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Agnotology: “Culturally constructed ignorance, purposefully created by special interest groups working hard to create confusion and suppress the truth.”

From Barry Ritholtz, “Big Picture Blog” (a truly brilliant source of information you can’t find yourself.)

Derived from the Greek root agnosis, it is “the study of culturally constructed ignorance.”



“People always assume that if someone doesn’t know something, it’s because they haven’t paid attention or haven’t yet figured it out,” Proctor says. “But ignorance also comes from people literally suppressing truth—or drowning it out—or trying to make it so confusing that people stop caring about what’s true and what’s not.”  (emphasis added)

Fairly amazing, and when it comes to certain issues, its dead on.”

Dear Leader here.

I dredged this up because the conventions these past two weeks have reminded me how sorely screwed up our political and societal issues are. We have selected the two most disliked and distrusted candidates in our HISTORY. I say “we” only in the rhetorical sense because I certainly didn’t select them – did you? To say we have a dysfunctional system is to understate the situation like, “Oh, this amputation is just a flesh wound.” 

We are told by folks - lurking just behind the curtain - not to worry our pretty little heads about it; they will tell us who to believe in and who will lead us. Ironically, both Trump and Sanders did identify the problem . . . yet both came up with the wrong answer: Trump wants to turn us into a modern day 3rd Reich and Sanders into new Soviet Union, two completely failed models. And of course, Hillary just wants to be President - God it’s a pisser!

Anyway, I have no idea if this word will catch on but I have no doubt about its accuracy. You can see the special interest groups at work everywhere trying hard to keep us stupid. These interests – and they come from all sides – are called “special” because that’s what they are, they are for things especially for them, not you or me. Big business, big unions, big politicians, big media - left and right, you name it somebody big is behind it. And this is no conspiracy, they are flat out in our face about their power. Perhaps we deserve it.

And now the freaking internet allows millions of ignorant (or dumb - two different things) numb nuts to spread all the lies at the speed of light (excluding me, of course.) All working on keeping us in the dark.

Perhaps this election will serve some larger purpose to point out this problem – but we’re still in trouble for at least the next four years.

God bless America – and God help us all.



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