It's far easier to explain away with a patently stupid platitude or the always handy "because they're crazy". Even if the lack of knowledge about the subject is not deliberate, it seems that there are too many people who don't apply any compassion or reasoning when formulating opinions. It's either easier or irresistible to simply acquire opinions whole from elsewhere. And that elsewhere is almost invariably the U.S. goverment or the U.S. media, speaking for the U.S. government. The same level of compassion these people use for those close to them is completely absent when discussing those "others", whose evil they have had no occasion to experience first-hand, or even second or third-hand, but whose existence is never doubted. (or so my TV tells me...) It is this capacity for alienation, coupled with a remarkable level of comfort and high standard of living that allows U.S. citizens the luxury of ignoring information. Regardless of the size of the uphill climb, it is this populace that is most in need of education, but, at the same time, most resistant. Whereas blatant lies and fabrications are swallowed wholesale and unquestioned from the television, where it's veracity is authenticated by the U.S. goverment, every scrap of contradictory information offered in the way of education is doubted with an almost religious fervor. "I've never heard that" is a favorite, along with demands of reference and intimations of collusion with anti-U.S. sentiments. Even when information, such as some facts of history concerning U.S. involvement in the Middle East, is accepted, it is still amazing to see the intellectual dexterity exhibited in integrating it into the existing pro-U.S. framework. Each instance of U.S. wrongdoing is explained away, but the enormity of all of the accepted facts taken together, which describes a whole new pattern of behavior of the U.S., is never realized. Each instance is individually justified, usually with logic that, were the sides reversed, would be cause for war on the part of the U.S. If, in fact, such a reversal is proposed, even as an argumentative ploy, it is summarily dismissed as "being ridiculous". This refusal to correlate accepted facts, which would certainly lead to, if not an indictment of U.S. foreign policy, at least a healthier level of skepticism towards it, creates some incredibly large blind spots that are fully exploited by the pettiest and meanest of administrations. How else to explain how the U.S. destroyed, conquered, transplanted governments and instilled dictatorships under the rallying cry of anti-communism? Worse still, once the personification of evil, the Soviet Union, was finally gone, the cry switched smoothly over to a cry of "terrorism" against any that opposed U.S. imperialism...and no one noticed. Those who did notice were free to shout their dissatisfaction into the void; no one was, or is, listening. And haven't we already done this before? People's capacity for ignoring history is too strong. When, scant decades later, the exact same agenda is proposed that patently failed before, it is accepted once again, without question, succumbing to the same logic proven so disastrously wrong before. From <a href="http://www.zmag.org/content/TerrorWar/chomskygab.cfm">Noam Chomsky Interviewed - April 27th</a> on <a href="http://www.zmag.org/">ZNet</a>: <bq>the Reagan administration came into office proclaiming that a "war on terror" would be the core of US foreign policy, and we need not review how they fought that war. "Terrorism" plays a role similar to "Communism," "crime," "drugs," and other devices to frighten the public into supporting policies undertaken to serve the interests of the state and domestic power centers; when one pretext loses its efficacy (like "Communism"), others take its place at once, with scarcely a murmur from the educated classes. ... None of this, of course, is peculiar to the US. This is the way states and other power systems operate. ...</bq> There are always these facts to believe in, all at the same time: <ol> The U.S. is basically a good place, one of the only countries to house a proper democracy. The U.S. is hated by other countries, for entirely inexplicable reasons. The U.S. needs more weapons than any other country. The U.S. needs bases in over 100 countries. The U.S. is justified in pre-emptively attacking other countries, in order to ensure security. The U.S. never had, nor wants, colonies and has no interest in imperialism. The U.S. is a peace-loving country. The U.S. supports only democracy in other nations. </ol> It was George Orwell who wrote in <a href="http://www.online-literature.com/view.php/1984/3?term=enemy">1984</a>: <bq>Oceania was at war with Eurasia and in alliance with Eastasia. In no public or private utterance was it ever admitted that the three powers had at any time been grouped along different lines. Actually, as Winston well knew, it was only four years since Oceania had been at war with Eastasia and in alliance with Eurasia. But that was merely a piece of furtive knowledge which he happened to possess because his memory was not satisfactorily under control. Officially the change of partners had never happened. Oceania was at war with Eurasia: therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia. The enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil, and it followed that any past or future agreement with him was impossible.</bq> This sounds remarkably like the U.S. relationship with Iraq, or Iran, or the Sovier Union/Russia throughout the last 100 years, no? The galvanization of the people provided by always having a dire enemy far offsets the risks incurred by always being at war. A people united for their country will always allow far more control domestically than those of a country at peace. This was all predicted by Orwell over 50 years ago. The imperialism of the U.S. stands strong on top of these citizens as they swallow their country's claims to goodness unquestioned. It is precisely this that makes the required education so difficult to administer. But that is the only way, really, to make a nation of citizens that no longer want to have wrong done in their name.