The City of Oakland has made bad loans to a number of businesses and characters in this city. One such person is under indictment on 27 counts of sexual abuse, rape and other sexual offenses. He or his sons received loans totaling about $3 million from Oakland City. Now he is telling the court, where he is being tried, that his doctor gives him one year to live--he has cancer.

Oakland made another business loan to Just Desserts, a bakery that was bought by a larger company. The City made a loan of about $1 million to this small business, and the purchasing corporation would not buy Just Desserts unless the City agreed to forgive half of the loan. The tact the City has taken, as they agreed to forgive half of the loan, is this: "Good news, Just Desserts has just been acquired by a larger business that will keep its present 75 staff on and could possibly hire an additional 75 staff. This is a win-win deal for Oakland." Yeah!

This incident and Oakland's approach to explaining its inability to collect on another bad loan is to doctor/spin/twist/lie about it. This matter and Oakland's way of spinning it is typical of a notion in America--Americans believe that they can sell anything; they can convince others that the world is flat if they say it enough times. This idea seems to have arisen out of experiences that are everywhere in society.

Some of the ideas and lies are so gross the tellers should blush, but instead, they feel they can make Americans and the world believe anything.

I looked at the Animal Psychic show one night when sleep escaped me. Supposedly she communicates with animals. From animal psychologists to the far fringes of psychics for animals is where we have gone. Many hold this show to be real and actually believe this woman looking at a dumb alligator, or some other animal, is, in fact, talking to and receiving understandable responses from the animal. Yeah!

Americans claim an independent spirit, but we are not as individualistic as we claim. We conform to the herd instinct more than we know. We go to the stores and purpose whatever is shown on TV as in-fashion. And a number of truly poor families will strain to get a son or daughter an over-priced pair of tennis shoes because we want to be like Mike in this herd-driven American crowd.

The US government knows the power of media to warp and control the minds of Americans, so it uses the media to trumpet its message to the nation, and, believe it or not, the government will tell the American people just about anything it needs to get their approval to do the most untoward and foolish things.

Iraq is the most immediate, but not the only case in point. The Bush administration told the American people that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and those weapons, massive they were supposed to be, were a threat to our security--that old gray dog again. The people, by and large, accepted that lie and by opinion polls gave Bush approval to kill needless nonwhite souls.

The US's argument in the UN was so weak that any intelligent American could have seen they had no support for their claim. Secretary of State Colin Powell spoke at length, while the world looked on and laughed. Nevertheless, the US went into Iraq in a blaze of this administration's contorted glory, killed people, got American soldiers killed, and found no weapons of mass destruction. After two months on the ground in Iraq, they still have not found weapons that were not there.

In the face of this mass absence of weapons of mass destruction, the tact the Bush Administration took is that they found something that may have been mobile chemical laboratories that could have been used, and we are still looking because those weapons are there. This was the strange reasoning used when the UN Inspectors were in Iraq and found nothing; to Bush, that was evidence they are there but being hidden. The obvious was too simple for the weighty minds of the Bush administration. They used a system of logic that most educated people are confused by--and that just shows we are not educated at all. Yeah! This stuff is too heavy for me.

Unreasonableness is given to Americans over and over again, and the Bush Administration seems feel if it says the same thing over and over again, the American people will accept it and believe it; regardless of how unbelievable what they say is, this Administration thinks that unreasonableness changes into reasonableness. Just repeat it. And for many, it does.

This type of thinking demonstratesa disrespect for the people. It also indicates a belief that Americans are gullible, and from polls, they may be right that Americans are a gullible and will accept anything shown over and over on TV or said over and over on the radio or in the various news media.

Americans have allowed themselves to be manipulated and deceived by this government, by big corporation, and by others who simply repeat a lie so much that is starts to seem like the truth. Many dictatorial minds feel that as long as they have access to media, they can sell the American people and the world just about anything they can repeat enough times.

In the light of the success of repetition of a message into action, corporations are no longer using spot advertisement; the strategy is to use campaign advertisement--a corporation repeats its message so many times that a person watching TV is inundated with the same thing and therefore hypnotized.

The government has taken its cue from corporations and talks the market down when stocks are too high and volatile; resultantly, it thinks it can talk things into existence and beliefs into individuals. This government feels that through the power of their positions and their repeated pronouncements they can change the course of a nation or the realities of that nation and the world. []

Frank A. Jones