Conspiracy Or Ignorance?
By Peter and Helen Evans (05/19/03)
While channel-surfing recently, we were treated to the televised indignation of a young woman who felt victimized by the administration’s withholding from her of a full explanation of why it had been decided to ‘do’ Iraq. Her phrase was, “Nobody told me enough to convince me.” Essentially, she was citing her own ignorance as a sufficient reason for the government not to proceed with foreign policy. In her sidewalk interview, she also suggested that her ignorance was the result of a devious government conspiracy intended to hoodwink Americans into going along with a sinister hidden agenda.
The plain truth is that such a conspiracy is totally unnecessary. A critical fact whose significance is almost always ignored in our discussions of foreign policy, perhaps because it is so easily taken for granted, is that we are just on-lookers. This is true of the federal government in general, but nowhere more so than in regards to foreign policy. Only the tiniest minority of us actually knows the ‘real’ reasons why those, whose actions we merely contemplate, decide to do the things they do.
By comparison, sporting events are no mystery for us at all. We know, most importantly, that we are spectators. Whether sitting in the stands or in front of the TV, we don’t confuse ourselves with the players. Even if we are unfamiliar with the rules of the game, we don’t suspect the teams or the league or the management of deliberately trying to keep us in the dark. If we’re at all interested in overcoming the embarrassing handicap of ignorance, we learn the rules; we watch more games; we review the statistics; we read about the teams and the players. In short we inform ourselves.
Why should it be different with government or foreign policy? If you want to know what the President or the Secretary of State knows, you have to do what they’ve done and learn what they’ve learned, and then impress a whole bunch of other serious, intelligent and skeptical people with your competence. The short answer is that it’s just too much long, hard work. Most honest people will acknowledge that their own talents, inclinations and persistence don’t suit them to the job of determining foreign policy.
Returning to our lady of the sidewalk; who did she have in mind when she said, “Nobody told me”? More to the point, why should anyone tell her anything? Did she expect the President to knock on her door and bring her up to speed? Did she even ask anyone, “What’s goin’ on?” Did she make any effort at all to inform herself? Probably not, because it sounded as though she had expected that she should have been “informed” by... somebody else. Perhaps she was referring to “them.” After all, “they” are usually behind most conspiracies.
Perhaps we’re being too hard on this citizen, who, when she was caught, like a deer in the headlights, by the voracious eye of the TV camera, tried to justify her understandable ignorance by blaming it on someone else. You don’t have to know much to have an opinion.
But, would we do any better? When ignorance is confronted by a mystery, like foreign policy, it usually breaks in one of two directions -- toward hope or toward fear. A hopeful person will tend to believe that “they” are doing as good a job as can be done in defending and promoting the greater good. A fearful person will tend to believe that “they” are only defending and promoting their own good and concealing their true motivations from the rest of us victims. Thus, our opinion on a subject about which we are ignorant casts no light on the subject in question, but only reveals ourselves as hopeful or fearful. It is well-known that ignorance breeds fear.
We shall do ourselves and our country a great service by honestly withholding our opinions when we are uninformed, and by making every effort to inform ourselves.
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