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October 19, 2005
Herd Mentality And Bases Of Power
News of Louis Farrakhan's latest Million Man March filtered into my consciousness over the weekend. I found myself dwelling on Farrakhan's claim that the New Orleans levee breach was caused by explosives planted by the U.S. government "to destroy the black part of town and keep the white part dry."
This is a good example of a standard modus operandi of a lot of (usually Leftist) political celebrities: the targeted outrageous pronouncement. The pronouncement can be a claim of abuse ("State troopers blocked us from voting!"), or a ridiculous demand ("End the occupation of New Orleans!") or an intricate conspiracy theory ("Karl Rove engineering the 9/11 attacks!"). It's targeted because I believe that more often than not the statement is known to be false by the speaker--the idea is not to promulgate truth or justice. Rather the idea is to throw out a grenade that will explode and resonate within the group of those supporters who will take the statement on its face, regardless of its lack of reason and logic. It's simply building and maintaining one's power base through rumor and misinformation. Farrakhan doesn't care in the least if he is forced to back off from his statement--his crawfishing will get a mention (maybe) in the media--but a lot of Farrakhan's supporters do not read the New York Times, or Powerline.
So the bogus meme grows in the masses and takes on a life of its own. Star Parker at Townhall.com has more thoughts on the intellectual herd mentality that is stock-in-trade for people like Farrakhan and Michael Moore.
Despite Farrakhan's supposed objective to "empower" poor folks, he should understand, as more and more blacks are beginning to understand, that he, and other long-standing traditional black leaders, really promote quite the opposite. [...]
It may be news to Farrakhan, and perhaps to other black leaders, that blacks are unique and individual human beings. It's the racists who look at us otherwise. It does not empower black citizens when they hear from their leaders that they are not unique individuals but racial objects.
That's why education reform is really the primary issue of importance with me: A person who can't follow a logical argument is will believe anything. Of course it's not just poor minorities who have trouble reasoning, but the dirty secret of our public education disaster is that it affects poor inner city African-Americans the most--and leaves them vulnerable to being manipulated by the Farrakhans of the world.
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Comments
Hi Jeff:
How 'bout them Astros? We got absolutely nothing around here, so I may as well celebrate with you.
Anyway, I don't think this is news to Farrakhan or to Jackson--they know all this perfectly well and are trying to maintain the status quo in terms of the objectification or perhaps it would be more appropriate to say the disenfranchisement of poor minorities because if they become enfranchised and as individuals have a stake in their communities, why would they need Farrakhan or Jackson?
I strongly agree with you about education reform--and weren't the education numbers that came out over the last 72 hours pretty strong? But you notice there's not a lot of ringing praise for the sort of reform that produces these results from the camps in your post...amazing.
Posted by: AcademicElephant at October 19, 2005 10:42 PM
Not exactly a series that set the media moguls hearts aflutter. Too bad!
One of the reasons I started this blog was to vent (hopefully in an informative way) about education issues, but I found myself focusing more on current affairs and foreign policy. Now I find that Plame/Delay/Miers has pretty seriously eroded my resilience in dealing with the current political scene. The education problem is just as intransigent, but maybe a change of focus will do me good.
Posted by: Jeff at October 20, 2005 12:28 AM
