It's a cowardice of the spirit

Many times since I moved to Canada 18 years ago, Canadians have told me that Americans are good people ... they just have a very bad government ... and it's not really the fault of the American people; they are just so propagandized they don't know what to believe anymore.  That's an argument that I don't believe holds water.  First of all, because Americans are supposed to be the world's shining example of a self-governing people; Americans are their own government.  If Americans want to deny responsibility for the actions of their government; they cannot at the same time claim to be a self-governing nation

As for propaganda; I have made a serious mistake believing, for years, that access to the truth was the antidote to propaganda.  Alternatives to the corporate-controlled US mainstream media are out there; whistleblowers have informed us of horrendous crimes (like the Abu Ghraib photos or the Collateral Murder video released by Wikileaks) that the US mainstream media chose not to investigate.  And the social media sites are rich, not just with conspiracy theories, though there's plenty of that, but with facts that the mainstream media chooses to ignore or, worse, attempt to discredit.

The mainstream US media is not part of any conspiracy to hide the truth; they are reporting what they believe their viewers and readers want to hear; they are filling a market demand, and that is not evil; that is just business.  Most Americans would prefer to be told what to think and how to feel.  That's comforting; that's security. 

If you are such a person, you will not heed my advice to "read a foreign newspaper once in a while." No. You are going to tune to that network news channel every evening, and get your talking points for the next day.  It feels right.  It comforts you in your beliefs.  It thinks for you.

That isn't ignorance, and it isn't indolence. It's a cowardice of the spirit.  It's a cowardice that makes a man want to give control of his mind and his conscience to a political party or to a church or to religious leaders, or the US Marine Corps or Boeing Aerospace or whatever institution or ideological credo.

Look, I know we all have biases and beliefs we'd prefer not to give up.  But when we willingly, eagerly, attempt to hide the truth, or hide from the truth, because we just don't want to deal with it, or the feelings that it might engender, we exhibit cowardice of the spirit.  It's not cowardice based on fear for our safety; but on a fear of having to deal with basic human emotions and moral decisions.  We run from ourselves.  We let someone else deal with those most basic individual moral conflicts.  We fail to exhibit something that I believe is properly termed "character."

So I'll say, once again, put down that cell phone and read something for a change.  I have zero expectation that anyone will.  Addictive behaviors can be extremely hard to break.

The core of all character lies in individuality. Character is a moral fact: and, until life is individual, it is not moral. And by individual we mean something single, separate, and alone, that cannot be accounted for from outside, cannot be grouped under any general laws, cannot be extracted out of outside conditions. Its actions must spring from out of itself, it makes them happen; and you have to enter into its inner life and secrets if you would know why it does anything. However alike the circumstances may be, no other being would do exactly what this character does, or say what it says. It is this seal of individuality which it sets on everything that comes out from it, which makes it a character. Sometimes it stamps it weakly, and then we say a person has little or no character; or sometimes it stamps it forcibly, and then we say, ‘That is a man of character.’

– Henry Scott Holland, Creed and Character, 1887