Understanding sheeple

An article on a Framingham, Mass. based website puts it well: "The Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority - to the indifference of most commuters - began regularly and randomly inspecting passengers' bags this week in a move Gov. Mitt Romney trumpeted as a necessary step in 'a war against people who have as their objective the overthrow of the United States government.'" (Emphasis added)

It would have been very simple for the crowd of people to tell the T cops that they weren't going to submit to such nonsense, whose main effect so far has been to show that taking medical aids onto a train is likely to get you treated as one of the targets of Romney's war, and thus to create a net danger to people's well-being. People have shown they're quite capable of refusing to get on board when someone does something really objectionable, such as speaking a foreign language.

The article quotes Felix Browne, speaking for Romney: "It's really to create an atmosphere of uncertainty for those who would carry out a terrorist act. Even if there's a small chance the routine could be upset, then it's worth pursuing a program like this." The pointlessness of this is mind-boggling. The chance that whatever upcoming terrorist attacks are being planned include the MBTA, which is one of millions of attractive targets, is miniscule. The searches cover a tiny fraction of the trains in the system, so the chances of conducting a search on the train which the terrorists are boarding is itself miniscule. And if that does happen, the terrorists will simply leave the station and get on another train at another station; as Browne admits, the terrorists will merely have their "routine upset." Such feeble protection may actually attract terrorists, since they might consider it more glamorous to get past an alleged defense system to murder people.

Why, then, do people go along with a scheme which poses a real and definite, though small, danger to people's health, in order to slightly complicate the task of terrorists? Perhaps it's that people regard a death by terrorist attack as vastly more horrible than other risks to their lives. But then they would be avoiding trains, shopping malls, and other crowded areas in significant numbers. I'm not aware of any figures saying that terrorist threats have modified people's daily behavior in the long run (though it certainly did in the weeks immediately following 9/11).

Perhaps the answer is that when someone says "I'm from the government and I'm here to help you," people believe him, no matter how unfounded his claim. This explains other phenomena as well -- for example, why people voluntarily understate their tax deductions so that they can make an interest-free loan to the IRS, when they could be depositing it at interest. If you question them, they explain that it's "forced savings," the implication being that having their choice taken away is a good thing.

It's bizarre, but many people trust the government simply because it is the government, because it tells them what to do. Maybe the explanation is that we're descended from apes who gained an evolutionary advantage by obeying the head ape.