Alllieblog

Human beings are pretty credulous. We’re likely to believe anything anyone tells us. You can see how that might have been adaptive back in the days when we were evolving in kinship groups. Back then if your mother told you “Watch out for that snake. He’s dangerous,” you’d probably better listen. If your cousin told you “Be careful. There’s a lion down by the water hole,” you’d need to believe him. We told the truth and had the truth told to us. Even today it takes more energy for the human brain to lie than to tell the truth. Despite that, there are whole professions, like advertising, public relations or Republican Party Operative, dedicated to figuring out the best lies to tell people, the lies people are most likely to believe. Even today we tend to believe what we are told and let it effect our behavior.

For instance: Clover. When I was growing up clover was seen as a good thing. In those days a lawn covered in clover was continually in motion, animated by the movements of colorful and productive insects. In those days clover was added to lawn seed mixes because it fixed nitrogen. A lawn that is 20 to 30 per cent clover shouldn’t need fertilizer. It shouldn’t need much beyond mowing.

One of the earliest herbicides, discovered during World War II, is 2,4-Dichlorophenoxyacetic acid, called 2,4-D. It kills dicots, leaving behind monocots, which are things like wheat, rice, rye, corn, and sugar cane. In practice this means it kills many broad-leafed plants, leaving grasses untouched. Put 2,4 D on a lawn and the clover will be killed but not the grass. Back when people liked clover in their lawns they didn’t use 2,4-D. For the producers of agricultural chemicals this was a problem. The solution was to convince people, convince lawn owners, that clover was not desirable, that it was a weed. Without clover in a lawn they could sell 2,4-D to homeowners without them getting upset when their clover died. And once the clover was dead then the lawn would probably need a nitrogen fertilizer. With the clover dead it was easier to convince homeowners to buy pesticides for the lawn because it wouldn’t be so obvious they were killing beneficial insects. Bees and butterflies are rare now on residential lawns. All from that one lie, that clover is a weed. “Weed” means is “unwanted plant”. For the makers of agricultural chemicals clover was unwanted. It interfered with profits.

This is how Scotts, which sells lawn care products, describes clover:

Clover is a perennial weed that grows easily in moist areas. This shallow-rooted weed is found throughout the U.S. Clover also performs well in nitrogen-depleted soil, so consider applying a fertilizer application to help keep it from coming back.

Can you believe the gall? Because clover fixes nitrogen it does well in nitrogen depleted soils, enriching them. To Scotts that is a bad thing. Their solution is for customers to buy and apply fertilizer to replace the nitrogen clover would fix for free. Jeez! And to buy herbicides to kill clover. They’ve gotten their customers to believe that clover should be eradicated from lawns. Their lawn seed mixes no longer contain clover. These companies also sell pesticides and without clover (and dandilions) people are less likely to notice their chemically treated lawn is now a fatal affliction for most living things.

But clover isn’t the only thing relabeled to fool us as to its true nature.

I know you’ve heard news reports from time to time about police in Iraq being killed, in the dozens, in the hundreds. If you were like me you wondered, why would they kill police? Crime is rampant in Iraq, people are robbed all the time, girls are often kidnapped and raped. Why would anybody attack the police?

When Paul Bremer took control of Iraq in 2003, he was ordered by the Bush administration to fire the entire Iraq military establishment as well as the national police force. They were replaced with collaborators, not unusual during an occupation. What the Bush Administration called “police”, the Iraqi National Police, were really a collaborative paramilitary organization that responded to “incidents,” assisted Coalition Forces on raids and supported the Iraqi puppet government. Some police brigades have been implicated in torture and even helped sectarian death squads. So, of course, Iraqi patriots tried to kill them. But by labeling them “police”, the Bush Administration meant to keep us from understanding why, to make us think the people fighting them and us were afflicted with an evil madness instead of an understandable anger.

They used words to confuse and relabel what they did in the US as well. Those that fight to protect the environment through any kind of property damage they called “ecoterrorists”. People who rescue animals from lives of torture are called animal rights terrorists. When the Republicans passed a bill to curtail the freedom of American citizens they called it “The Patriot Act”. The list goes on and on as they tried to convince us that bad is good and good is bad, all by controlling what something is called, by controlling its label.

Remember, clover is not a weed. Bees and butterflies are good. And the Patriot Act is not patriotic.

© Alllie 2009

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 4th, 2009 at 5:58 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed. Edit this entry.