Why more Americans often believe a lie more than the truth.

While the media dutifully focused on the story of President Obama releasing his birth certificate, the far more interesting and politically important story of racial discrimination by US Immigration officials towards President Obama’s father in 1961 was under reported or not reported at all.

Didn’t read about the subtle and almost institutionalized conspiracy against President Obama’s father?  That just underscores how the failure of the media to give more attention to a factual story like the discrimination faced by Obama’s father, rather than the mythical story of President’s Obama birth certificate, is why more Americans often believe a lie more than the truth.

If the now discredited “birthers”, had to have a representative, there couldn’t be a more suitable candidate than Donald Trump. This wealthy two time divorced real estate aristocrat and Vietnam War draft dodger is the ideal representative for the “birthers”. As is often the case in contemporary American politics, the political issue of the birth certificate was a smoke and mirror tactic to keep Americans distracted from more important issues such as the never ending war in Afghanistan, corporate tax evasion by companies such as  General Electric, and  the continuing economic polarization between the rich and poor in America.

Trump however is just the latest personification of the long standing relationship that wealth and democracy has had in American history and the ability of the few to dominate the many. When James Madison was asked during the founding of the republic how any business could get done in Congress with so many conflicting interests in such a large country as America, Madison took the line that oligarchy’s iron law always obtains: A few people always run the show, and keep if they can in the family.   

Uncomfortable for most Americans to admit and unthinkable for opinion making national news organizations to critically analyze, American leaders, often people coming from wealth and privilege (i.e. Kennedy, Bush, Kerry, Romney in the modern era), have a long record of deceiving the American public in order for the few to continue to dominate the many.

Since the end of World War II and the creation of the national security state, the domination of the few over the many has been driven by imperial goals and to maintain the hegemony of the United States in the international system. The recent birth certificate debate was another smoke and mirror tactic by political elites and their surrogates to avoid drawing attention to America’s long term relationship supporting authoritarian leaders around the world and the use of National Security State apparatus agencies like the CIA to overthrow governments in Iran, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Haiti, Chile, etc.

If you have trouble believing or supporting that statement, just ask yourself if Bush and Cheney ever found those pesky weapons of mass destruction in Iraq or if the Gulf of Tolkien was a valid reason for the political elites in America to escalate the war in Vietnam? Perhaps Gore Vidal,  a novelist, essayist, playwright, and provocateur whose career has spanned six decades, said it best in his 2002 book Dreaming War.

 “The American global empire rests on a number of Presidential lies that our court historians seldom dare to question. It would seem that Hitler got it about right when it comes to human credulity: the greater the lie, the more apt it is to be believed”.  

With those kinds of statements, it is no surprise that Gore Vidal is described as a provocateur by his admirers on the left and as an America hater by his opponents on the right. Like other intellectuals such as Noam Chomsky, who has been largely blacklisted from the American media, Gore Vidal believes that that the United States should return to its Jeffersonian roots, stop medalling around in the affairs of other nations, and the private affairs of its citizens.

If the main stream media and infotainment cable news outlets reported on the discrimination that President Obama’s father faced during his time at Harvard, perhaps more Americans would be reminded how status quo elites often hide behind lies and false allegations to pursue alternative agendas. One of the recently declassified I.N.S documents reveal how even the supposed liberal Harvard University practiced a subtle form of discrimination towards President Obama’s father when it wrote, (the university) is "going to try to cook something up to ease him out”. 

The failure of the main stream media to give more attention to the treatment that Barack Obama’s father received in 1961, allows patrician elites and their surrogates like Donald Trump to cook up more false stories in order to distract the average American from more important issues.