Part One of Two
Only in America
By Manuel Valenzuela
12/19/05 "ICH" -- -- The coming years, like those of the present and the past, will see the continued spewing of fictionalized propaganda designed to manipulate the fears, hatreds, xenophobia and nationalistic tendencies of the population. The level of control over the masses and power over the nation in the years after 9/11 by corporatists intent on hijacking the country became, to them, a rousing success, thanks to the intense levels of fear and hatred engendered by the horrific events of that day. In the span of a few infamous days the corporatists had unleashed massive psychological warfare upon us, its effects still lingering in the minds of millions. Suddenly, those in power had become the puppeteers of the citizenry, free to manage us as they saw fit, our fragile and damaged psychologies traumatized, our thinking, human minds replaced by our more primitive, mammalian instincts and behaviors. An entire nation had succumbed, thanks to television, to images and emotions no people had ever witnessed, repeated over and over and over again. The making of America’s new enemy had begun.
The manufacture, marketing and dissemination of bogeymen enemies, both real and fictional, for a long time endemic in American society, has always worked to perfection, becoming the inertia used to control the population. It becomes the energy needed to maintain America’s permanent wartime economy. The creation of unseen bogeymen into supernatural evildoers fits the perfect mold of how the American citizenry has been brainwashed over the years through the use of Hollywood movies and television, with the constant themes of good versus evil, of fantasy and sensationalism, and of course the always needed happy ending, where the good guy always triumphs over the villain.
The struggle against America’s enemy, conveniently chosen and designed to fit the policies and goals of those in power, is purposefully made out to be like a struggle in a typical Hollywood film of good and evil characters, where America is seen as the force of good confronting the evildoer afflicting the world, a hero that ultimately, in the end, will triumph, leading to the happy ending that in reality rarely, if ever, bears fruit. Yet to the reprogrammed mind of the average American, our conception of real life rewired, our brainwaves reconfigured through the incessant fictions and altered states of reality bombarded into our heads by movies and sitcoms, the battle of superhero and evildoer must continue, because America can do no wrong, it is the shining beacon on a hill, the savior of humankind, incapable of committing human evil, fighting forces intent on destroying the nation. Inevitably, in our warped mind good always triumphs over evil, the hero always gets the girl and normalcy eventually returns to life.
To say that televised fantasy bears no resemblance to real human outcomes is an understatement, yet in a fictional war that remains but a fleeting illusion in the minds of the population, becoming more intangible than visible, hardly affecting the daily lives of the majority, the deception works like magic thanks to the blitzkrieg of propaganda sent out through the airwaves. In a sense, the so-called war against America’s enemy becomes a Hollywood production, existing in the conscious of the people but never truly being felt, its puppeteers hiding its reality and its truth, the keepers at the gate filtering what needs to be seen and what does not. Our reality is what they make it to be, after all.
Voiced loudly by America’s paid opinion makers yet hardly seen, the struggle against our new enemy exists as if in a vacuum, yet the citizenry gobbles it up like fast food, devouring what is spoon fed them, believing, like they have been trained to do since birth, that this Hollywood movie is a frightening reality, yet, as always, will invariably end with good defeating evil, and America killing our enemy. Never mind that we are more likely to be struck by lightning than killed by a bomb or act of terrorism.
Such is the power of movies and television and newscasts that from an insignificant group of terrorists, concerned mostly with expelling America from their lands and toppling American sponsored despots, a giant evildoer can be created, mutating from our hired freedom fighters of times past to the dreaded terrorists of today, mutating from friend to enemy, possessing super human strength and powers, seemingly dying and being reborn, capable of destroying the mightiest nation the world has ever seen.
These fictions, of course, were pure deception, yet inside the minds of average Americans they are as real, and as serious, as any threat America has ever confronted. For the Establishment has wished it so, knowing that having enemies translates into power, control and vast sums of wealth for themselves, all at the expense of the masses who can be easily steered any direction they are needed to take. American society has been, for the last century, conditioned to exist in a state of anxiety and fear, not of internal factors, which are much more dangerous, but of the external enemy that seemingly arises like a phoenix from the ashes of those previous ones now discarded, their usefulness having died out, reborn to become the new barbarians at the gates.
America’s tomorrow will be made to confront the same Madison Avenue marketing techniques that have for too long now steered the population in the direction of control through fear of enemies, both real and concocted. For the corporatists and elite wishing to retain the power, wealth and control of the nation, the population must always have conditioned and ingrained inside them the fear of bogeymen and the uncertainty of violence. The masses must be made to believe that external enemies, both alien and clandestine, are a menace and threat to destroy their way of life and the very foundation of the nation they inhabit.
It is the fear, anxiety and insecurity of man that blinds thinking and births subservience to power, making of us primates desiring the comfort and security of our masters. Through fear we allow our impulses for survival to dominate, the emotions of tribalism and xenophobia to thrive, and our trust in upper hierarchy to permeate. Therefore, if an enemy of unnatural power and ability can be concocted from which to frighten the population into submission, into granting away its rights and freedoms, its blood and treasure, made to trust that its survival is dependent on the protection of its overlords, an entire nation can be brought to its knees, impotent to revolt and seek change. Willingly the people kneel in submission, allowing themselves to be ruled by today’s version of yesteryear’s totalitarians, the corporatists.
Through the spreading of our fear the power of the Establishment arises, and expands. Enemies that are created and given prominence can capture the minds of hundreds of millions of people, and can make us subservient to the dictates of power. Is it any wonder, then, why for decades, and some would say a couple of centuries, enemies of America have existed, lingering in our consciousness, becoming great threats to our way of life, dying and being reborn, evolving and adapting, changing according to the times, and yet always hating us for our way of life, for our freedoms and our democracy? Yet somehow Americans manage to thrive, our lives are lived in comfort and gluttony, our nation rarely, if ever, attacked, our people rarely, if ever killed.
From Indians to Mexicans to Spanish to Filipinos to Germans to Soviets to Communists to Vietnamese to Arab Muslims to the future Chinese an external enemy has always been a threat, a thorn on our side, seemingly rising out of thin air, molded by the hands of greed addicts, warmongers, criminal capitalists and authoritarian corporatists, allowed to be born in order to cover up for the real and much more dangerous enemy.
External enemies have always existed in our reality because they are an invaluable tool to those who aspire to control the people and the resources of the planet. What was the Cold War but a charade used to gain control of and dominate southern nations, rich in natural resources and cheap labor, and to control their people, and hence their economies, both through market colonialism and the use of proctors? What is the so-called war on terror but a charade for the geostrategic race being waged to control the oil fields of the Middle East and Central Asia, knowing full well that oil is not finite and that the nation that controls the oil will invariably control the world?
The Birth of Enemies from the Middle East
Hidden behind dark corners, lurking underneath beds, fantasy bogeymen not known or understood are mutated by marketers and propagandists who understand human psychology well into demons haunting the deep and frail recesses of the human mind. Humans not known or understood, alien in culture and language, masked in foreign appearance and color are easily transformed into creatures evil and degenerate, threats to the vitality of so-called freedom and democracy. For ignorance invariably leads to fear of the unknown and, if propagandized correctly, an entire population can be easily manipulated into allowing itself to be controlled and exploited by the Establishment. The ingrained mammalian instinct of security, both of the citizenry and that of their children, can be easily exploited by the corporatists, made to be of paramount importance, manipulated as only being made secure by purchasing the products of the corporation and by acquiescing to the draconian measures of the state.
Through the televised media, the attempt to birth perpetual fear into the populace has never been easier to accomplish. Images, sound and opinion can be bombarded day in and day out to the easily receptive American citizen, many of which have become dumbed-down couch potatoes spoon fed their thoughts through the monitor they have become addicted to. Through the manipulation of televised images and sounds, the doctors of propaganda can hypnotize and control the thoughts of Americans, using all tools at their disposal to concoct the perfect bogeymen.
The evildoers designed to captivate the fear-controlled mind of the masses are created to serve the interests of the Establishment, helping to steer the population in the direction most beneficial to the elite while at the same time working to mobilize millions into supporting the activities and illegalities ultimately detrimental to the people themselves.
During the so-called Cold War, for example, the enemy created was the dreaded Soviet Communist, birthed to unleash terror in the dreams of average Americans. At the time, America’s military industrial complex, along with the omnipresent corporate world, saw that a nation in a perpetual war footing could be more readily controlled, its people made to serve the interests of the Establishment. Using a cocktail of jingoism, nationalism, xenophobia, fear mongering and hate baiting, the propagandists were successful in breeding a hatred of anything related to Soviet Russia, including its innocent citizens. Through the control of the masses, manipulated to accept and even demand a perpetual war footing, profits to corporations became enormous, power over government became real and control over the course of America became a reality.
With the population in the stupor of fear and hatred, dominated by fascinations of nationalism and sensationalistic displays of greatness, its collective mind occupied by the rabid pursuit of Soviet defeat, the corporatist dominion over America, as well as the Third World, triumphed, giving rise to a geopolitical chess match for corporate control over the lands, resources and peoples of the underdeveloped world. This game, a fight for profit, power and hegemony, resulted in the ceaseless poverty, disease, under-education, exploitation and death of millions of human beings, for generations now their destinies made to subsist in endemic poverty, with talents eroded and lives in perpetual limbo, their lands and economies still to this day not having recovered from the devastation the Cold War years spawned.
Just like the corporatist elite were able to control their own masses, conquer the resources, lands and peoples of the south, thereby enriching themselves beyond compare, manipulating Cold War indoctrinated fears and hatreds to silence, control and make indifferent the masses, using the media to maintain a state of ignorance throughout the nation, so now in the Middle East and Central Asia do they see the grand prize: further empowerment over us as well as control of the world’s remaining underground fields of oil. Once again, an enemy has been conveniently manufactured out of the dark rooms of Madison Avenue focus groups to fit nicely into the agenda of the corporatists and neocons in power.
Serving the interests of the corporatists, fundamentalist Islamicists, of which only a small minority exists willing to commit violence, make a great enemy from which to hypnotize the population: unknown, alien, of different culture and language, existing in multiple desired states, dark skinned, invisible, violent and perhaps most importantly, of a religious belief system at odds with the fundamentalist Christian orthodoxy dominant in today’s America.
The systemic marketing of Muslims and Arabs and Persians as external threats capable of destroying our way of life, our religious norms, and the cherished charades of freedom and democracy is, therefore, the perfect weapon launched against the masses, for naturally we impute the actions of a minute lunatic fringe with all Muslim people, allowing the terror of a few miscreants to penetrate our fragile psyches and our even more fragile belief structure.
Through the methodical brainwashing used in Hollywood and the corporate media, the Arab/Persian is made to be a rabid demon wishing death upon our children’s future, ready at any moment to blow himself up, committing heinous acts of barbarity, murdering and bombing and rampaging, for he is a terrorist, the descendant of the Soviet, the next adaptation of American enemy, the next marketable wonder the corporatists exploit to enrapture our minds and control our lives.
The Arab/Persian as enemy serves to militarize the mind of the population, to distract us from more ominous, internal threats, to control and brainwash the weaker minded among us, creating a marching army of “good Germans.” It helps mobilize the country towards a perpetual war footing, acting as an excuse to wage war, to increase the profits and wealth and power of the corporatists, and to further lead America down the road to eventual fascism. Through war the military-energy-industrial complex and the corporate world can further engorge themselves, using the energy and wages of the masses for the construction of their weapons of death and suffering. Through war they can lay claim to the resources of the Middle East, the all-important lifeline to continued economic dominance.
Using Arabs and/or Persians – who just happen to be native peoples of the Middle East, the very same lands saturated with underground fields of oil that the military-energy industrial complex craves – as the new American enemy gives our corporatist government the perfect excuse to invade, occupy and devastate desired lands with American imposed capitalism. Accorded the face of evildoer extraordinaire, stereotyped and marginalized through the lens of fiction, the Arab/Persian people, diverse and complex, unknown to the undereducated, act as the key to unlocking the American people’s historical reluctance to fight wars both immoral and of choice.
If the Arab/Persian can be demonized to be hated and feared by a population brainwashed by the hypnotizing glare of television, the nation will be much easier to militarize, the people’s children will be much easier to enlist as cannon fodder and the internal policies of the nation will be much easier to control and manipulate.
The sustained viability of the nation’s militarization – and some would say the ongoing embezzlement of the people’s treasure by corporatists – desired by corporatists in power depends on the Arab and Persian and Muslim people remaining, in the conscious of the masses, forever an enemy, always a demon, their reputation strong enough to make of them a most potent adversary, capable of hijacking airplanes, destroying skyscrapers and threatening to strike fear amongst the population, as always hating our way of life.
What better scapegoat than the Arab/Persian population if one wants to conquer the resources of the Middle East and Central Asia? What greater marketing ploy could be manufactured to make enemies of the same people whose resources you desire?
And, with the war on terror acting as a vicious circle of recruitment, by becoming a self fulfilling prophesy, having violence beget violence, with more and more Arab people incensed at the actions of America, ready to join in jihad where only few extremists existed before, (Al-Qaeda has become a mass movement, franchised and claimed by many insurgents, most of whom have never met a real member of the group) thereby creating ever more non-fictitious enemies, the military-energy industrial complex has the capacity and will to continue the war into perpetuity, using the anger on the Muslim street, along with the fear and hatred of Americans, to further its own interests, exploiting both Muslim and American, pitting one against the other, creating fictitious conflict where none exists, concocting enemies out of two peoples whose similarities as humans quashes our differences of culture.
For a citizenry made to fear an alien people of which little is known about, with hatred and xenophobia running through their veins, programmed by the keepers at the gate to demand blood and death, can, at the push of a few psychological buttons, be mobilized into a war frenzy where the human brain, thinking, analytical and logical, is set aside and replaced by our primitive, mammalian brain, full of primordial behaviors and emotions. Once the population’s collective conscious has mutated according to the designs of their puppeteers the march towards war, invasion and occupation can commence.
Part two will be posted on Wednesday 12/21/05
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source: Information Clearing House
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