A democracy cannot survive if one exposé after another uncovering criminality and deceit is ignored by a blood mob, millions strong, surrounding the castle, protecting evil in power while cheering on attacks against truth tellers.
That’s not painting a rosy picture of nearly half of America, but it’s not inaccurate.
If we bend over backwards to understand what is happening, I think we come to this: there is one time when most of us think it is justified to plug our ears and refuse to risk conversion to another view, and that time is in War.
In War we expect our soldiers to give only name, rank and serial number, refusing to otherwise engage. Resistance to reason is commended as strength against propaganda, coercion, and the risk of treason. We believe that the incredible strain of being a prisoner of war makes it impossible to honestly evaluate propaganda, we are at risk of brainwashing under such pressure, so we are exhorted to treat all communication as false, and to resist instead.
When the soldier hums an anthem and plugs his ears against his captive’s arguments, we applaud his valor. We know that self-interest pushes the captive into embracing the man with the whip and the bread, and the man who refuses and faces lash and starvation instead is a true hero.
But perhaps many never really understood the point of this sort of valor? Especially those raised in closed-minded Churches that praised congregants for clinging to faith in the face of reason? Did they learn the pernicious lesson that plugging one’s ears against attacks on one’s current dogma is not ignorant, but somehow valorous? That refusing to learn, especially that Emperor has no clothes, is not vice but virtue?
Is this a description, perhaps even a defense, of at least some of those Americans who seem deaf to the mountains of evidence that this is an authoritarian Coup and democracy is fast slipping away?
Are they plugging their ears and humming to block us out because this is what the loyal, faithful, obedient soldier does, even when the Officers in Charge have turned traitor?
Surely there is no forgiveness for those who have justified terrorizing sexual assault victims or terrorizing children in detention camps or depriving the poor of food stamps and the elderly of medical care, but what of the others? The simple, faithful soldiers, already, but unbeknownst to them, victims of this cabal, too? Shall we forgive them?
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