The policy of fooling the people
M. Orhan Tarhan
May 02, 2008
In the previous LETTER it was explained how the Bush Administration fooled the American people about the Iraq War and it was pretty successful at it. It fooled the entire Congress first. Many people here still don´t see the light. Unfortunately, the policy of fooling the people is not limited to the Iraq war. In many aspects of our lives we are fooled. I want to talk about some of those aspects today.
First, how come that we can be fooled so easily? The reason is of course our primary education. I discussed "Education in America" in full detail some time ago. For those who do not remember it, I will repeat here a short version of it. The present American Education is still based on the so-called reforms of John Dewey about a century ago. It was designed to convert illiterate immigrants to literate miners but the system was applied to all the children. It does not teach the children to think for themselves. It does not teach them to distinguish the right from the wrong. It teaches them many disconnected facts, but no systematic math, sciences, history or anything. (I had an excellent primary and high school education in Turkey that included even philosophy)
The worse case of blatant fooling I remember was the fooling of hundreds of average people, men, women , and children, in a place called Johnstown (If my memory is right) to kill themselves, so that they can go to a better life in another planet. I may not remember the reason right, but they indeed killed themselves en mass. All of them had at least the American primary education. That education did not save their lives. Because they had not learned to distinguish the non-sense they were told from the reality. I was reminded that there was a second such case around San Francisco.
I heard some people saying that a country like America, that has the best universities in the World, and can send a men to the moon, should be able to fix the education of its people in no time if it really wanted to . For years every president talked about fixing, yet the old lousy education still did not improve a bit. Years ago I read that businesses wanted that women are not made smarter, because they would not swallow the fooling advertisements of what ever they were selling.. I read quite recently that the Exxon-Mobile Corporation spent several $ millions to put doubt in peoples minds on Global warming. Everybody wants the people dumb enough so that they can easily fool them.
I have been taking cholesterol-lowering drugs since 1992. During the last two years the side-effects of the statins that are contained in those drugs destroyed my leg muscles. My doctor, who ´s source of information must be just drug companies, believed sincerely that if I discontinued to take statins in some form, "I would get heart attacks and die" . But more recent studies showed that there was actually no direct correlation between cholesterol content of blood and mortality. Several drugs were banned to claim in their advertisements that they save lives. All this time I was fouled to use a drug that destroyed my muscles and was not absolutely necessary for my life. The remarkable thing was, that not only I, but my doctor was fooled as well.
The latest financial crisis started simply by some eager real estate man trying to fool some ignorant customer by selling him a house he cannot afford to buy. For that he let the customer pay only the interest for a while. Then when also the principal was due, of course the customer could not pay it and the house had to be taken away from him. The real estate person certainly knew perfectly well what would happen, but for a good profit, he did not mind destroying a fool´s life. A multitude of such fooling made an international financial crisis. I think knowingly driving ignorant people to poverty and homelessness should be a crime.
Several decades ago, some one marketed "pet rocks" . These were rounded pieces of some rock that a love-sick teenager would buy to pet, like a dog or a cat. Even some grown ups bought pet rocks. That was fooling by excellence.
Again several decades ago, an overseas nephew of my wife asked us to send him a polo shirt. I went to shop for it. I found that exactly the same shirt without that horse figure was selling for $14, but the addition of the horse figure raised the price to $92. Selling $14 shirts for $92 was pretty good business. They could do that by developing a culture of brand names that people thought was elevating them some how. That also was pretty slick fooling.
Of course, governments fool the public opinion all the time. The same thing is also done by partisan newspaper commentators. During the Vietnam War, there were never any news that we were being defeated by the Vietcong. Until the last helicopter left the roof of the U.S. Embassy, we were always making progress. I.
In news coming from Turkey, the Laic people who wanted to live like Westerners, according to the reforms of Ataturk are portrayed as the "bad guys" and the religious party that wants to rollback Ataturk´s reforms and make Turkey an Islamic republic is portrayed as the "good Guys" . I think the Bush administration who is trying to fool the American people that way, in fact is fooling itself. Should we be friends with Western-minded people or should we court Islamist people who are closer to Osama bin Laden than to us?
I would like to ask my readers to e-mail to me (orhant@verizon.net) their own examples of FOOLING that are different from those given above. I will make them another LETTER and publish them with their names. It must be in English.
The policy of fooling the people
First, how come that we can be fooled so easily? The reason is of course our primary education. I discussed "Education in America" in full detail some time ago. For those who do not remember it, I will repeat here a short version of it. The present American Education is still based on the so-called reforms of John Dewey about a century ago. It was designed to convert illiterate immigrants to literate miners but the system was applied to all the children. It does not teach the children to think for themselves. It does not teach them to distinguish the right from the wrong. It teaches them many disconnected facts, but no systematic math, sciences, history or anything. (I had an excellent primary and high school education in Turkey that included even philosophy)
The worse case of blatant fooling I remember was the fooling of hundreds of average people, men, women , and children, in a place called Johnstown (If my memory is right) to kill themselves, so that they can go to a better life in another planet. I may not remember the reason right, but they indeed killed themselves en mass. All of them had at least the American primary education. That education did not save their lives. Because they had not learned to distinguish the non-sense they were told from the reality. I was reminded that there was a second such case around San Francisco.
I heard some people saying that a country like America, that has the best universities in the World, and can send a men to the moon, should be able to fix the education of its people in no time if it really wanted to . For years every president talked about fixing, yet the old lousy education still did not improve a bit. Years ago I read that businesses wanted that women are not made smarter, because they would not swallow the fooling advertisements of what ever they were selling.. I read quite recently that the Exxon-Mobile Corporation spent several $ millions to put doubt in peoples minds on Global warming. Everybody wants the people dumb enough so that they can easily fool them.
I have been taking cholesterol-lowering drugs since 1992. During the last two years the side-effects of the statins that are contained in those drugs destroyed my leg muscles. My doctor, who ´s source of information must be just drug companies, believed sincerely that if I discontinued to take statins in some form, "I would get heart attacks and die" . But more recent studies showed that there was actually no direct correlation between cholesterol content of blood and mortality. Several drugs were banned to claim in their advertisements that they save lives. All this time I was fouled to use a drug that destroyed my muscles and was not absolutely necessary for my life. The remarkable thing was, that not only I, but my doctor was fooled as well.
The latest financial crisis started simply by some eager real estate man trying to fool some ignorant customer by selling him a house he cannot afford to buy. For that he let the customer pay only the interest for a while. Then when also the principal was due, of course the customer could not pay it and the house had to be taken away from him. The real estate person certainly knew perfectly well what would happen, but for a good profit, he did not mind destroying a fool´s life. A multitude of such fooling made an international financial crisis. I think knowingly driving ignorant people to poverty and homelessness should be a crime.
Several decades ago, some one marketed "pet rocks" . These were rounded pieces of some rock that a love-sick teenager would buy to pet, like a dog or a cat. Even some grown ups bought pet rocks. That was fooling by excellence.
Again several decades ago, an overseas nephew of my wife asked us to send him a polo shirt. I went to shop for it. I found that exactly the same shirt without that horse figure was selling for $14, but the addition of the horse figure raised the price to $92. Selling $14 shirts for $92 was pretty good business. They could do that by developing a culture of brand names that people thought was elevating them some how. That also was pretty slick fooling.
Of course, governments fool the public opinion all the time. The same thing is also done by partisan newspaper commentators. During the Vietnam War, there were never any news that we were being defeated by the Vietcong. Until the last helicopter left the roof of the U.S. Embassy, we were always making progress. I.
In news coming from Turkey, the Laic people who wanted to live like Westerners, according to the reforms of Ataturk are portrayed as the "bad guys" and the religious party that wants to rollback Ataturk´s reforms and make Turkey an Islamic republic is portrayed as the "good Guys" . I think the Bush administration who is trying to fool the American people that way, in fact is fooling itself. Should we be friends with Western-minded people or should we court Islamist people who are closer to Osama bin Laden than to us?
I would like to ask my readers to e-mail to me (orhant@verizon.net) their own examples of FOOLING that are different from those given above. I will make them another LETTER and publish them with their names. It must be in English.
The policy of fooling the people
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