The process of creating and entrenching highly selective, reshaped or completely fabricated memories of the past is what we call “indoctrination” or “propaganda” when it is conducted by oficial enemies, and “education,” “moral instruction” or “character building,” when we do it ourselves. It is a valuable mechanism of control, since it selectively blocks any understanding of what is happening in the world.
One crucial goal of successful education is to deflect attention elsewhere —say, to Vietnam, or Central America, or the Middle East, where our problems allegedly lie—and away from our own institutions and their systematic functioning and behavior, the real source of a great deal of the violence and suffering in the world. It is crucially important to prevent understanding and to divert attention from the sources of our own conduct, so that elite groups can act without popular constraints to achieve their goals—which are called “the national interest” in
academic theology.