I won't go into the obvious lack of the ability to effectively use logic that the American people display, or rather, don't display. The proof, as usual, is in the pudding.
Classically, a child was first taught grammar. Grammar was the equivalent to facts. You would be taught as many and all facts that your teacher could tell you. I refer to Grammar as pieces of a puzzle. Without all the pieces, you wouldn't have the big picture. Sometimes, if someone was misleading you, or lying to you, they would give you puzzle pieces to a different picture all together.
In speaking of these facts, in this, the 21st Century, you need to rely on a reliable source. And you need to agree (with yourself, at least) what you will rely on. Will you rely on the scientific field? Will you accept facts from the mainstream media? Remember these questions.
In the United States, for whatever reason, children are possibly taught distorted facts, half facts, and sometimes not taught all the facts at all.
The second step, and one in which I feel that my fellow Americans are lacking, is logic.
Logic is the ability to utilize and incorporate the grammar, or facts you have been taught. Grammar is the puzzle pieces, as Logic is to the picture on the box. The inability to properly use Logic is one of the main problems in this country today. Also, arrogance in not knowing all the puzzle pieces, as well as the stigmatizing of other Americans who continue to find all the puzzle pieces are two other problems today.
If an American is not given the correct puzzle pieces and gets their puzzle pieces from the mainstream media, or from the dialogue used in modern sitcoms, they will most definately believe that the picture on the box is whatever they have been given. This lack of searching for answers and accepting the grammar given by popular culture and at worst, cable news channels, leads them to see a very different cover on the box then one who does their own searching, and their own research.
Today in America, those who see the Grand Canyon that is from the mainstream culture's puzzle box, have also been given two tools to secure their picture they cling to so readily: defamation of other conflicting puzzle box pictures (in the form of conspiracy theorist, or worse, crazy person), and denial ("I don't/can't believe such a thing.")
For those who see the Dracula's Castle that is the reality of the United State's on their puzzle box, it becomes very dismaying. And there is no way of telling which, nor how many pieces of grammar have been omitted and/or distorted in the opposing American's logic. This leads to the next step...
Let me give one more example. The American who searches for truth outside the mainstream, uses sources from Associated Press, Reuters, historical documents from different historians on the same events, as well as "white papers" from our own government and non-government think-tanks like the Council on Foreign Relations or the Rand Corporation and comes to the logical conclusions that:
1) We are heading towards a scientifically enforced tyranny/dictatorship.
2) That we are, and for the last decade at least, been losing our middle class and are heading
towards a collapse in our currency.
3) That both parties have been operating against the better interests of the American people.
There are many facts to back these three points up. It would take the ability to remember facts, and then the ability to use logic to put pieces of the puzzle together.
Let's say that the three aforementioned points are three different puzzles. If we were to look at our box and see a scientifically enforced police state in the United States, we could definately see at least a dozen pieces to the puzzle. I will give a few here as an example:
Pieces of Grammar in the form of codifications of Law:
1. The United States Patriot Act of 2001.
2. The Military Defense Act of 2007.
3. The National Defense Authorization Act of 2011.
White papers from government and non-government bodies:
4. The Project for a New American Century
www.newamericancentury.org/
5. A Stability Police Force for the United States by the Rand Corporation
www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2009/RAND_
6. The MIAC Report
www.constitution.org/abus/le/miac-
Legal Precedents set by the Federal Government
7. The Torture Memos by Deputy Assistant Attorney General of the United States John Yoo.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torture_Memos
8. The Extra-Judicial killing of American born Muslim Cleric Anwar Alwaki (who committed
no violent act against the American people).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki#Targeted_killing_order_and_lawsuit_against_the_U.S.
9. The use of unmanned Predator drones on a couple in North Dakota. http://articles.latimes.com/2011/dec/10/nation/la-na-drone-arrest-20111211
I again won't get into all of the puzzle pieces from similar puzzle boxes in history that have shown something that looked like tyranny before. My point, is that the puzzle pieces are there. You just have to be smart enough, and have the inclination to put them together.
The last part of the Trivium, is Rhetoric. Rhetoric is the ability to tell someone else what the picture on the puzzle box is. Here lies another problem with dealing with most Americans. Instead of someone just telling you the truth: "I have a nihilistic streak in me that only allows me to worry about drinking, partying and only thinking about myself and none useful skills," they will instead argue with you, knowing none of the facts (and with no ambition to find the facts) that the picture you have put together that is the picture on the box (plus or minus a few cactuses), is indeed the Grand Canyon. Somtimes, the subject will shrug off the notion that you can trust a certain source, in which case it is agreeable to initially set and agree upon a common source of facts.
Even if you were adept at Rhetoric, and, as the last part of knowledge being the most nuanced, if you were talking to someone with none of the Grammar, trying to illustrate Logic to them would be impossible at best, futile at worst. You would be, in effect, wasting your time. If the picture on the box was a big sign saying, "Run! Fire," what good would warning your fellow Americans do? How would you educate them the Grammar, and then the Logic in the time span it would take before the house you were both in burned to the ground?
So, I leave it to you, the reader, conscious American that you are, to be patient with your fellow American. Don't start with the Rhetoric. Don't even start with the Logic. Start with the Grammar. What could happen? Why didn't your fellow Americans learn the Grammar themselves? Quite possibly a fear of even the basic Grammar for where we find ourselves. What is a person who abhors even the basic Grammar? I don't know. But I would hardly call them a human. Maybe they are just a highly evolved animal, fit for no more than eating, drinking, and the occasional sexual arrousal.
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