The most discouraging realization to come out of the debate regarding
The Path to 9/11 is this: the movie is merely symptomatic of
Americans' tendency to consume information in the most efficient and convenient way possible - truth be damned.
Like it or not, we all are all sheep. We are swayed, with varying degrees of ease, by the strength and conviction of public opinion. At the water cooler, in the newspapers, on TV, and here in our blogosphere, we can be persuaded to believe things that may or may not be true, whether or not they run parallel to our better instinct.
Here's something that people in my profession (marketing) have known since the dawn of time: if a person hears something often enough, their own instinct - which includes an inherent quest for truth - will be pushed to the back of the mind in favor of bite-sized talking points and sound bytes, because it's easier to remember and regurgitate. In short, when someone chews our brain food for us, it's simply easier to digest.
To this day, 43% of Americans have fully digested what they've been told for nearly 4 years - that Saddam Hussein and the events of September 11, 2001 are intertwined in some kind of complicated cause-and-effect relationship. Extrapolate the percentages, and we're talking about 130,000,000 million people - your family, your neighbors, your colleagues.
They believe something that even the original purveyors of the lie have now admitted to be untrue. And many will continue to believe it, because the frequency of the message has caused it to be internalized in an almost irreversible way.
From an early age, most of us are taught to trust and respect grown-ups: our parents, our teachers, our heroes, and even the media. That trust causes us, in most cases, to mimic what we see. If you ever went grocery shopping with your mother, you are likely in adulthood to buy many of the same products she bought - not because you're convinced that those products are the best products available, but because you trust your mother's judgment.
When a child watches a cartoon, they know inherently that they are witnessing fiction. After all, their own dog doesn't talk and they've never seen a rabbit upstage a bumbling hunter. It's contrary to their own experience, and they consume it as such. Yet, children are substantially more inquisitive than adults. The number one word in a three-year-old's vocabulary is "why?"
In adulthood, we end our sentences with periods and exclamation points instead of question marks. The Republican Party understands the psychology of consumer behavior very well. Even today, after they've admitted no Iraq/911 connection, after they've admitted their "secret prisons," after they've admitted their NSA wiretapping - many adults will refrain from cynicism, because it's disrespectful and requires individual thought.
Ever wonder why so many southern states are "red"? It's not just the conservative values that are taught in churches and in schools and at home - it's also the highly disciplined family unit that disallows questioning of authority.
This is how women become Republicans, or gays become Catholic. We affiliate with groups that clearly working against our best interests, because we at some point trusted someone (a mother, a priest, a mentor) who told us that group was "right" and all others were "wrong."
For those of you wondering why so many of us are obsessing over the grassroots effort against ABC and The Path to 9/11," it is because of one simple, indisputable, repeatedly-proven truism:
Some people will accept it as fact, because they're inherently hotwired to do so.
It is for that reason that we must continue doing what we do here at DailyKos. We must counter fiction with fact. We must counter lies with truth. We must continue to encourage individual thought. I guarantee that had this "movie" come and gone quietly, with no public pressure and no upswelling of public outcry, Scholastic would still be on board. ABC wouldn't even consider edits or revised disclaimers. Talk shows and news shows wouldn't be having the debate.
None of that would be happening without us. So while the war still eludes us, we have won a small battle, and we should be proud of that.
Back to the original premise of the diary: frequency of message will persuade more than authenticity of message. That's politics, marketing, and human nature all rolled up into one truth. You and I don't have a podium or a news camera or a microphone or the right to reserve 20 minutes of speech time with the TV networks. That makes our hill steeper, but not unconquerable. We still voices and keyboards and motivation and the strength of conviction. That we also have truth is only frosting on the cake.
Let's keep working.