Social scientists, psychology majors, deep thinkers: check in here.

[kansasblue]

So more and more people think the country's going to heck in a hand basket. How ever the news media is keeping it hush hush.

What happens when a group (like in the US) when everyone start feeling things are going bad but as far as most people can tell most everyone else (so you are told) thinks things are fine?

It reminds me for the old psychology experiment where you put 5 people in a room waiting and then there is a incident in the next room. A man falls and cries for help. In the group of 5, 4 of them are really part of the experiment and told not to react. The 5th person is really the one being tested. It's surprising how many times that the 5th person did nothing to help the hurt person because he see no one else reacting.

So back to our country. Everyone beginning to feel bad about the direction of the county but the media isn't carrying it.

For example:

Today's AP/Ipsos Poll has Bush approval at 39%. That should be headlines. It's buried.

Look at right direction/wrong direction: 32% / 65%

Look at approval: 39% approve, 59% disapprove

Buried again is this POWERFUL stat: 40% strongly disapprove,

That's more than both (strong approve, somewhat approve, lean toward)

Buried. So back to the original question. What is the end result of this mass deception?



http://www.ap-ipsosresults.com/

click on topline results

[whistle]

1. The country will survive, but it will be different, politically fascist...

...fewer personal freedoms, more powerful domination by the wealthy, smaller middle class, increasingly larger poverty class, few social services, outlawing employees unions, corporate domination of workers, etc. (See movie "Brazil" by Terry Gilliam as a model).

http://www.trond.com/brazil/

It is so comforting to know that it was Ronald Reagan who got the ball rolling on this.

[chomskysright]

2. Stanley Milgram's experiments; HERE: we're mapping MALEVOLENT NEGLECT

Its Malevolent Neglect and we're mapping it. Here is something I wrote back on Thursday. I sent it to Krugman.

There's a phenomenon going on here re: lack of federal assistance in N.O. and what took place prior to 9-11. I'm using the phrase (as psychologists are prone to assign something a descriptor as a kind of short-hand) "Malevolent Neglect."

We now have 2 BIG instances of Malevolent Neglect: 9-11 and New Orleans.

Both are associated with information voluminously parlayed to Bush's administration prior to the event. This is established.

Back up: get away from the smoke: what do you see: 2 events with massive warning, should've-been-planning, finger pointing during which nothing goes into the US Cabinet and little impact on the U.S. Congress.

I keep thinking back to Stanley Milgram's experiments; to Zimbardo's prison experiment. There are big archetypal forces being examined in all of these settings: sadism and torture.

There is a social psychology experiment being played out here---either consciously or unconsciously. I think some of both, more conscious than not, with the related parties, particularly Rove I think, working the pieces onto the board and then whistling as he walks away into the dark of the night, knowing that sometime/ somewhere the levee will break, the terrorists will take over the planes, the London Muslims scrambling in their back-packs because they all of a sudden figured out what was up.

[bigbrother05]

3. The Emperor's new clothes

Group think. If 'everyone' says one thing, it takes a strong character or the innocence of a child to point out the obvious. A voice in the wilderness, etc. are examples of the same kind of outcry against the Status Quo. But look at the kid in Tienanmen Square. Largely symbolic, but a lasting image that future generations in China should revere.

Your question is well founded, but there are still plenty of people (just look around this site) who will fight the lies, whether there are 4 or 4,000 aligned against them. Bush hasn't had a long enough time to completely wipe out the shared American story of individuals standing against tyranny.

Even the MSM rose up in NO even if they end up backsliding. When people face, within their own experience, absolute evidence of lies, they will have a shift in perception. It might not be the first or even the fifth one that does it, but the change will come.

[Mountainman]

4. My guess is that what people saw in NOLA last week scared the shit out of

them. People are asking themselves, could that be me someday? The answer is yes if things keep going the way they are.

The reason people can be behind the war and the administration especially if they are older is because the vision of America that they have in their minds is stronger than the vision of reality they see with their eyes. For example, in the America in their minds we do not go to war preemptively but only out of self defense. The president doesn't lie to us to get us to back a war. People are not dying in the streets homeless, hungry and and thirsty. And the media has reinforced the America we have in our minds.

But now reality is getting just too hard to dismiss. The media can't keep telling us "don't pay attention to that man behind the curtains."

Like Judy says to the wizard, "you're a very bad man." People are beginning to say that about Bush.