Check out James Bovard’s latest “Attention Deficit Democracy” on FFF. That’s some serious shizzle, bizzle. Below are my favorite excerpts for those of you who can’t read entire essays.

Americans are assured that they are free because rulers take power only with the people’s informed consent. What does “informed consent” mean these days? It means knowing the names of the president’s pets but not knowing his record on key issues. It means knowing the sexual orientation of family members of candidates for high office, but falling prey to their rewriting of history. It means recalling the phrases the government endlessly repeats, and screening out evidence of government atrocities.

The political ignorance of scores of millions of Americans prevents them from recognizing the consequences or dangers of government actions. The citizenry is increasingly on automatic pilot, paying less attention to each new war, each new power grab, each new dubious presidential assertion.

The rising gullibility of the American people may be the most important trend in U.S. democracy. With each passing decade, with each new presidency, it takes less and less to snooker Americans. And a candidate only has to fool enough people on one day to snare power over everyone for four years.

Attention Deficit Democracy begets a government that is nominally democratic – in which elections are boisterous events accompanied by torrents of deceptive ads and mass rallies. But after the election, the president returns to his pedestal. Attention Deficit Democracy lacks the most important check on the abuse of power: an informed citizenry resolutely defending their rights and liberties.

Yep. You’re dumb. It gets worse:

Ironically, despite the government’s long record of deceits, distrust of government is more dangerous than government power itself – at least according to the conventional wisdom of today’s Establishment. Private doubts are supposedly a greater threat to America than official lies. Trust in government becomes mass Prozac, keeping people docile and compliant.

You stupid sheep-person.

We now have the Battered Citizen Syndrome: the more debacles, the more voters cling to faith in their rulers. Like a train engineer bonding with the survivors of a train wreck that happened on his watch, Bush constantly reminded Americans of 9/11 and his wars. The greater the government’s failure to protect, the greater the subsequent mass fear – and the easier it becomes to subjugate the populace. The continuing follies and flounders of the war on terrorism were irrelevant compared to the paramount promise of protection. The craving for a protector drops an Iron Curtain around the mind, preventing a person from accepting evidence that would shred his political security blanket.

I have often wondered about this, in a cynically conjectural way. It’s almost as if the government would prefer disasters like 911 because Big Daddy always enjoys strong favor in times of mass freak-out, as the fear-drug is in peak circulation throughout the citizen body. I’m not saying this is the case, nor do I suspect it to be the case, but it is an interesting, if slightly cynical analysis of power and the psychology of political control.

Attention Deficit Democracy begets Leviathan because rulers exploit people’s ignorance to seize more power over them. The bigger government becomes, the fewer citizens understand it, the less representative it will tend to be. The contract between rulers and ruled is replaced by a blank check. As long as presidents and their appointees recite the proper phrases and strike the correct poses, they can do as they please.

Dude, he said “Leviathan.” I’ve always wanted to say Leviathan. Seriously though, it’s common knowledge that government seeks naturally to perpetuate and grow itself. It’s a big power business after all. Keep people afraid, keep them confused, win their trust through empty rhetoric.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 10th, 2006 at 2:35 pm and is filed under politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.