Notes of an Agitated Citizen - September 2001
written & compiled by Alexander Hirka, born 22 December, 1951, New York City
Neo-patriotism has been in production for years. Steven Speilburg (one of the top 100 richest men in the United States and in less direct ways our own Leni Reifenstahl) and Tom Hanks (neo John Wayne) have been helping the nation forget the truths and painful lessons of Vietnam with versions of the more distant and much more easy to romaticize WorldWarII. Male bonding through violence; celluloid heroes for truth, justice & the “American” way. It sells newspapers and boosts the economy too.
It entered my vision the day after the attacks on the World Trade Center with a "pass this on to everyone" e-mail, suggesting an "American Pride" day;
that we all dress in red/white/blue.
Why was I startled and repulsed? Nothing new here...When television was converting the Gulf War into the Desert Storm mini-series, the Topps company started making Desert Storm "Coalition For Peace" trading cards that were being sold everywhere, with pictures of Generals and war equipment. I have a pack as a reminder.
So many shaken citizens unable to get out of the emotional grasp of terror, unwilling to tolerate a discussion of the deeper issues that might challenge their complicity in how this nation operates. Dissent is difficult.
The Nike sneaker sweatshop controversy (one of millions of glimpses into international "everyday-terrorism") didn't hold the tv viewers interest for too long.
Gone are the memories of Dow Chemical and their creative product - napalm. Et cetera.
Inner examination and questioning of authority and information are too complex when there’s Dan Rather to tell us what is “really” going on, and Congress to sing "God Bless America" to us.
Though there are pockets of depth and insight and truth-seeking, the internet's promise of an Information Age has been mostly bought out by commerce. Shopping is the USA’s primary pastime; television it’s primary tool. Citizens shopping to silence that strange kafkaesque anxiety...shopping to display social conscience... shopping because what else is there to do but accumulate the latest.
A few weeks earlier television’s infamous "popularity ratings" had indicated that everyone was noticing that an empty suit had bought it's way into the White House...a vapid man displaying arrogant disregard for the rules the rest of the world was trying to agree to live by, a disregard for the poor, women, the environment...and now this was suddenly the "leader of the
free world", given a blank check by Congress, and we were expected to support him, and a majority bought it.
The smirk glows - what more could he ask for to blur the past & "legitimize" his illigitimate power.
Absolutely amazingly it has worked. With a stunned, scared and patriotized population he can now perhaps steamroll onward all the other careless aspects of his selfish agenda.
Nationalism is a faith, a belief in an abstraction, a religion.
Jerry Falwell, a "religious"(sic) man, blamed what happened on the un-religious. He blamed this disaster on "alternative lifestyles", as if this freedom, to choose how to live one’s life, wasn’t one of the main supposed freedoms here.
"Samuel Johnson's saying that patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels has some truth in it but not nearly enough. Patriotism, in
truth, is the great nursery of scoundrels, and its annual output is probably greater than that of even religion. Its chief glories are the
demagogue, the military bully, and the spreaders of libels and false
history. Its philosophy rests firmly on the doctrine that the end justifies the means - that any blow, whether above or below the belt, is fair against dissenters from its wholesale denial of plain facts."
- H. L. Mencken
News is entertainment and entertainment is news. Didn't take long for the nightmare to begin being packaged. Must package it to manufacture consent.
"Operation Infinite Justice". “As The World Turns”. The medium is the message and in the television tube good and evil do battle.
Besides the training and weaponry we sell to the rest of the world to extend our reach, a favorite export to the rest of the world is sensually stimulating film violence.
But the "Brave New World" (Aldous Huxley) was suddenly startled, almost awake, but unwilling to really open it's eyes.
Virtual televisions shows and theme parks are so much safer than the unpredictable roads of life.
So there's a rush to hide - behind flags and gods. More prozac, please.
The majority of the "American" people, until this event, knew virtually nothing of the people, culture, or politics of Afghanistan, and especially not of this government’s long and dirty involvements there. Why and how should they...television certainly doesn't really explore and teach, and that's where the vast majority of their information comes from, the programmed universe where vast portions of their free time is spent.
And nothing should disrupt "business as usual".
"More generally, people have little specific knowledge of what is happening around them. An academic study that appeared right before the presidential election reports that less than 30 percent of the population was aware of the positions of the candidates on major issues, though 86 percent knew the name of George Bush's dog. The general thrust of propaganda gets through, however. When asked to identify the largest element of the federal budget, less than 1/4 give the correct answer: military spending. Almost half select foreign aid, which barely exists; the second choice is welfare, chosen by 1/3 of the population, who also far overestimate the proportion that goes to Blacks and to child support. And though the question was not asked, virtually none are likely to be aware that 'defense spending' is in large measure welfare for the rich. Another result of the study is that more educated sectors are more ignorant - not surprising, since they are the main targets of indoctrination. Bush supporters, who are the best educated, scored lowest overall."
- Noam Chomsky
Perhaps this is a time to look at pre-WWII German history, the economic and racist fears that were planted in the people’s hearts and how blind they were to what was being done in their name, the roar of patriotism and the way the government was allowed to increase it’s power by promising the people security and prosperity...
The terrorists were drunk on two legal substances - religion and patriotism - in self-righteously toxic doses.
The response here has been flag-waving and "god bless america", in highly brain-numbing doses.
Osama bin Laden was the Frankenstein we helped built when his methods were useful to our world domination pursuits, and now we had to get the
peasants-bearing-torches mentality behind us as we tried to hunt him
down. (In Vermont, where I live, it’s automobiles-bearing-antenna flags!)
"Conceit, arrogance and egotism are the essentials of patriotism... Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who had the fortune of being born on
some particular spot, consider themselves better, nobler, grander, more
intelligent than the living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill, and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all others."
- Emma Goldman
To wave a flag proudly at this point is to admit that you have consistently diverted
your eyes from what this country has done to maintain it's power and that you have believed the rhetoric that this government, and the media
they hold by the brain, has & continues to feed you.
And that you are scared and hope that daddy will protect and keep you safe (even if he does lock you in the closet to do so)
The United States doesn’t need to resort to vile bloody terrorism so it can make this
very methodology the enemy. It’s own vile methodolgies are usually much cleaner, utilizing CIA, Unilever, Lockheed, Disney, Exxon, Walmart, et cetera, ad infinitum, ad nauseum, to attempt to dominate and subvert the world.
"The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing
about them."
- George Orwell
I just came back from a couple days in New York City, where the street dealers are selling red-white-blue everything (3 foot inflatable red-white-blue hammers - that I assume we'll hammer the "enemy" to death with)...Fear and a certain kind of emotional bankruptcy seem to love to hide behind this symbol...
"Patriot, n. A herd member who compensates for lack of self-esteem by
identifying with an abstraction. An enemy of individual freedom. See also 'Bootlicker.'"
- Robert Tefton
I have hung up a black flag, which to me symbolized the grief, horror and multiple levels of shame and sadness in the situation.
If the orders come from a fancy office space, directives sent to have
buttons pressed that will pulverize pharmaceutical plants, jets to bomb civilians, sanctions to stop necessary survival supplies...if this isn't terrorism, what is it?
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired,
signifies in a final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not
fed - those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone - it is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
On the religious aspect:
As a non-believer in gods or goddesses, the religious fervor and patriotism being stirred up during these times scares me...
It is the kind of fervor that stirred up those men to stop caring about innocent lives and fly airplanes into the buildings...
Of course we have missiles and bombs and are now armed with self-righteous indignation so whatever the government does will be okay.
To imagine such an entity or force as god/goddess, and then to ascribe
very human attributes to it, whether loving or wrathful, seems an unneccesary abstraction and diversion from our own lack of comprehending this experience called "life", and the admittance of which might bring us a bit of necessary humility...Within their groups it seems that everyone who
believes in some kind of "god" character/force thinks that the other "believers" perceptions are skewed...god is hellfire, god is love, god is hater of homosexuals, goddess loves the earth, god lives in jerusalem, god is in a piece of bread and some wine, et cetera... To defend their god they will wage war... Millions have lost their precious short stays on this planet in the
name of Allah, Jesus, Yahweh, etc etc etc...Many more, here and there, are getting ready to do more of it...
In a war-like state the government increases it's power. The history of our country is full of the abuses of liberty that occur during these kinds of times...from Honest Abe during the Civil War to the Japanese Internment
(Concentration) Camps. Watch your back.
"Patriotism now means advocating plunder in the interest of the privileged classes of the particular State system into which we have happened to be born."
- Leo Tolstoy
"I came to America because of the great, great freedom which I heard existed in this country. I made a mistake in selecting America as a
land of freedom, a mistake I cannot repair in the balance of my lifetime."
-
Albert Einstein
“There is always, in every nation, a body of citizens more intelligent than the average, who see the issues between their own and other nations more clearly than the ignorant patriot, and more disinterestedly than the dominant classes who seek special advantages in international relations. The size of this group varies in different nations. Although it may at times place a check upon the more extreme types of national self-seeking, it is usually not powerful enough to affect national attitudes in a crisis.”
- Reinhold Niebuhr
Listen to John Lennon’s “Imagine”, seriously. There may still be time.
click HERE
for October 2001 updates
click HERE
for March 2002 update
click HERE
for March 2003 update
(Submission or Dissent as the Naked Emperor Marches On)
some anti-war songs
