Image Wikipedia.

“They want obedient workers. Obedient workers. People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork, and just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it, and now they’re coming for your Social Security money.” (George Carlin, American stand-up comedian, 1937-2008)

According to Stanley Milgram (1933-1984), the controversial social psychologist who conducted experiments on obedience in the 1960s at Yale: “Obedience is as basic an element in the structure of social life as one can point to.” (more on this study to follow)

Currently in America, a very dark brand of obedience serves to confirm the sarcasm George Carlin leveled at America’s socio/economic system which takes advantage of a complaisant public, and when this obedient public does not exert sufficient pressure on political leaders, it grants “silent permission” to avoid or radicalize crucial issues such as climate change, uniform tax policy, proper medical treatment, and fair societal policies.

This darkness transfers control by allowing extreme divisive rhetoric to become normalized, in power, in control. Then political dialogue easily shifts to extremism, a very effective tool of control, marginalizing minority groups, intensifying social divisions. This is how societies and ecosystems go “extinct from politeness,” a term coined by Caitlin Johnstone. journalist, essayist, painter and poet: Faces Of The Empire: The Battle For Humanity’s Soul (November 2025)

Caitlin Johnstone recently posted an article: On Becoming The First Species To Go Extinct From Politeness, which goes straight to the heart of today’s nonsensicalness getting away with murder of every type and stripe while clobbering life-sourcing ecosystems without a care in the world. The simple explanation for mean-spiritedness getting away with mountains of ridiculousness is “American Obedience.” People seem to embrace being led around by their noses to the end of the Earth, to a certain demise, to utter destruction, to cold-bloodied murder, to Wile E Coyote’s edge of the cliff. This type of human tragedy is found in Jesus’ teachings, Matthew 15:14 and Luke 6:39: “If the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit.”

Caitlin’s article captures the essence of Jesus’ teachings by pointing the guitar strumming finger of the famous poet, folk-songster and celebrated labor advocate Utah Phillips (1935-2008) who exclaimed: “The Earth is not dying, it is being killed. And the people who are killing it have names and addresses.” The relevance of Phillips in today’s world could not be more apropos.

Caitlin quotes Howard Zinn (A People’s History of the United States): “As soon as you say the topic is civil disobedience, you are saying our problem is civil disobedience. That is not our problem…. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are running the country. That’s our problem.”

According to Stanley Milgram (1933-1984) the controversial social psychologist who conducted experiments on obedience in the 1960s at Yale: “Obedience is as basic an element in the structure of social life as one can point to… The legal and philosophic aspects of obedience are of enormous import, but they say very little about how most people behave in concrete situations. I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist. Stark authority was pitted against the subjects’ strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects’ ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation.” (Stanley Milgram, The Perils of Obedience, physics.utah.edu, The University of Utah)

Lying Creates a Kind of Trickle-Down Corruption

This infestation of dark obedience prevails even as nearly seventy-five percent (75%) of people in a Gallup poll that identify with either of America’s political parties agree that moral values are getting worse. This is a strong signal that something is deeply wrong. “The problem begins with the government and the media. The problem is not that we feel like morality is in decline by our fellow citizens but by our government and media. When the government and the media lie to us or share information that doesn’t align with our experience, it feels like honesty and integrity for America as a whole are eroding. Perhaps President Herbert Hoover said it best back in the 1930s when he observed, ‘When there is a lack of honor in government, the morals of the whole people are poisoned.’ Lying creates a kind of trickle-down corruption and the average citizen’s reasoning can quickly become: “If the government can, then why can’t I?”” (Is Morality in Decline or Is It Being Manipulated? Psychology Today)

The question remains: Why are today’s descendants of the original disobedient American revolutionaries of the late 18th century so obedient, especially in the face of misdeeds, theft, graft, con artists, swindlers, and crooks at an all-time high? Do they idolize the original American Revolutionaries, the Founders who were wealthy landowners/slaveowners disobedient to monarchial rights while ignoring true democratic spirits. The early American Revolutionary era (1765-1783) established an extraordinarily narrow focus, only extending rights to white property-owning men, excluding women, slaves and non-property owners or pretty much everybody else. Democracy? “That’s our history. We were founded on a very basic double standard: This country was founded by slave owners who wanted to be free!” (George Carlin)

The Founders did not trust democracy. They reveled in oligarchical democracy, creating government structures designed to limit direct democracy, e.g., the Electoral College. It was a narrow interpretation of democracy, e.g., as for “religious freedom,” Catholics were denied rights like holding public office, voting, owning land and freely practicing their faith, some laws banned priests. Based upon the morality and ideals of the Founding Fathers, the DNA of American democracy is fragile and vulnerable to returning to oligarchical democracy. The 2000 and 2024 presidential elections demonstrated a fatal weakness inherent with mindless public obedience. All of which is only possible in the context of an “obedient society,” both then and now.

America has returned to its origins, with oligarchical democracy anxiously waiting in the wings, with taxes once again a pivot point, recalling the Boston Tea Party of 1773 led by some of the richest men in the colonies like John Hancock and Joseh Warren opposed to any form of taxation like today’s Big Beautiful Bill roundly accepted by smiling billionaires with clandestine tipping, accepted by obedient millionaire members of Congress and an obedient unwitting public from coast-to-coast, nobody stood up against it, nobody stood up, even as it buries America in a mountain of $3.4 trillion in new decadal debt. Moreover, with obedience so pervasive, all of Project2025 is easily enacted, smooth as silk, in a heady return to oligarchical democracy, as warned by Milgram: “The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority.” Project2025 proved to be that authority, nobody questioned, nobody challenged it, nobody!

Like a mindless drunkard wobbling down the street, American Obedience has given free rein to Project2025’s massive quiver filled with poisoned arrows aimed at complete destruction of a tenuous democracy and wholesale avoidance of enormously destructive climate systems directly caused by burning fossil fuels that are, in fact, encouraged; consequently, targeting the last remaining hope, i.e., a fair democratic system, of easily led obedient adults that have reduced themselves to sittin’ ducks. Who’s proud of this?

The post George Carlin’s Obedient America appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

From CounterPunch.org via this RSS feed