They Think You're Stupid

by Herman Cain

  The City of Doubt--Washington, D.C.

  All too often we read in the papers, see on television, or even hear in person a member of Congress bemoan the fact that it is just too difficult to advocate and enact fundamental policy change in Washington, D.C. The complaining members are, of course, always champions of policy change, but they just do not think they will be able to get the necessary support from their colleagues to tackle the big issues effectively.

  Unfortunately, Washington, D.C. has become the "City of Doubt." Many of the would-be leaders in Washington campaign on promises of being able to fix problems, and then weeks after they are elected they are right back into politics as usual mode.

  I believe the public is much more hopeful than members of Congress for the possibility of aggressive policy solutions. Veteran politicians have learned to campaign on hope and optimism, but then they go back to Washington and maintain "business as usual." They get away with maintaining the status quo because most voters turn off their political antennas the day after the election. Veteran politicians depend upon most voters having short memories or no memory at all.

  If the majority of the electorate does not express a new voice after election day, the City of Doubt will never become a City of Hope. The City of Doubt will never replace the tax code mess or fix the broken Social Security structure. A City of Hope can fix these problems. We do not suffer from a deficiency of "know-how" in this country; we suffer from a deficiency of hope in Washington, D.C.

  There are millions of success stories in every endeavor of life that prove we can accomplish anything when hope supersedes doubt. So why do most of our members of Congress campaign on hope and take doubt with them to Washington, D.C.? They either do not know how to lead or they lack the courage to lead.

  Many professional politicians simply believe that if they do not take a bold leadership position on issues, their opponent in the next election will have no ammunition to use against them. Doing nothing is the politically safe option. Since the electoral process takes a long time to replace people, the public has got to push the elected officials that are in Congress now to do the right things and to do them with urgency.

  Quite frankly, I am sick and tired of the status quo in D.C., and I believe millions of other voters feel the same way. We were founded as a nation of hope, not as a nation of doubt. Many of those we have elected have forgotten this principle.

  The City of Doubt also refers to any city in our country where people have lost hope that it is possible to change the political status quo. The City of Doubt exists anywhere people have lost hope that it is possible for all citizens to work for and achieve economic freedom, and in any city, town, farm, or hollow where people have lost hope in their individual, God-given abilities to leave this great nation a little better than they found it for their children and grandchildren.

  Tom Rath and the late Dr. Donald O. Clifton discuss the effects of lost hope in their book How Full Is Your Bucket? Rath and Clifton tell a heartbreaking story of the devastating and sometimes deadly effects of losing one's hope.

  Following the Korean War, Major (Dr.) William E. Mayer, who would later become the U.S. Army's chief psychiatrist, studied 1,000 American prisoners of war who had been detained in a North Korean camp. He was particularly interested in examining one of the most extreme and perversely effective cases of psychological warfare on record--one that had a devastating impact on its subjects.

  American soldiers had been detained in camps that were not considered especially cruel or unusual by conventional standards. The captive soldiers had adequate food, water, and shelter. They weren't subjected to common physical tactics of the time such as having bamboo shoots driven under their fingernails. In fact, fewer cases of physical abuse were reported in the North Korean POW camps than in prison camps from any other major military conflict throughout history.

  Why, then, did so many American soldiers die in these camps? They weren't hemmed in with barbed wire. Armed guards didn't surround the camps. Yet no soldier ever tried to escape. Furthermore, these men regularly broke rank and turned against each other, sometimes forming close relationships with their North Korean captors.

  When the survivors were released to a Red Cross group in Japan, they were given the chance to phone loved ones to let them know they were alive. Very few bothered to make the call.

  Upon returning home, the soldiers maintained no friendships or relationships with each other. Mayer described each man as being in a mental "solitary confinement cell . . . without any steel or concrete."

  Mayer had discovered a new disease in the POW camps--a disease of extreme hopelessness. It was not uncommon for a soldier to wander into his hut and look despairingly about, deciding there was no use in trying to participate in his own survival. He would go into a corner alone, sit down, and pull a blanket over his head. And he would be dead within two days.

  The soldiers actually called it "give up-itis." The doctors labeled it "marasmus," meaning, in Mayer's words, "a lack of resistance, a passivity." If the soldiers had been hit, spat upon, or slapped, they would have become angry. Their anger would have given them the motivation to survive. But in the absence of motivation, they simply died, even though there was no medical justification for their deaths.

  Despite relatively minimal physical torture, "marasmus" raised the overall death rate in the North Korean POW camps to an incredible 38%--the highest POW death rate in U.S. military history. Even more astounding was that half of these soldiers died simply because they had given up. They had completely surrendered, both mentally and physically.

  How could this have happened? The answers were found in the extreme mental tactics that the North Korean captors used. They employed what Mayer described as the "ultimate weapon" of war.

  Mayer reported that the North Korean's objective was to "deny men the emotional support that comes from interpersonal relationships." To do this, the captors used four primary tactics: informing, self-criticism, breaking loyalty to leadership and country, and withholding all positive emotional support.

  To encourage withholding, the North Koreans gave prisoners rewards such as cigarettes when they snitched on one another. But neither the offender nor the soldier reporting the violation was punished--the captors encouraged this practice for a different reason. Their intent was to break relationships and turn the men against each other.

  To promote self-criticism, the captors gathered groups of 10 or 12 soldiers and employed what Mayer described as "a corruption of group psychotherapy." In these sessions, each man was required to stand up in front of the group and confess all the bad things he had done--as well as all the good things he could have done but failed to do. The most important part of this tactic was that the soldiers were not "confessing" to the North Koreans, but to their own peers.

  The third major tactic that the captors employed was breaking loyalty to leadership and country. The primary way they did this was by slowly and relentlessly undermining a soldier's allegiance to his superiors. The consequences were ghastly.

  In one case, a colonel instructed one of his men not to drink the water from a rice paddy field because he knew the organisms in the water might kill him. The soldier looked at his colonel and remarked, "Buddy, you ain't no colonel anymore; you're just a lousy prisoner like me. You take care of yourself, and I'll take care of me." The soldier died of dysentery a few days later.

  If a soldier received a supportive letter from home, the captors withheld it. All negative letters, however--such as those telling of a relative passing away, or ones in which a wife wrote that she had given up on her husband's return as was going to remarry--were delivered to soldiers immediately.

  The effects were devastating: The soldiers had nothing to live for and lost basic belief in themselves and their loved ones, not to mention God and country.

  Excerpted from Tom Rath and Dr. Donald O. Clifton, How Full Is Your Bucket? (New York: Gallup Press, 2004), 17-23. Used by permission.

  We can see
from the experiences of some American POWs during the Korean War that, when taken to the extreme, the loss of hope can exert some of the most debilitating effects on our lives and the lives of our family members, and those we lead, work with or interact with on a regular basis.

  Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. also noted the negative effects of a lack of hope in his famous and moving "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech: "You know, whenever Pharaoh wanted to prolong the period of slavery in Egypt, he had a favorite, favorite formula for doing it . . . . He kept the slaves fighting among themselves."

  Do political leaders in the U.S. utilize the tactics of Pharaoh or the North Koreans to create doubt in the minds of the public that enactment of aggressive policy solutions is ever possible? Of course they do. Democrats use these same tactics when they pit groups of U.S. citizens against each other with their divisive class warfare rhetoric instead of working on fixing our crumbling economic infrastructure.

  They create doubt in people's minds that they can achieve economic freedom without assistance from a government program. They tell those in the so-called middle and lower economic classes that they are being kept down by the rich, and they tell Blacks that all their problems are caused by racist Whites. Democrats scare the elderly into thinking that Republicans want to cut their Social Security benefits or privatize the Social Security system.

  They frame the issue of abortion around a woman's right to control her body against the men who want to control women's bodies. They have fought to take God out of our public schools, our courthouses, our Pledge of Allegiance, and have told school children they can no longer sing Christmas carols.

  Democrats instill doubt in people's belief in their ability to achieve their American Dreams on an individual basis with individual responsibility. In doing so, they have helped create the politically homeless, who have given up on government and the prospect of change in the political status quo.

  Some Republican leaders are also guilty of creating and perpetuating feelings of doubt among the public. Weeks after election day in 2004, a Republican senator, who is also chairman of a powerful committee, was asked about the prospect for replacing the tax code with a fairer system, given that Republicans now enjoyed an increased majority in the Senate. The senator stated, "Comprehensive tax reform would be difficult to do. I'm not one to spend a lot of time tilting at windmills." Instead of following the president's lead by working on a much needed replacement of the federal tax code, the senator chose to express doubt instead of hope for an aggressive solution to the tax code mess.

  What would happen if your boss at work asked you on Monday to complete a task by Friday, and you said, "Boss, not only can that task not be completed by Friday, I don't think it can be completed at all. I'm not going to spend a lot of time tilting at your windmills." You would be on the unemployment line by Tuesday. You would be out of a job because, as an employee, your job is to answer to your boss. There is an expectation that you will complete the tasks you were hired to complete or you will be replaced by someone who is driven to excel and wants the company to succeed. We must hold our elected officials to results, or they will ride the wave of complacency.

  All elected officials in the U.S. serve and are employed by the people who elect them. They are obligated to fix the problems of government and make the government operate as efficiently as possible. For too long, however, elected officials have preyed on a politically apathetic public. Instead of fixing our biggest problems, they have exacerbated them by annually spending billions on pork barrel projects for their home districts and heaping tax credit upon tax credit to the federal tax code mess with one objective in mind--do whatever it takes to keep the voters and campaign donors happy so they can get reelected.

  It is no wonder why millions have lost hope in their government. Their government has forced them to lose hope in themselves, and their ability to be a new voice for policy change.

  A Nation of Hope . . . We the People

  Our nation has been blessed with many leaders in its history who faced seemingly insurmountable challenges and legions of doubters en route to achieving political victories that have forever changed the world. They have literally made possible what was once thought impossible. Leaders like Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Ronald Reagan were not dissuaded by the doubters and political foes who told them their aspirations could not be achieved. Instead, they relied on their faith in God and the American people, their belief that anything can be accomplished in America, and their hope and optimism for the future.

  Every day millions of Americans who possess those same qualities as our greatest political leaders carry with them the hope that today they too can get a little closer to making their American Dream a reality. I believe the majority of Americans are truly hopeful and optimistic people. In the face of the myriad of challenges we face each day, including, of course, those instilled by our political leaders, most Americans work hard every day to make their lives and the world a little better.

  I believe that we are a nation of hope. Whether we will forever remain the beacon of hope for the world, however, depends on the willingness of the public to force our politicians to enact aggressive policies that will unleash our country's economic potential and protect our moral foundations. Solving problems and changing things begins with believing that it can be done, much like the bumblebee believes he can fly even though, mathematically, he is not supposed to fly.

  Then how does the bumblebee fly? When I was a math major at Morehouse College, one of the things we studied was the equations of motion. The equations of motion are those equations that they put into computers to design airplanes and figure out how they are going to fly. Mathematicians and aerodynamicists for years have been trying to figure out mathematically and scientifically how the bumblebee flies. You see, the bumblebee is not supposed to fly. An aerodynamicist will tell you that the bumblebee's body is too big for its short little wings to suspend it in the air.

  So the mathematicians and scientists take the aerodynamics of a bumblebee, of the little fat body and the little flappy wings, and put it all into a computer model. Then, they run the model with all of these measurements and the computer comes back and says, "The sucker can't fly." So out of frustration the next generation of mathematicians and aerodynamicists go get some more poor little bumblebees and put them in a wind tunnel. They take some more measurements. They get a bigger computer. They get a faster computer. They put it all in there, they run their models and equations, and the computer says, "The sucker still can't fly."

  I'll tell you why the bumblebee flies. Nobody told the bumblebee that it could not fly. He just keeps flying around, gathering his nectar, and stinging you or your dog if you get too close. The bumblebee flies because he believes he can fly!

  Like the bumblebee, we can change the status quo in government and can create a new brand identity for the party that represents the Government Of the People. We are a nation of hope because hope is the key to happiness, and happiness is the key to success. We have been successful as a nation because people have been free to define and pursue their own happiness. Self-motivation and happiness are synonymous because no one can make another person happy. If you are already happy you are motivated to stay happy, and if you are unhappy you have to be motivated to get happy. Many people have experienced the feeling of happiness without being able to explain or define the feeling. The same is also true of unhappiness.

  A person who claims to be unhappy typically has a personal barrier to motivation. Happiness begins with a good attitude and with knowing what would really make you happy, but people cannot always answer that question.

  A few years ago when I lived in Omaha I heard the minister of my church, Rev. Dr. Nigel McPherson, use some thought-provoking words to define happiness: "something to do, someone to love, and something to hope for." "Wow!" I thought to myself that Sunday morning when I first heard this definition. It makes so much sense and explains
why I have felt a sense of happiness most of my life, although I did not know exactly why or how to articulate my sense of happiness.

  I have always had something to do (school, work, career, more work, and even more work). I have always been blessed with loved ones (my parents, my wife, our children, and some very close friends). And I was never without hope for something . . . a healthy family, the next promotion, or the next adventure in my life or career.

  But additionally, this definition gave me a vehicle to stir peoples' thinking who may be searching for happiness in their jobs and lives or who may be trying to eliminate a bad attitude. If one of Reverend McPherson's "somethings" is missing, you have a happiness deficiency that only you can fill.

  I believe much of the general public's dissatisfaction comes from an overload of negative news, negative political rhetoric, and the false perception that somehow the government or someone else is responsible for making them happy. This creates a mass bad attitude, which is a major barrier to happiness.

  Something to do, someone to love, and something to hope for, but the greatest of these is hope. Hope has been the common thread of all the great leaders throughout the history of our nation. They have shared their hope and optimism for the future with their fellow citizens and inspired the public to believe in themselves and the possibility of positive change. There would be no great achievements in our history, and people would not be working hard to achieve their American Dreams, if it were not for hope.

  Hope inspires people to believe in themselves and their abilities. Hope inspires people to start their own businesses or create the next great invention. Without hope in the prospect for success and a brighter future, we as individuals and as a nation are without purpose and vision. Hope is the basis for all achievements, great and small.