This Week: Patterns of Confusion in the News, Part II

"Quote" of the Week

Confusion About Dealing with Drug Abuse

Confusion in Our Public Reasoning

Greetings,

Forgive my typo in last week's Nygaard Notes. In the "Quote" of the week I said that "I offer the entire first && paragraphs" of a news item. It was the first three paragraphs. Where's my proofreader!?

This week is another Double Issue, as I couldn't figure out how to get across this point about "confusion" without a lot of examples and a lot of words. I hope you like it. I hope it's not too confusing!

I'm sure most readers are aware that the Republican National Convention is happening in a week or two, and that it's right here in World Headquarters of Nygaard Notes. I don't have much to say about this four-day commercial for the Republican Party, but let me know if you'd like me to say something. Otherwise, I thought I might offer some tips for where to find information for those who are not going to be present. We'll see.

See you next week,

Nygaard

"Quote" of the Week:

"Iraq is a sovereign country, and it can make decisions based on how it feels that it wants to move forward in its development of its oil resources."

The speaker here is Dana Perino, who is the spokesperson for the chief executive of The World's Only Superpower, which is currently occupying the "sovereign" country of Iraq. The White House spokeswoman was speaking on June 24th.

Confusion About Dealing with Drug Abuse

What we now call the "War on Drugs" was declared by President Richard Nixon in 1971. Since that declaration—that is, for my entire adult life—the news has regularly featured stories about the efforts of various police, military, and other bureaucratic organizations to reduce the supply of illegal drugs in the world. The headlines focus on the "successes."

There are headlines about cocaine. There are headlines about heroin. There are headlines about marijuana. The reports are endless, with police departments and drug enforcement offices worldwide routinely holding press conferences to announce the latest "success" in the War on Drugs.

Here are a few recent headlines about illegal drugs: Associated Press (AP) August 5th: "Over a Half Million Dollars in Drug Funds Seized;" AP July 21st: "10 Tons of Drugs Seized in Morocco;" AP July 15: "US Navy: 30 Tons of Drugs Seized in Gulf;" AP May 20th: "13 Arrested, 44 Pounds of Cocaine Seized in Drug Sting;" Christian Science Monitor, last September 7th: "Record Drug Seizures on US-Mexico Border;" AP last November 9th: "Agents Seize 122 Pounds of Pills in State-record Ecstasy Bust."

Successes, all? None of these seizures and arrests have any effect on drug use or abuse. The Drug Policy Commission in the United Kingdom put out a report last month that said it plainly: "[D]espite significant drug and asset seizures and drug-related convictions in recent years, drug
markets have proven to be extremely resilient. They are highly fluid and adapt effectively
to government and law enforcement interventions."

Ethan Nadelmann of the terrific advocacy organization the Drug Policy Alliance underlines the point in a recent article in Foreign Policy. Speaking about drug seizures, crop eradication programs, and other weapons in the U.S. "War on Drugs," Nadelmann tells us that "Attacking the supply side has yielded nothing: Drugs are cheaper, purer, and more plentiful than ever."

Most people, if they think about it, would probably say that success in the "War on Drugs" would be seen in a reduction in the human suffering caused by drug abuse and addiction. Yet the focus of the "War on Drugs" has long been on actions that don't seem to affect these things, like trying to disrupt the "free market" in illegal drugs. (And it is really "free," after all; no taxes, no regulation, just supply and demand.) The 2009 Bush budget, for example, would spend almost twice as much on law enforcement and drug interdiction than on addiction prevention and treatment.

And it's not just the budget. The Office of National Drug Control Policy at the White House, in their report "Current State of Drug Policy: Successes and Challenges," doesn't even really talk about addiction or drug abuse. The word "addiction," for example, appears only once in the 28-page report. The phrase "drug abuse" also appears only once, and in an ironic spot. The heading of the section in which the phrase appears is "Drug Use Is Still High, and Its Consequences Contribute to Medical and Social Pathologies."

That same office, the ONDCP, insists on taking credit for "success," regardless. In Chapter Three of the 2008 National Drug Control Strategy, one finds this remarkable statement: "The U.N.'s 2007 World Drug Report highlighted U.S. successes in sharply reducing drug use. Many countries have reached out to U.S. agencies and our Embassies around the globe for guidance on ‘what works.'"

There's no list of embassies that have been approached for "guidance," so who knows if that statement is true. And I went and searched through that U.N. Report—all 282 pages of it—and I couldn't find any references to "U.S. successes," let alone highlighted ones. However, when I looked over a different United Nations document, the World Health Organization's study "Toward a Global View of Alcohol, Tobacco, Cannabis, and Cocaine Use," released last month, I found this comment:

"The US, which has been driving much of the world's drug research and drug policy agenda, stands out [among the 17 countries surveyed] with higher levels of use of alcohol, cocaine, and cannabis, despite punitive illegal drug policies, as well as (in many US states), a higher minimum legal alcohol drinking age than many comparable developed countries."

The WHO report continues, saying that "Clear differences in drug use existed across the regions of the world... Drug use is related to income, but does not appear to be simply related to drug policy, since countries with more stringent policies towards illegal drug use did not have lower levels of such drug use than countries with more liberal policies." One example offered is The Netherlands, which "with a less criminally punitive approach to cannabis use than the U.S., has experienced lower levels of use, particularly among younger adults. Clearly, by itself, a punitive policy towards possession and use accounts for limited variation in nation-level rates of illegal drug use."

I talked about all this back in Nygaard Notes #51 (1999!), in an article called "How Not to Fight Drug Addiction," in which I said "Despite the fact that this week's arrests are only the latest in a long series of ‘major drug busts' conducted in our hemisphere, U.S. cocaine use is not declining." Well, nine years later it's still not declining. According to the government's own figures the number of kids using cocaine in 2007, while lower than it was when Bush II took office, is actually higher than it was in 1992, at the end of the term of Bush I. In fact, the use of all "illicit" drugs among high school kids is higher now than it was then, although the highest figures occurred during the late 1990s and early 2000s, which appears to correlate more closely with the 1990s economic boom than anything else. And here we should recall what the World Health Organization said, which is that "Drug use is related to income, but does not appear to be simply related to drug policy."

Drug policy hasn't varied much from President to President since Mr. Nixon's declaration, but there could be some justification in the Bush administration taking credit for the drop in drug use over the past eight years. Not because of their drug policies, but because of their mismanagement of the economy. After all, when people have less disposable income, they tend to purchase fewer drugs. That's one way to reduce drug use, I suppose.

For the media's part, it dutifully reports on the "War on Drugs" using the framework preferred by the Warriors: it reports on drug seizures, arrests, and military and law-enforcement "successes" as if these things were addressing the real problems. So, once again, as in the cases of the "War on Terror" and the fight against hunger that I discussed last week, a misguided strategy is confused with a legitimate goal. And, once again, the result is news that confuses people. And it doesn't stop here. It permeates much of our Public Reasoning, which I explain in the following article.

Confusion in Our Public Reasoning

The confusion that I talked about in the previous article is the confusion between the goal of reducing drug abuse and addiction, on the one hand, and the strategy of trying to suppress and control the "market" that supplies drugs, which we call the "War on Drugs," on the other.

The confusion I talked about last week was the confusion between the goal of reducing the threat of terrorism, on the one hand, and the strategy of waging a "War on Terror," on the other.

The other confusion I talked about last week was the confusion between the goal of reducing hunger, on the one hand, and the strategy of attempting to increase the already-sufficient amount of food in the world, on the other.

And the week before that, the confusion I talked about was the confusion between the goal of economic well-being, on the one hand, and the strategy of promoting economic "growth," on the other.

There seems to be a pattern here, doesn't there? There's a lot of confusion in our public discussion—Amartya Sen calls it "Public Reasoning"—about these important issues, and it's not limited to these few topics I've been talking about. People get confused all the time in the way we think about goals and strategies. People want cheaper energy, and they think offshore drilling will help. It won't. People want to reduce the number of murders, and they think that the death penalty helps with that. It doesn't. People want to reduce teenage pregnancy, and they think that preaching "abstinence" will reduce it. It hasn't so far, and doesn't look like it ever will. People want more accessible health care, and they think that "more competition" will help. Again, no evidence for that. And on and on. What the #&%@$ ... ?!?

What is "Public Reasoning?"

Arizona State political scientist Clark Miller defines "Public Reasoning" as "a diverse array of formal and informal means by which societies identify, frame, evaluate, and make sense of the policy challenges they face." All of the things I mention above are, in part, "policy challenges." And we have a hard time reasoning about them together when we're so often confused. So, why are we so confused and how can we get un-confused?

I think the capacity of people in the United States to engage in effective Public Reasoning has been poisoned by a variety of factors. Although it is very complex, I think we can talk about three key factors that work together to make our Public Reasoning very confused and confusing. They are:

1. Propaganda, both Overt and Deep. (See NN#172.)

2. Power. By this I refer to power both within the U.S. system and in the larger world, and the unequal distribution in both places.

3. Lack of diversity. That is, the institutions in charge of informing the public discussion are dominated by people who tend to share the same assumptions about the world.

Let's take these one at a time.

Propaganda

As I say all the time, there are two levels of Propaganda, Overt and Deep. While Overt Propaganda tends to be specific and conscious, Deep Propaganda is usually general and unconscious. Overt Propaganda, in other words, is the thing we are supposed to believe, while Deep Propaganda is what makes it believable.

Overt Propaganda is propelled by personal psychology and also by institutional forces. On a personal level, people like to believe that they are making the world a better place. So, when we think about what we have done, we tend to put our actions in the best possible light. Almost nobody says to themselves, "I am evil, and I am doing evil things." I'm always acting for the greater good (so are you!), and people in power have the same tendency to self-delusion as the rest of us.

In large institutions, and sometimes small ones, there are special people designated to present the organization in the best light. In institutions (especially public ones), people's jobs and livelihoods often depend on the institution being perceived in a good light. Propaganda thrives in such environments. Whether a specific piece of Overt Propaganda is the result of self-delusion or intentional deception doesn't really matter. The result is the same, and the result is Overt Propaganda that is put out through the media, at conferences, in official reports, and in all the other ways that ideas get out and into our heads.

Power

The United States has been a "Superpower" for many decades, in a world system in which power is distributed in a spectacularly unequal way. All of the most powerful international institutions are dominated by the U.S. and its allies, from economic institutions to military alliances to the United Nations, where the U.S. and a few other nations have veto power over the rest of the world. In addition, U.S. corporations have long exported ideas and ideology through their dominance in media, entertainment, and culture. One of the things that this means is that the "American way" of doing things—and seeing things—becomes the world's way of doing and seeing things. An example would be the one I pointed out in the essay on drugs in this issue, where the World Health Organization told us that the U.S. "has been driving much of the world's drug research and drug policy agenda." It doesn't matter that there's no evidence that it's an effective agenda. The World's Only Superpower says it is.

The people at the top of any system will want to maintain that system, since it works for them. And the nations at the top of the international system are no different. The U.S., sitting at the top of the international hierarchy for decades now, naturally has constructed a system of beliefs that makes it seem "right" that we run the world—"Manifest Destiny," "Democracy Promotion," whatever. And, since part of our power is the power to distribute such ideas around the world, much of the world gets a message that "There is no alternative" to U.S. dominance, and probably shouldn't be. These are the kinds of beliefs that powerful people—let's call them "elites"—have come to accept, and they are the kind that make a lot of their Overt Propaganda believable (to them and to anyone who shares those beliefs).

A specific example of a self-serving belief would be the belief that "Might Makes Right." It shouldn't surprise anyone that such a belief appeals to the mightiest among us. It is this belief that leads us to declare "war" on things like terror, drugs, crime, and so forth, and justifies all sorts of violence and force in the attempt to "win" these wars. Another such belief might be the belief that "We're The Good Guys." That belief is the one which makes it possible to believe, for example, that the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 was naked imperialism, while the U.S. invasion of Iraq was a mission of "democracy promotion." Such beliefs are examples of what I call Deep Propaganda, and we all have some basic beliefs that make us susceptible to certain types of Overt Propaganda, and resistant to others.

There is another way that power corrupts our Public Reasoning within the United States. Since wealth means power and wealth is so unevenly distributed here at home, here also we have a political and cultural system that is largely controlled by people who are the "winners. "Winners" tend to share certain beliefs, like the belief that they are "winners" because they deserve to be. This belief takes many forms, but it includes the belief that they know "what is best" for everyone. Anyone who doesn't agree with this is then perceived as "unfit" to be in leadership, or possibly a "threat" to "law and order," and so forth.

Within a basic framework of Power, it is acceptable to urge, beg, encourage, and righteously demand that The Powerful act in different ways. So, we can have movements for "corporate responsibility," and calls for more "philanthropy," and so forth. But anyone who attempts to inject into our Public Reasoning a serious call for changes in the way that power and wealth are distributed throughout the society will be relegated to the sidelines. And that is the real problem with...

A Lack of Diversity

I talk all the time about the patterns of ideas within our intellectual culture and how predictable and recognizable they are. That is so because of the lack of diversity within the institutions that inform us, particularly our mass media. And, in this case, what I mean by "lack of diversity" is that when we have corporate or government officials speaking to the media, what we tend to have is powerful people speaking to other powerful people. On a basic level, they will tend to share the same basic ideas about how the world works. And those basic ideas—Might Makes Right, We're the Good Guys, etc—make the purveyors of news and ideas easy pickings for the people who produce the Overt Propaganda that confuses our Public Reasoning so effectively.

In our grossly unequal system, assuring that media people are the "right kinds" of people is not done through a totalitarian use of force. It's far more subtle, and seems like a "natural" process, a "meritocracy." It's not. It's entirely controlled by a certain class of people who function in a corporate environment in which they get to decide which people are "good sources" and which are "bad sources" of information for the purpose of informing our Public Reasoning. That is, which people will go along with conventional wisdom, and which people will not.

The reason I have been going on at length the past couple of weeks on a few examples of confusion is to bring into focus some of the current conventional wisdom—that is, the Deep Propaganda—that is so widely-shared by those "in the loop" that no one is inclined to challenge it.

Two of the examples that I have discussed are the War on Drugs and the War on Terror. Both of these are built upon the foundational premise that Might Makes Right, which justifies huge expenditures in money and human life in an attempt to suppress things we don't like. A different premise ("Compassion Makes Right"?) might lead us toward a different, non-violent, engagement with these problems in pursuit of the same goals: reducing the harmful effects of drug addiction and the problem of terrorism.

The other two examples I've been talking about are economic welfare and hunger. In both of these cases the answers are popularly understood to be a need for "more," as in "economic growth" (more wealth) and "a new Green Revolution" (more food). The foundational premise here is the belief that We're the Good Guys. This Deep Propaganda is what makes it seem logical to people that scarcity must be the problem. Why? Because the system (set up and maintained by U.S. leadership) must be fair and just, since we're the Good Guys. Therefore, if people don't have enough money or food, it must be because there simply isn't enough money or food to go around. It's very logical, if you start with the "right" premises.

Power, Propaganda, Diversity: What To Do?

In a nutshell, we can't think clearly about the crucial issues of the day—that is, our Public Reasoning is corrupted—because we live within a political system that distributes POWER unequally. That power is then used to maintain itself. This happens in many ways, one of which is by assuring that we don't have a DIVERSE set of voices that might include those that might challenge the nature of the system. So the people who produce the OVERT PROPAGANDA that confuses us are rarely challenged because the people in a position to do so share the DEEP PROPAGANDA beliefs that make them believe what they are told.

All of these things are connected. Unequal POWER allows a few people to ascend to positions where they get to spout whatever OVERT PROPAGANDA they want. A LACK OF DIVERSITY in our media and other institutions that distribute that OVERT PROPAGANDA assures that, for the most part, the DEEP PROPAGANDA that makes the powerful people's OVERT PROPAGANDA believable is rarely questioned. Then the loop starts over: The less the DEEP PROPAGANDA is questioned, the more OVERT PROPAGANDA is allowed to enter the public consciousness. And that makes it harder for anyone to imagine what a different system might be like. And the less people can imagine an alternative, the more the current system seems "natural" and "right."

How to break in to such a system? You can pick any of the points that I have mentioned. You can start to imagine different ways to distribute power, and work to bring them into being. You can work to expose and counter propaganda wherever it is found. You can work to bring a more diverse set of people into leadership in your organization or community.

Work on media. Work to amplify voices in your community, your state, your country, that think outside the box. Support independent media. Give free gift subscriptions to Nygaard Notes, or subscriptions to other independent media. Form a Media Response Group on the issues that you care about, and communicate with the corporate media in your community.

Many people are already working on all of these things, and many others. Maybe you are one of them. Or maybe you are just about to join with them.

Start wherever you want, and I suggest using a Three Step Approach to improving our Public Reasoning: Analyze, Organize, Act. Step One: Analyze the barriers to diversity in our Public Reasoning. Step Two: Organize a group, or join one that's already organized. Step Three: DO whatever your analysis suggests will promote change.

That's not too confusing.