"How come there are people, subjected to exactly the same society and media who see other people as being brainwashed but not themselves?"

Because, Jack, I get my information from reading contemporary books by various independent political anyalysts whom I respect and from consulting a great variety of independent sources...not from watching daily TV programming, not by tuning into the daily "news" (which is propaganda, distortion, and distraction) from CNN/Fox/NBC etc, and not by listening to commercial radio "news" (which is even worse). You see...I am NOT subjected to the same media most Americans are, because I don't even tune in to the mass media except for an occasional laugh and a way to remind myself how useless and corrupted they have become. I get my information elsewhere...mostly by reading books and newspaper and magazine articles and articles on the Internet (which is still free). Also, I have access to the Canadian press, which although rather dominated by its American sources is still not as stone-dead-batshit-insane as its American counterparts are.

Further to that, I can recommend the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) which is publicly funded, therefore not a compliant slave of a group of corporate commercial sponsors. Then too, there is the BBC, which usually has a much saner view of reality than American media do. And then there's the rest of the world, always worth listening to for an alternate view of reality.

The average American (and Canadian) citizen becomes a passive sponge for the daily commercial TV and radio programming, all funded by corporate sponsors who want to push the corporate agenda. People are trained like parrots in cages by that corporate-sponsored media, and they are programmed into unthinking conformity by it.

I am not. Because I don't watch it or listen to it. Period.

If people want to free themselves and use their own minds and come to their own intelligent conclusions, they must stop being passive receivers of mass media daily propaganda as delivered on corporate-owned network news.

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Bobert - I think there are some genuine progressives in the Democratic Party, and they probably pushed for health care reform out of genuine idealism...and because it's simply insane NOT to reform your health care system! Then there are the opportunists who thought "This will sound wonderful to our supporters and get us many votes, but we'll have to shape it the way our lobbyist pals in the private health insurance industry want it so they can get richer and we can continue getting their funding."

Unfortunately, the opportunists got their way and you did not get what you should have: a single payer government-administered health care plan such as exists in Canada, Japan, and western Europe.

I don't know which camp Obama is in. He may be one of the genuine idealists or he may be an opportunist. I just don't know. I do know he's a very bright man and a superb orator who makes a great impression when he speaks. I've been very impressed by some of his speeches...but not so impressed by his actual policies as carried out. I don't know if it's that he can't do what he wants to...quite possible...or that he never had any real intention of doing what he said he would do. It could be one. It could be the other. It could even be a combination of the two.