My Sources: 36 Thoughtful, Evidence-Driven, Highly Recommended Readings

Jack Dresser, Ph.D.

“A popular government, without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy.”
   – James Madison, Fourth President and principal author of our Bill of Rights

As I have said elsewhere, a functional democracy also requires a clear-thinking and caring public that seeks independent information and is inherently suspicious of power and of statements by self-interested parties in either politics or business that profits from politics.   The power elite do not make their activities and purposes easy to detect, so responsible citizenship requires time and effort well beyond simply showing up on election day.  We must also change “hearts and minds” here, not on foreign soil, and to do so, persuasive evidence and moral reasoning are the most effective and respectful  instruments.

In this light, both the results and the pattern of the 2004 presidential election are highly disturbing.  A substantial plurality of voters in the south, west, and midwest – if the vote counts can be believed – voted for George Bush despite overwhelming and well-known evidence of massive corruption, deception, incompetence, and reckless disregard of citizen and planetary welfare in his administration.  When examined by county, these election data show a striking disparity between urban and rural voters.  City dwellers voted overwhelmingly for Kerry while Bush prevailed overwhelmingly among rural and small town voters.  The urban/rural population balance defined red vs. blue states.

The Bush supporters I spoke with, when asked about their choice, invariably gave mindless, one-line answers, e.g., “He believes in God,” “He prays every day and I trust that God will guide him,” “He believes in capital punishment and my grandfather was murdered,” “Kerry is too weak” – these answers despite the fact that Kerry attends church and Bush doesn’t, Kerry was a decorated combat boat commander while Bush was avoiding risk and playing National Guard airman in Texas and Alabama at a time when National Guard units were not deployed to combat theaters, and Kerry was already a prosecuting attorney, Lt. Governor, and U.S. Senator while Bush was immersed in alcoholism, convicted of drunk driving, and engaged in shady and unsuccessful business dealings with bailouts by his daddy.

This presents troubling questions: how do these voters assess character, “strength,” achievement, job performance, intelligence, “values,” competence, stability, mental health, leadership qualities, honesty, integrity and reliability?  Not on bases of clear thinking or empirical evidence, it would appear.

An October 2004 survey by the Program on International Policy Attitudes associated with the University of Maryland reflected a glaring lack of basic knowledge and realism among Bush supporters.  The survey found the following differences between Bush and Kerry supporters in accuracy of information regarding established, widely disseminated facts that (a) Saddam had neither WMDs nor any WMD development program prior to our invasion as determined by chief UN inspector David Kay and the administration’s own chief inspector, Charles Duelfer, (b) Saddam had no relationship with al-Qaeda or 9/11, determined by the 9/11 Commission, and (c) world opinion overwhelmingly opposed the Iraq invasion and opposes the Bush administration (pluralities in 30 major countries favored Kerry while only 3 favored Bush).
 

Questions regarding established facts	Bush	Kerry
Just before the war Saddam had WMDs or a major WMD program	72%	26%
Most experts agree that just before the war Saddam had WMDs	56%	18%
Experts agree that Saddam was providing support to al-Qaeda	60%	21%
Iraq was directly involved in 9/11	20%	7%
The 9/11 Commission determined that Iraq was aiding al-Qaeda	55%	27%
The 9/11 Commission determined that Iraq was involved in 9/11	13%	8%
A majority of the world’s population opposed the Iraq War	31%	74%
A majority of the world’s population favors Kerry’s election	9%	69%
Without Iraqi WMDs or support of al-Qaeda, war was unjustified	58%	92%

This last finding is interesting.  Even a majority of Bush supporters would not support the war if they acknowledged the truth.  This suggests the psychological defense of denial – ignoring well-publicized and readily available facts – to maintain their political allegiance.

However, repeated survey findings over time on these and other political beliefs show increasing rates of factual accuracy as knowledge spreads.  Denial must be confronted repeatedly with evidence of reality, generating cognitive dissonance that is eventually resolved in favor of reality in non-psychotic adults.  A similar “adoption curve” is observed in “diffusion of innovation” patterns in all areas of life, with “late adopters” typically characterized by less education, less exposure to diverse information sources, more homogeneous cultures, and attachment to traditional ideas and practices.

To accelerate the adoption of political knowledge, realism and responsible citizenship in ever-wider circles of our population, generous quantities of evidence-based reasoning need to be distributed as widely and rapidly as possible.  Unfortunately, our “free press” has failed miserably to fulfill its constitutionally defined and protected duty to inform citizens and serve as vigilant watchdogs rather than indolent lapdogs of government.  Toward that end, I provide the following reading list for citizen watchdogs in eight key areas crucial to the survival of our democracy.  These provide a plethora of references and springboards to additional data and publications.  Most are available inexpensively in used or paperback editions from www.alibiris.com or www.powells.com.

The Psychopathology of George W. Bush

Bush on the Couch
 – Justin A. Frank, M.D.

The Superpower Syndrome
 – Robert Jay Lifton, M.D.

Bush/Right Wing deceptions & manipulations

The Lies of George W. Bush
 – David Corn

Big Lies: The Right Wing Propaganda Machine
– Joe Conason

The Exception to the Rulers
 -- Amy Goodman

Bushwhacked
 – Molly Ivins

American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and. the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush
 – Kevin Phillips

House of Bush, House of Saud
 – Craig Unger

Worse than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush
 – John Dean

The Great Unraveling: Losing our Way in the New Century
 – Paul Krugman

Lies and the Lying Liars who Tell Them
 – Al Franken

Stupid White Men
 – Michael Moore

Republican political & corporate corruption

The Best Democracy Money can Buy
 – Greg Palast

Losing America: Confronting a Reckless and Arrogant Presidency
 – Robert Byrd

Pigs at the Trough
 – Adrianna Huffington

Election theft

The Best Democracy Money can Buy (Ch. 1)
 – Greg Palast

Jews for Buchanan
 – John Nichols

The Unfinished Election of 2000
 – Jack Rakove (ed.)
 

Another Stolen Election: Voices of the Disenfranchised, 2004
 – Bob Fritakis & Harvey Wasserman

War, conquest, the American imperial agenda and methods, its popular appeal, & its realities
(The first two are must readings for prospective military members and their parents. Hedges is a 15-year war correspondent)

War is a Force that Gives us Meaning
 – Chris Hedges

What Every Person Should Know About War
 – Chris Hedges

War Is a Racket
 – Gen. Smedley D. Butler

The Folly of Empire
 – John Judis

The Bubble of American Supremacy
 – George Soros

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
– John Perkins

The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives
– Zbigniew Brzezinski

Cruel and Unusual: Bush/Cheney’s New World Order
 – Mark Crispin Miller

History and Hyperpower
– Eliot Cohen, Foreign Policy, July/August, 2004
[Foreign Policy is a bimonthly publication of the Council on Foreign Relations]

Containing Iraq: Sanctions Worked
 – George Lopez & David Cortright, Foreign Policy, July/August, 2004

Our corrupted media

The Media Monopoly
 – Ben Bagdikian

Rich Media, Poor Democracy
 – Robert McChesney

The complicity theory of 9/11
(These books present deeply disturbing but compelling evidence that the Bush administration deliberately allowed or orchestrated 9/11.  Indigestible and unthinkable as this suggestion is, it is nonetheless, as these authors persuasively argue, the only causal model that seems to fit the data.  However, few Americans are yet ready to consider this idea, so the risk in mentioning it is dismissal as a left-wing nut.)

The New Pearl Harbor
 – David Griffin

Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil
 – Michael Ruppert

War and Globalisation: The Truth Behind September 11
 – Michel Chossudovsky

Worldviews and political attitudes
(These describe the psychological bases of liberalism and conservatism. The Psychological Bulletin  [an American Psychological Association peer-reviewed journal] article summarizes 88 research studies in 12 countries using the method of “meta-analysis.”)

Moral Politics
 – George Lakoff

Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition
 – Psychological Bulletin, May 2003

The Great Game of Politics: Why we Elect Whom we Elect
 – Dick Stoken
 
 

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Copyright 2004 Jack Dresser, Ph.D.
 
 

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