Posted by By Josh Quin, Co-editor in Chief
How do you know a politician is lying? Their mouth is moving.
I’m sure we’ve all heard the sentiment before, from your conspiracy theorist boss to your next-door neighbor, this idea that politicians aren’t to be trusted is a theme heard around the world. What if it’s not the politicians we should blame, but ourselves?
What if it’s not the politicians we should blame, but ourselves?
Good old fashioned public mistrust hasn’t always been the norm. In 1958, over 70% of Americans trusted the government to do what was right; today, it is a mere 22%. So, what went wrong? Like all good things, you can blame the 1960’s. More specifically: Vietnam. Even though we officially declared war on July 28 1965, it all starts with the Truman Doctrine.
Picture this: You’re president of the United States of America, and World War II ended a mere two years ago. Europe is a mess, and you don’t want another Germany. So what do you do? You throw money at the problem! Enter the Truman Doctrine, a 400 million dollar aid deal to Turkey and Greece written by none other than our 33rd president Harry Truman in 1947. With the help of Under Secretary of State Dean Acheson, Truman articulates what will go down in history as the “Domino Theory.” This theory states that if a country turns to communism, the ideology would spread to surrounding countries, and like dominoes, these countries would fall, winning Russians the cold war.
Now I’m gonna spoil the next forty years of United States foreign policy: the Domino Theory isn’t true. As it turns out, communism is not a plague, and it does not infect surrounding countries. But no one knew this, and so the aid bill was passed. And this is all well and good, the American people are thoroughly convinced of their heroic defense of liberty, and they pat themselves on the back until April 7 1954, when President Eisenhower starts to talk about the “Domino Theory” but this time, it isn’t about Europe, but instead a little country in Southeast Asia, Vietnam. And it’s not aid this time. It’s people, it’s troops, it’s bombs and war and death.
After this speech, it wasn’t long until the United States declared war, and the American people began to protest. Throughout the 1950’s and 1960’s over 884 protests occurred that included tens of millions of Americans. But it didn’t matter because we were at war, and we waged this war the minute we closed our eyes to the domino theory. It is a war which hasn’t ended. Today, the United States is responsible for 37% of all military spending globally, but the USSR is gone, so who are we fighting?
Nowadays we fund military operations throughout the world, from Yemen and Israel to Kenya and the Cameroons. We ended the cold war and began a new war on “terror.” Isn’t that insane? The United States declared war on an idea for the second time in a row, and the citizens sat by idly.
Today, the United States is responsible for 37% of all military spending globally, but the USSR is gone, so who are we fighting?
The American people are suspicious of the Government, and we are to blame. In a democracy, the power comes from the people. We have given our leaders the authority for the past 68 years to feed the starving beast of war. We have protested, we have cried at the injustice, but we cower at the polls. The United States ranks #34 in voter turnout, and yet we insist we must bring democracy to the world. We are a country dying in self-congratulatory lies.
Democracy does not mix with long term foreign policy precisely because the policy presupposes that the government will be privy to details the American people cannot know. In both Vietnam, and the War on Terror, Americans were left in the dark, unaware of the actions their government was taking, and yet, in a democracy, power comes from the people, so what happens when the people don’t know all the facts? I’ll tell you what happens, the power starts coming from the government, not the people. It’s easy to blame the politicians, but we are complicit, so maybe we should start saying a new joke:
Why’d we elect the politician if we knew he was lying? Because we didn’t want to change.
The Maroon 