indoctriNATION

Posted by Guest Blogger "Sayf Maslul"


Because there is so much indoctrination that many people can’t even understand the word “profits.” If you try using the word “profits” around Harvard, for example, in the Kennedy School of Government, if you say “Clinton’s out there getting profits for rich Americans,” then people would be appalled — “Is he some kind of conspiracy theorist? Marxist? anti-American? or crazed radical?” 

Even elementary truisms like this, which to someone like Adam Smith, are so obvious he scarcely even bothered to talk about them, are completely beaten out of heads of educated people. In fact, I think it’s worse among the educated sectors than among the uneducated. 

I’ve talked to all sorts of people, and it would be harder to convince Harvard graduates that this deal with Exxon was for profits than it would be to convince guys on the street. They’d say “Yeah, obviously.” 

And the reason is, if you’ve been really well educated, meaning well indoctrinated, you can’t even think rational thoughts any longer. They can’t come to you, the words can’t come to you. 

So, I don’t think Elaine Sciolino is lying, it’s just that the conception of the state working to increase profits for wealthy Americans is inconceivable. You can’t think that thought. If it’s ever expressed, you have to designate it “unthinkable,” with scare words like “conspiracy theory.” And that’s the process of “good education.” 

People who don’t internalize those values are weeded out along the way. By the time you get to the top, you’ve internalized them.”
[By Noam Chomsky]