Michael
Mar 25th 2009, 12:14 PM
Isn't it amazing the way whole cultures can collectively delude themselves?
Isn't it a bit weird, as the present US financial crisis shows, that pretty much 100% of US financial, media and political elites were working with entirely wrong assumptions about how the finanical world actually works?
And the debacle in Afghanistan and Iraq also seems to suggest that pretty much 100% of the US foreign policy, media and political elites were also working with entirely wrong assumptions about the realities of world affairs and the limitations on US military power?
Isn't it just amazing that on two of the biggest political issues of the last decade, US media and political elites have been shown to be completely and categorically wrong?
Now its normal for some leaders to get some issues wrong some times. But the level of group-think here and uniformity of wrongness is utterly remarkable, given the fact that US culture prides itself on individualism and free thinking.
Anyone have any ideas about A) how such [wrong] group-think can be so culturally powerful, or B) how to prevent such [wrong] group-think from dominating political discourse?
What is doubly interesting/disturbing about this phenomena is that this same culture looks to the same comprimised elite class to provide the solutions to these problems. This pretty much guarentees repeats of the debacles down the road.
I'd like to add here that I don't think this is unique to the USA. I think collective group-think of political elites is common elsewhere too, only that the evidence and the spectacular failures of the US political elites just happen to be particularly noticable (and catastrophic) at this time.
Isn't it a bit weird, as the present US financial crisis shows, that pretty much 100% of US financial, media and political elites were working with entirely wrong assumptions about how the finanical world actually works?
And the debacle in Afghanistan and Iraq also seems to suggest that pretty much 100% of the US foreign policy, media and political elites were also working with entirely wrong assumptions about the realities of world affairs and the limitations on US military power?
Isn't it just amazing that on two of the biggest political issues of the last decade, US media and political elites have been shown to be completely and categorically wrong?
Now its normal for some leaders to get some issues wrong some times. But the level of group-think here and uniformity of wrongness is utterly remarkable, given the fact that US culture prides itself on individualism and free thinking.
Anyone have any ideas about A) how such [wrong] group-think can be so culturally powerful, or B) how to prevent such [wrong] group-think from dominating political discourse?
What is doubly interesting/disturbing about this phenomena is that this same culture looks to the same comprimised elite class to provide the solutions to these problems. This pretty much guarentees repeats of the debacles down the road.
I'd like to add here that I don't think this is unique to the USA. I think collective group-think of political elites is common elsewhere too, only that the evidence and the spectacular failures of the US political elites just happen to be particularly noticable (and catastrophic) at this time.