We, humans that is, are quite easily deceived. We are taught to believe what we hear, especially when it comes from a purported authority - a status now bestowed on anyone who has access to a variety of new and traditional media outlets. We tend not to notice, focus in on, or want to resolve contradictions. When two people tell a different story about the same thing, our first impulse is that the 'truth lies somewhere in the middle,' rather than the equally (and often times more) plausible possibility that one or both of them is lying. Cognitively speaking, we have a hard time translating abstract ideas (Politicians are corrupt!) into concrete reality (but not my representative). These are the qualities that have made us such perfect candidates for being manipulated and oppressed by the people with the power and acumen to do so.

Tocqueville noted that people don't revolt when things are bad, they revolt when things are getting worse. This impulse has a mirror image, that we won't revolt if we think things are getting better, which has been the cornerstone of the various Machiavellian enterprises undertaken by our government in this century and the last. By concealing the two steps backward that has been taken by our nation, they can victoriously claim the one step taken ahead, and then convince us things are improving. As long as the public is left believing in that step forward, things are kept to a low simmer, and power is protected.

Nearly a lifetime has passed since America ushered in a new iteration of xenophobia and intolerance with the Second Red Scare. We often forget about the first one, since anarchists didn't have the atom bomb, but it bears noting that McCarthy didn't invent witch hunts or punishing people for believing the wrong ideology, he just happened to have a good brand for it.

Two steps back. Students in American public schools were routinely told to fear imminent nuclear destruction at the hands of the Soviet Menace. Curriculum reflected a belief that Soviet Communism was intent on enslaving the world, nuking American cities, killing god and - this is always the trump card - violating the innocence of our women. The USSR had the armies, but the real threat was the idea, so we taught our kids to fear Reds and report them to the police.

One step ahead. McCarthy is repudiated, the Supreme Court eventually forces the government to stop imposing political tests on employees. To this day I, as a teacher, am not required to recite the pledge of allegiance or sign a piece of paper attesting to my political affiliations.

But it's that unaccounted for step that's doing us in.

Since 1946 it has been illegal to require students to stand or recite the pledge of allegiance. The case is Minersville School District v Gobitas, look it up. The Supreme Court was quite clear on this, and the ruling still stands to this day: it is a violation of the First Amendment to require students to stand for or recite what is, unabashedly, a loyalty oath. And yet, each of the public schools I've visited have either had school wide policies requiring students to stand or recite the pledge, or had teachers who - with full knowledge of the administration - required that of students.

Washington law is quite clear. Respectful silence, nothing else, is required. Tell your school board.

What example are we setting for future citizens, if schools can't even abide by the simplest of the requirements of the First Amendment: freedom of conscience? The issue of peer pressure, that awful wrenching feeling of your stomach dropping into your lower abdomen as you realize you're the only one not standing, this is usually enough to snuff out errant desires for individuality. When the state puts its power behind such a proposition, though, well ... we've seen the results.
One unaccounted for step.

The pledge, I'm told this all the time, isn't such a big deal. If you think this you've missed the point. In the last sixty years, we have steadily culled a once diverse political spectrum. Left or Right, when a third party arises they're targeted for destruction so they won't split the vote. People who choose not to work within the Republocrat party are ridiculed and despised. The idea that all people in American public schools have to swear fealty to a flag (and not, for instance, the Constitution, as our elected officials and those in the military service do) says, very clearly, that you are not allowed to disagree on this issue. We are a republic. We are capitalist. We are White. We are Male. These things are not up for discussion.

What was it, then, that we lost in that step?

It was our freedom to think new thoughts. We gave away our freedom to think during the Cold War, and then our leaders claimed to give it back to us in small pieces, weekly installments of a civil liberty at a time. In the mix, they hoped we wouldn't notice all the bits they kept for themselves. And we didn't. Enron, civil liberties, we're really terrible accountants. As a nation, it doesn't even occur to us that things can change, and that's exactly what the architects of this disaster wanted. Three hundred million people who have forgotten how to think new thoughts. All we're left with, then, is the stale, decaying, way-it-always-was that never really was, in which a few made millions, and the rest break their backs to scrape by.

We don’t like to think of it as such, but we don’t own this country. Banks and real estate groups, not people, own most of our homes. Our lenders own our cars and furniture. Our jobs, the source of the money we need to feed and clothe our families, exist only so long as the millionaire owner can make more millions off our labor. National parks are auctioned to timber companies and mountains are erased so coal companies can increase their stock price by half a percent. Our economy is designed for the sole purpose of siphoning wealth up. Our government is designed to make sure no one threatens the economy. We fought a Cold War for capitalism, which is to say millions of people paid taxes for less than a tenth of a percent of the country could stay rich. And what’s best for business is a nation of consumers who don’t ask if they really need what they’re working so hard to afford.

And now I’m crazy for noticing it.

We did this. We made it unacceptable to dissent. We narrowed the spectrum of what you can and cannot say, when we should have been broadening the diversity of ideas we entertain. The veiled owners of this country orchestrated it but we, the great press of humanity, happily did as we were told. Every time something terrible happens we turn to the people in charge and demand that they change. Why would they? It's not like you're going to vote out an incumbent of your own party because they get you angry. Look at Liebermen - the guy is beaten in a primary and still wins the general. Message received loud and clear, Connecticut: you're going with the devil you know. Loud and clear.

When we stopped letting people disagree we signed away our country to whatever snake oil salesman ran for office or opened a brokerage firm By removing the possibility of new ideas being presented, by allowing only one version of the truth into classrooms, by applying penalties - official and personal - to those that fall outside 'acceptable parameters' of thought, we create exactly what we see before us today: compliant, uncreative people who accept the status quo unthinkingly.

Fifty years ago there was a serious discussion about our nation’s commitment to maintaining capitalism. MLK advocated rethinking our choice to prop up capitalism at home and abroad. Leaders of the Civil Rights movement were communists and socialists. We remember hippies for opposing the war, but the movements that made up the 60’s recognized profit and private ownership of the economy as weapons of equal violence to napalm and an M16. A president even had the wherewithal to say that poverty was bad and it was our social responsibility to eliminate it. And the response was overwhelming: erased. A testament to the efficacy of the political intolerance taught to a generation of Americans.

And the inevitable result:

In 2007, you won’t find a single person on television or a reputable blog even bringing up the possibility of ‘rethinking’ capitalism. We’d rather just blame it on Republicans. And poverty is a product of not enough free market radicalism, just as Bill Clinton – we fix what’s wrong with America with more of what’s wrong with America. Fifty years ago it was unacceptable to disagree with the Washington Consensus. Today, we’ve forgotten it was even an option.

Two more steps back, in the last twenty years. Trickle Down economics, thirty years of falling wages, environmental catastrophe and record deficits – all paid for out of the standard of living of workers in America and the Majority World. And one step forward. A new media, Netroots, responsive, decentralized, dynamic, radical and hip. Yes, the 'blogs,' which are centered around ... the Republocrats. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.

We did this to ourselves. And it's we who have to fix it. Not the government we, not bloggers who want Democrats and Republicans to win we, not capitalist charities in our schools we or million dollar filmmaker activist we. Actual we. You and me.

I'm a teacher. I teach my students to think. Not agree, to think. You're a teacher too. If you have children. If you have friends. If you ever discuss anything with someone other than the voices in your head. You are a teacher. You are a leader. You do both by example.

Let no idea go unchallenged. Everything is up for debate. Accept no assumptions. Disagree. With everyone.