The wizards of lies

By UMBERTO MAZZEI*

SINCE THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, information control obsesses those looking for “excessive profit”, as Adam Smith defined it. The model was developed in the United States. There, secondary education – the mass version – was minimized in any aspect related to humanities, such as history, geography, philosophy, which give benchmarks for critical thinking.

The idea is to impart only the knowledge that will render the working class useful at a job, but politically ignorant. It allows for nurturing majorities with a world view based on distorted information, so the public can be guided according to the convenience of the ruling class. It is a useful trick even for governments without electoral fuss and with visible leaders, but it is in democracies where it is most useful, because the ruling class, which is hardly seen, uses misleading information to promote their puppets in electoral carnivals.