Scientific studies conducted during the 2004 U.S. presidential election revealed that the majority of people who claimed to value honesty had voted for George Bush even though the Bush administration had just been exposed of deceiving the public regarding reasons for invading Iraq. How could this be ?
Betrayal Trauma Theory
Research of experiencers of traumatic abuse showed, that they all suffered from memory loss. The memory loss was particularly high if the abuser was a caregiver the person depended upon. This can be understood best when looking at the psychological processes : Everybody normally has a cheater detection mechanism which alarms us, when we realizes that we are being manipulated by another person. When this detection kicks in, we react with rejection and anger towards the cheater. This strategy does not work, if the cheater is a person we depend upon for our survival, which is the case for a child being abused by a caregiver like their own parent. In this case either the abusive actions have to be denied and reclassified as non-abusive or they have to be denied completely and thus memory loss occurs. The same mechanism can also apply in adult relationships where a wife is denying the abusive actions of her husband because she is fully dependant upon him financially.
The U.S. 2004 Presidential Election
Every U.S. citizen is affected to a large extent by the actions of the U.S. president and thus is dependant upon him. The level of dependency varies for each person but e.g. fundamentalist Christians see the president as the protector of their core values. A person who is fully identified with their values experiences any attack on them as a personal attack. Since most people feel powerless to defend against an attack on their values, they require a person to identify with who protects their values for them : The president
Once this dependency link is activated the foundation for blindness to betrayal is established. Thus it becomes difficult for these people to either recognize deception and lies as they are being uttered or to recall them at a later point in time. This effect was particularly obvious due to polls conducted during the 2004 US presidential election : These polls revealed that particularly people who claimed to value honesty and truthfulness highly voted for Bush even though only weeks before the Bush administration was exposed for deceiving the population about the reasons for starting the war in Iraq.
Manipulation through Orwellian rhetoric
The Bush administration has been particularly good at using Orwellian rhetoric to deceive the population : By giving policy initiatives names that sound appealing at first glance they rely on the ignorance of most people to not even look at what is really sold to them. Two examples are the "Healthy Forest Initiative" which actually contained a plan to cut down more trees or the "Clear Skies Initiative" as a plan which allowed for more pollution in the air. Even the Washington Post adressed this issue in 2005 by writing that "more often than not, you can assume that the measure will accomplish almost precisely the opposite of that its name boasts".
An outlook into the future
The research results from psychological studies imply that the ability of the population to distinguish between truth and lies decreases as the world is perceived as more dangerous. Feelings of insecurity are rampant especially during a time of economic crisis and the dependency on government aid to survive has decreased the ability of the population to see government lies even further. The level of Americans who only survive on food stamps has increased rapidly over the last years. By July 2010 the official figure for U.S. citizens on food stamps was 41 million, by March 2012 this figure rose to 46.4 million.
As long as politicians can rely on the combination of ignorance and blindness to systemic betrayal, this game will most likely continue until the breaking point when the entire system implodes due to the vast level of hypocrisy it is built upon. By that time everybody should be able to see the lies because the studies of betrayal blindness also show that by the time the dependency link to the abuser is broken - because the abuser can not provide the promised support anymore - the ability to see the lies and deception can be regained rapidly.
Unfortunately it might be too late to change anything in a constructive manner by that time. The change during a systemic collapse is mainly driven by chaos and governments will not be able to do much about it. Even though this process will most likely cause suffering for humanity at least there is hope that some people will gain a heightened level of awareness to the deception by authority figures from this experience and if they are really honest about it, they might be able to admit that on a deeper level, they accepted to be deceived so they did not have to face aspects of reality that were simply to frightening to look at. Aspects which were a reflection of who we are collectively, aspects which we allowed to happen without speaking out about them, aspects we collectively defined as "normal" but which are really inhumane and harmful to all of us. These aspects will have to be changed and humanity will have to change because both are inseparably entangled.
This article is partly based on a publication by Eileen Zurbriggen from the Department of Psychology at University of California.
