The Noble Lie

In 1714, Britons were read the RIOT ACT.

In 2001, Americans were read the patRIOT ACT.

We have to be “read our rights” because they are the ones that decide what those rights will be. Not us. Certainly not anything we would call God. What they call God is an old man in an Armani suit.

We love our legal system but we don’t think about the gaping holes. Much of our legal system is defined by the actions a “reasonable person” would take, something which has a fluid definition and can be argued to be just about anything. How do we know what a “reasonable person” would do? What is a “reasonable person?” Does such a creature exist? If anything, “reasonable” is defined by what everybody else is doing, a collective reality, which really means it comes from television and popular culture. They tell us what a reasonable person would do and we do it. See Cultivation Theory.

When we hear the word “Patriot,” we think of somebody who loves and stands up for our country. Congressmen were shoehorned into voting the Patriot Act in without even being able to read it, on the pretext that any senator who defied by voting nay would not be a true patriot and thus ridiculed and harangued out of office. Well, the “Patriot” in Patriot Act has nothing to do with loving one’s country. It’s the “Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism” Act. Joke’s on you. They have their own definition of terrorism to go with it, too.

“Democracy” is another of those great fluid-definition words that started to mean “rule by oligarchy of land-owning wealthy white men” and today means “rule by international banking elite which allows the whole public to have a say in which one of the bankers’ representatives will be in front of the television for the next few years.”