NAZI Germany, Bolshevik Russia, Apartheid South Africa, the Iranian Revolution...it’s not hard to find extreme examples of entire nations that have been misled.  The problem is that pointing out when a nation is actually being misled is very hard to do until it’s too late, and the extreme has been reached.  The United States of America no longer suffers from the problem of deciding whether or not she is being misled.

"Michelle’s Barbershop” is a 2-chair/1 small business tucked away in a tiny shopping plaza off the main roads in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio.  Yesterday Michelle was chopping a certain writer’s mop and when the interlocking topic of Iraq/partisan politics/and the global war on terror came up, she stopped.  Michelle-a very nice, mild-mannered, and intelligent woman spun the chair and looked the writer in the eyes.  “Ya know, I just don’t know who to believe anymore.  I mean, FOX News tells you one thing, MSNBC tells you another.  Democrats claim one thing, then they don’t seem to have the nerve to do it.”

She was responding to a discussion about Sen. Clinton’s run for the 08 Presidency, and her claims:

“If I had been president in October of 2002, I would not have started this war. I would not!”
-Sen. Hillary Clinton (D, NY), 2/2/07

“In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al Qaeda members ... It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons.”
- Sen. Hillary Clinton (D, NY), 10/2/02

Michelle works.  She’s a single mom and small business owner.  She doesn’t have time to read the daily or weekly briefings from CENTCOM, and the traditional media doesn’t cover them for her.  She doesn’t have the time to research and see how much of what is on FOX and MSNBC is spin.  She is unique, however, in that she has one of those rare professions that gives her a direct finger on the pulse of Americans.  She was absolutely in disbelief when I pointed out Sen. Clinton’s duplicity.  Michelle is representative of America, and few people know what America is thinking the way a barber does!

This intelligent, caring, skilled woman has been completely misled into believing that history never happened; that Sen. Clinton and all Democrats have always been against the war.  Michelle and other Americans by and large believe that the war in Iraq is Bush’s War or a Republican War.  40% of Americans also believe that the Bush Administration either participated in the 911 attacks on the United States or that they knew about the attacks and let them occur.  This doesn’t mean 40% of Americans are morons, conspiracy theory kooks, or nutjobs.  It doesn’t mean that almost half of America is stupid.  It means they’ve been misled, and even the smartest people can be misled.

How do intelligent, caring, and thoughtful people become furious over the war, and so easily mislead?  Smart people aren’t supposed to believe nonsense.  Loving people are supposed to care about populations-not hate individuals.  Intelligent historians are supposed to have learned from history.  Yet on both sides of the political debate about the war we have such people.  HOW does that happen?

Last week The History Channel seemed to have a Cult Day or something.  All day long they aired shows about cults.  Among these was a show about the Jonestown massacre on.  Jim Jones’ son brought up a good point (smart guy btw).  He said his father took a group of people who were downtrodden, penniless, hopeless, and he gave them hope.  He gave them comfort.  He gave them leadership.  He told them what they wanted to hear, and made them believe it by convincing them that their greatest fears were true.  He gave them hope against those greatest fears.  He misled them.  Then he took all that hope away, and left only the hope of peace in the afterlife, and that’s how he killed them.  It’s brainwashing 101.  Deliberate, incidental, accidental, inevitable...it doesn’t matter so much WHY it happened as it does HOW it happened.

I thought, isn’t that exactly what dems have done?  The appeal to the most oppressed, those who feel unrepresented, those who fear, and then enhance those fears while providing themselves as the comforting agent.  Now, what happens if they take away all that comfort and steer their masses into a new direction-not necessarily ritual suicide, but why not national impotence?  And on the flipside, what happens when the leaders get all that power they’ve manipulated so hard to get, and then demonstrate that it was all a lie-what do their masses do then?  Do they wig out and the themes in which they’ve taken comfort run amok (see also huge rise in anti-war rhetoric and fire as in wapo article)?

The next step is to go from understanding how intelligent, caring people are lead to drink the kool aid towards getting those same people to recognize it…recognize it before it’s too late.  Thankfully, no one needs to point this out.  We don’t have to tell Americans like Michelle that they’re being misled.  She knows it.  Her customers know it.  America knows it.  They just don’t know where to find the truth anymore.

However, there are those who still drink the red juice who do not realize it.  Now that their leaders have the power they’ve pandered to gain, the followers are lost.  No longer can the followers demand impeachment, demand an end to the war in Iraq, demand that Iran be ignored/appeased.  Well, they can do all those things, but now they have to make the demands to their leaders who have the power in Washington, and those leaders don’t have any intention, ability, or courage to accomplish those tasks; tasks which were really their tools for pandering their way to power.

So, in reaction to the loss of their leadership, in reaction to the reality that they were successfully pandered by politicians seeking power, and in reaction to the built up fears, expectations, and broken promises the people who were the most misled are lashing out in familiar directions.  It’s a scenario that resembles the implosion of a nuclear device followed by the explosion of frustrations in all directions.  But as the explosion reaches farther and farther, it becomes weaker, less believable, and certainly less effective.

Jane Fonda, William Arkin, Sean Penn, and Dennis Kucinich can rant and rave all day long, but why?  It’s not going to stop, deter, or even weaken President Bush’s resolve to wage war in Iraq.  He has nothing left to gain or lose here at home, and only success in the war to pursue now.  In the background, the Democrats in Congress, and the leftist base can whine and cry and protest and rant and rave, but their leaders will do nothing.  They can’t even find the courage to debate a non-binding resolution promising not to cut funding for the war.  It would appear that while the Democrats won majority status in both houses on Capitol Hill, they have lost the political war and instead set the stage for a great party divide in 2008.

The only things lower than President Bush’s approval ratings-are the Democratic Congress’ approval rating.  While most Americans might not know the truths yet, they are learning the lies that they were sold by a conspiracy and scandal crazed traditional media, by pandering politicians, and by political extremists on the left.  America no longer suffers from the problem of deciding whether or not she is being misled.  She need only be shown the reality, and lead to accept it.