Zbigniew Brezinski is reported to have said that we need to be less paranoid about the world so that we can deal with people of the world more rationally.This paranoia is no less evident in our domestic politics and our life in general where all manner of evil intentions are ascribed to the unknown THEM.It is intensified by our delusions of grandeur to which demagogues like Bush cater.
The role of the media in perpetuating and heightening this paranoia is a scandal in and of itself.The incessant din of blonde girls abducted here, there and everywhere,the disaster movies and the writing style of some of our paid shills make paranoia a continuous companion of our life.
All of this plus the illusion that we are the shining city on a hill constantly under assault from the unruly mobs of the Old World make it possible for charlatans like Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Robertson to capture the public’s imagination and make it vote for wars about which it has no clue.For most Americans, it would never occur to question why a small country like Sweden or France can have a high standard of living without compromising all the benefits in health and education for its citizens. It would, of course, never even dawn on them that as these countries have stayed away from warmaking as an organic fact of life, they may have benefited by giving up, in France’s case at least, some of the delusions that it entertained as a colonial power.
At this stage, a collapse of our imperial enterprise in Iraq would be the most salutary outcome for us,if,we shed our illusions, paranoia and elevate peacemakers to power.That would waken us up like the bodies on Lake Ponchartrain did.
