40% of our fellow Americans living in denial?!

[patmacsf]

According to a new CBS/New York Times poll (among other things) only 60% of those polled believe that the economy is worse today than before Bush took office. Huh?!? What rock have these deluded individuals been living under? This doesn't even rise to the typical 25-30% of hard-core Republicans that will always say down is up as long as it supports the Republican point of view ... this is a full 40% of people who can't add 1 and 1. The 300 billion dollar surplus that is now a 300 billion dollar deficit, the historically record unemployment, the increases in the number of children and women living in poverty, the number of people who no longer have health insurance ...

How can people live in a dream world like that?

[Jacobin]

1. That "t" should be a "b"

[patmacsf]

6. Thanks, I got over-zealous

[Warpy]

2. Hey, it aint happenin' to me

....and that means it aint happenin"

[RobertSeattle]

3. Dumb joke...

"Had a Freeper come up to me and ask how to get to Cairo? I asked him Why. Said he and his buddies all want to det to Denial"

[Brucey]

4. It's completely weird...

I guess people who like Bush* just give favorable answers to any question in order to show support. Whatever.

[tom_paine]

9. Yes, we are not facing American as you remember them, Brucey

But Amerikans, specifically programmed for the last two decades by an insidious propaganda machine that make Goebbels look like a kid with a megaphone.

Of course this propaganda machine only superficially and strategically resemble Goebbels, because that would be bad PR.

When you consider it that way, as opposed to thinking you are going up against Republicans from the Old American Republic, things make much more sense.

See my post below. It's not weird at all. Such Orwellian behavior is to be expected form people subjeceted to Orwellian/Nazi/Commie-style redefinition of language/unchallenegd lies and the rest of it that comprises what I call Goebbels v2.0.

[demnan]

5. This was driven home to me yesterday . . .

when an IT manager I thought to be at least reasonably intelligent stated that the Democrats were no good on the economy. :crazy:

[ramapo]

10. It's all about me

The economy isn't a problem for the more self-centered of our fellow Americans until they are directly impacted in a negative way. So when the Repub IT guy's job becomes obsolete after he's saved his company a bundle by outsourcing to India, then the economy sucks. But then it's Clinton's fault anyway.

[tom_paine]

7. The success of Goebbels v2.0

Propaganda & lies, as we've seen, when allowed to incubate unchallenged, acts just as Goebbels (the original) said it did seventy years ago.

It becomes "conventional wisdom".

Given the general inability of the Democratic Party to fight back, challeneg lies, or even recognize the infrastructure of Goebbels v2.0 growing around them even as it strangled them (I didn't fully understand either, and thus am a little forgivign of their mistake...what they and we are up against is too monstrous to even consider...hey at least the Busheviks aren't as violent as their spiritual forebears, Grandpa Prescott's business partners...yet), we can see that, like in Nazi Germany, Goebbels v2.0 evetually becomes self-fufilling prophecy.

It is one thing for Freeper, Dittoheads, Brownshirts, and other programmed automatons to believe what Master tells them, that up is down war is peace slavery is freedom.

But we now know that, if left unchallenegd, Goebbels v2.0, like v1.0 before it, will ultimately come to be believed by a majority of the people, who will bully, cow and intimidate the others into supporting Fuehrer Bunnypants*.

As Sebastian Haffner said in "Defying Hitler": "In 1932, 60% of Germans voted for someone other than Hitler. What happened to them?"

Well, in 2000, 53% of Ameicans voted against Fuehrer Bunnypants*. If we allow Goebbels v2.0 to remain unchallenegd one day historians picking over the bones of the Amerikan Empire will be asking the same question.

We Free Americans must not allow the Bushevik Brownshirts to make that happen!

[Seneca]

8. I have long held that view

America is in deep denial about many things, and it was worsened by 9-11.

America is in denial about our declining schools and our level of knowledge versus other industrialized nations. Geography, math, you name it. America is not Number 1.

America is in denial about our long history of the dark side of our foreign policy, which plays a major role in 9-11.

America is in denial about being a nation of rude, self-centered, SUV-driving, obese Survivor-watching morans obsessed with celebrity tabloid pseudo-journalism.

Americans are in denial about their declining incomes, disappearing benefits, degrading environment, and less affordable health care.

Americans are in denial, which is nowhere near Egypt.

What's the cure? I don't know. Surely, more Bush or anyone like him for another 4 years is the farthest thing from it.

Why the denial?

Years of complacency, and media and school-fueled propaganda that tells us America is a perfectly swell country with NO flaws, and that to question it means you are disloyal (this came to full fruition with 9-11 and Ashcroft/Congress's Patriot Act). With things going to hell in the past few years, cognitive dissonance sets in, and the wiring comes loose. Perhaps denial is a mass form of repression from the national trauma, for which 9-11 was the catalyst. I don't know, but I know it has to do with being spoon fed a LOT of crap about being the swellest bunch of chumps on the face of the earth.

America is truly great in many ways, and truly fucked in others. Until at least HALF of the population comes to grips with the fucked part, we will never fully be able to develop the potential of the great part. We're adrift, and Bush is doing his damndest to take us down into the black waves.

[ramapo]

11. 30 years and counting

We're about 30 years into the denial thing now. I remember how disgusted I was when disco became "music", Happy Days was the most popular TV show, and Jerry Rubin went from being a Yippie to a Yuppie.

The excuse was, "people are tired from the '60s" and they have to go offline for awhile.

It's been all downhill since.

[Seneca]

14. that's roughly the timeline since Watergate

Do you think that plays into it? Watergate certainly did a major part in exposing the deep imperfections of the American system we were taught as youngsters to revere.

[sinkingfeeling]

15. I agree.....

but I'm terrified that this is truly the early stages of an unique American version of fascism. Those 40% are either the wealthy repubs happliy enjoying their shallow materialism or those who are in complete denial. I also believe (no offense intended to the deeply held religious beliefs of some here) that part of the propaganda machine is the extreme fundamentalist churches. They tell their followers, "Not to worry, trust in the Lord".

[rucky]

12. Denial? What Denial?

The poll numbers are FINE...heh...the economy is GREAT...the rich people are just HOLDING our money for us...terror alerts are HELPFUL...i feel...er...SAFE...we hava fighting force of EXTRAORDINARY MAGNITUDE... * has our GRATITUDE (sniff).
There's no denial. Maybe you're the one in denial. Why are all you pointing the finger at other people? Why don't you point the finger at yourselves? um...United we Stand. er...You're either with us or against us.

[nomaco-10]

13. Well, I'll tell you....

It is a dream world to many of them. My brother-in-law and his family own a company that had several branches all over the United States, they closed most of them down and built a huge plant in Mexico. They pay their employees about $3.00 per hour and extol the hard working virtues of the Mexicans all the time. In case you haven't figured it out, he is a repub and so now is my dear younger sister who married him some 25 yrs. ago. They have season tickets to all the Titan games in a VIP skybox, he takes golf trips to Scotland, he has tickets to The Masters, they eat at only the finest retaurants and attend the Super Bowl and the World Series regularly. They don't get it, "what's all the grumbling about, "I think the economy is great".