Ignorance And The Hypocrisy Trap

Published in Issue 486 of The Black Commentator on September, 20, 2012
By Larry Pinkney

“Ignorance is a cure for nothing.”

-W.E.B. Du Bois
  

“Liberty is the right of every man to be honest, to think and to speak without hypocrisy.”

-Jose Marti

The vast majority of the populace of the United States is corralled in a cage of perpetuated ignorance and virulent hypocrisy.

This corporate-controlled nation has been almost totally infected with the desire to cling to ignorance, which in turn, reinforces its descent into insanity and the abyss of hypocrisy. Thus, the psychological, social, and political potential for growth and development of an enormous amount of everyday ordinary Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people in this nation has been callously and precipitously stunted.

The U.S. corporate/political elite, including their propaganda arm [i.e. the corporate-stream media] engage in a relentless war on the minds, hearts, and souls of the ‘American’ people. The more that we are told we have choices, the less choices we actually have. The more we are told that peace and security are at hand, the less peace and security we actually have. And of course, the more we are told that conditions are improving for the masses of people, the worse these conditions are actually becoming.

Contrary to the adage that says “ignorance is bliss,” ignorance is ultimately anything but bliss. Ignorance is the trigger for peril. In the words of W.E.B. Du Bois, “Ignorance is a cure for nothing.” Thus, the U.S. corporate/political elite functions 24 hours/7 days a week to keep people uninformed, disinformed, distracted, and misinformed – in other words – to keep people ignorant. Why? Because an ignorant people are a controlled people.

Remaining willfully Ignorant is fertile ground for the growth and perpetuation of hypocrisy; and hypocrisy serves no one but those who are addicted to, and hold the reins of, illegitimate political, economic, and social power. The hypocrisy of the corporate-owned Democratic and Republican U.S. politicians is a by-product of perpetually maintained ignorance.

Despite the ongoing machinations of and by the corporate/political elite in this nation, there is no longer any excuse in this 21st century for remaining in a state of, most especially, political ignorance. We in this nation cannot, in good conscience, say to the peoples of the rest of the world, “Oh, I did not know what horrors [my] government was committing in my name.” We cannot hide under the cover of ignorance. The daily realities of blatant corporate domination, joblessness, home foreclosures, massive imprisonment, increasing economic austerity, etc. right here in this nation, combined with our common sense, tell us enough to know that we have been, and are being constantly lied to by the systemic Democratic and Republican politicians; and this is whether or not we are privy to all the details. To reiterate: we cannot hide under the cover of ignorance. To do so would, in itself, be hypocritical.

There are those (especially much of this nation’s so-called ‘intelligentsia’) who are consciously complicit with this corrupt political system and its de facto corporate-government (Patriot Act/NDAA) police-state. These collaborators masquerade under many different banners. Some call themselves ‘progressives,’ others ‘liberals’, and yet others so-called ‘leftists,’ etc. But the reality is that they are collaborators. They are, in actuality, supporters of the phony left/right paradigm embodied by the symbiotically-joined corporate Democratic and Republican parties, which is of course, a continuation of this systemic hypocrisy.

The everyday ordinary people of this nation must step outside this rotten, filthy, hypocritical system. The time for ignorance and its concomitant hypocrisy is over. The time for being bamboozled is also over.

A new model must be creatively and collectively created from the bottom up by everyday ordinary people of all colors in this nation. Abolish ignorance and end hypocrisy! Meanwhile, we must stop supporting our own oppression by this nation’s corporate government right here at home, and we must stop supporting the murderous and hypocritical actions of the U.S. government against people in all other lands throughout Mother Earth. No more predator-drone missile attacks! No more bombing of other nations! No more military interventions! All U.S. military support for repressive U.S. client-state regimes must be stopped! No more U.S. government lies and subterfuge! Close the U.S. gulag at Guantanamo, and all secret U.S. torture chambers! NOW is the time.

The everyday ordinary people of the United States are not the enemies of the world. It is the blood sucking, hypocritical, corporate-controlled U.S. government of Empire that has demonstrated, and is demonstrating, that it is the enemy of humankind.

Remember the words of Jose Marti, when he said, “Liberty is the right of every man [and woman] to be honest, to think and to speak without hypocrisy.”

Each one, reach one. Each one, teach one. Onward, then, my sisters and brothers! Onward!

Larry Pinkney is a veteran of the Black Panther Party, the former Minister of Interior of the Republic of New Africa, a former political prisoner and the only American to have successfully self-authored his civil/political rights case to the United Nations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In connection with his political organizing activities, Pinkney was interviewed in 1988 on the nationally televised PBS News Hour, formerly known as The MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour. Pinkney is a former university instructor of political science and international relations, and his writings have been published in various places, including The Boston Globe, San Francisco BayView newspaper, Black Commentator, Intrepid Report, Global Research (Canada), LINKE ZEITUNG (Germany), 107Cowgate (Ireland and Scotland), and Mayihlome News (Azania/South Africa). He is in the archives of Dr. Huey P. Newton (Stanford University, CA), cofounder of the Black Panther Party. For more about Larry Pinkney see the book, Saying No to Power: Autobiography of a 20th Century Activist and Thinker, by William Mandel [Introduction by Howard Zinn]. (Click here to read excerpts from the book.)