WASHINGTON, DC --- Convinced that it knows what is best for everyone else, the Obama administration has launched a new effort to control citizens' behavior and bend them to the federal government's will: BIT (Behavioral Insights Team) is working "across all departments" of the federal government to "blind and bind" the American people in a unified, systematic, and persistent effort to "get people to do things our way," a government white paper declares, adding, in one of several hundred pages of footnotes, "our way is the right way."
Critics claim that BIT is a "misguided attempt" by corrupted government officials to create the people in the image of the president and his toadies. "The program is designed to turn every American into a miniature version of the great O Bama," Jim Smith, who wishes to remain anonymous, declares.
"Behavioral sciences can be used to encourage the public to comply with public policies, no matter how absurd and asinine those policies may be," the government document insists,
Maya Shankar mailed the document to professors of behavioral science at prestigious universities around the world, including several universities in Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea. "It's important to the president," she said, "that everyone have a voice in directing the thoughts and controlling the actions of American citizens. The president rejects isolationism and is working to ensure that everyone becomes a citizen of the world."
The plan seems to be to start out small, tweaking citizens' behaviors in small, relatively noncontroversial ways, such as encouraging them to save more money for their retirement or reducing energy consumption to protect Mother Earth. However, more ambitious-and more controversial-goals will then be added. "We'd like to see Americans pay 85 to 90 percent of their income to the U. S. Treasury, not only in new taxes, but also in voluntary contributions for the good of the country, of course. Bush and Obama have run up enormous debts, and somebody has to pay them," Shankar gushed. BIT intends to ensure that it is the poor and the middle class, not the rich, who pay and pay and pay.
Eventually, the document admits, "the people will become as docile as sheep as the government becomes increasingly ruthless and predatory. Resistance will decrease proportionately, as the people realize that it is pointless to oppose the government on any issue, no matter how large or small."
The government, Shankar says, "prefers to use carrots, rather than sticks, but, make no mistake about it, there are also plenty of sticks to club reluctant citizens into action."
Chicago thug Richard Thaler, an Obama appointee to the Chicago Booth School of Business, agrees with Shankar that "the time has come" for such a program. "It will streamline government; mold the beliefs, values, and emotions of the American people; entrench political corruption; at every level; and provide a mechanism for controlling voting that is legal and effective. What's not to like?"
"BIT is a threat to freedom and democracy," opponents claim, but Obama denies this allegation as "extreme and absurd rhetoric." Instead, he says, "the goal of BIT is clear: it's purpose is simply to maximize the efficiency of implementing public policy in a cost-effective and practical manner by reducing ineffective human dynamics, such as 'free will' and 'choice' through the use of academe's professional expertise and expert knowledge." He offered his audience one of his famous grins. "Besides," he added, "Michelle really wants schoolkids to accept the new meals she has suggested for our nation's children's lunches, and the mayor of New Yawk wants New Yawkers to drink less soda."
