A few excerpts follow.
Read this speech to understand what has happened to the United States over the last 50 years or so.
He pins it.
Take the long view.
Read on.
It’s a scintillating stratagem. Language is actually employed to keep thought at bay. The words ‘the American people’ provide a truly voluptuous cushion of reassurance. You don’t need to think. Just lie back on the cushion. The cushion may be suffocating your intelligence and your critical faculties but it’s very comfortable. This does not apply of course to the 40 million people living below the poverty line and the 2 million men and women imprisoned in the vast gulag of prisons, which extends across the US.
Do you really think that you are continually self aware enough to filter out the ongoing hypnotic code words that exist in every line uttered by the media?
Do you?
If so, you are a fool.
NEWSTRIKE!!!
For your own mental health.
‘God is good. God is great. God is good. My God is good. Bin Laden’s God is bad. His is a bad God. Saddam’s God was bad, except he didn’t have one. He was a barbarian. We are not barbarians. We don’t chop people’s heads off. We believe in freedom. So does God. I am not a barbarian. I am the democratically elected leader of a freedom-loving democracy. We are a compassionate society. We give compassionate electrocution and compassionate lethal injection. We are a great nation. I am not a dictator. He is. I am not a barbarian. He is. And he is. They all are. I possess moral authority. You see this fist? This is my moral authority. And don’t you forget it.’
Yup.
He pins it.
I was present at a meeting at the US embassy in London in the late 1980s.
The United States Congress was about to decide whether to give more money to the Contras in their campaign against the state of Nicaragua. I was a member of a delegation speaking on behalf of Nicaragua but the most important member of this delegation was a Father John Metcalf. The leader of the US body was Raymond Seitz (then number two to the ambassador, later ambassador himself). Father Metcalf said: ‘Sir, I am in charge of a parish in the north of Nicaragua. My parishioners built a school, a health centre, a cultural centre. We have lived in peace. A few months ago a Contra force attacked the parish. They destroyed everything: the school, the health centre, the cultural centre. They raped nurses and teachers, slaughtered doctors, in the most brutal manner. They behaved like savages. Please demand that the US government withdraw its support from this shocking terrorist activity.’
Raymond Seitz had a very good reputation as a rational, responsible and highly sophisticated man. He was greatly respected in diplomatic circles. He listened, paused and then spoke with some gravity. ‘Father,’ he said, ‘let me tell you something. In war, innocent people always suffer.’ There was a frozen silence. We stared at him. He did not flinch.
Innocent people, indeed, always suffer.
Finally somebody said: ‘But in this case “innocent people” were the victims of a gruesome atrocity subsidised by your government, one among many. If Congress allows the Contras more money further atrocities of this kind will take place. Is this not the case? Is your government not therefore guilty of supporting acts of murder and destruction upon the citizens of a sovereign state?’
Seitz was imperturbable. ‘I don’t agree that the facts as presented support your assertions,’ he said.
As we were leaving the Embassy a US aide told me that he enjoyed my plays. I did not reply.
I should remind you that at the time President Reagan made the following statement: “The Contras are the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers.”
Language employed to keep thought at bay.
The concept “I don’t agree that the facts as presented support your assertions” broadcast 24/7 into the subconscious of the American audience until said audience says “Well, gee, Martha. Mebbe these fellers are right. I mean…they got nice suits and haircuts, right? And there are SO MANY OF THEM!!! G’night now. ZZZZzzzzzzzz.”
Pinter pins it.
When was the last time that THIS kind of information appeared on the op-ed page of your favorite newspaper?
Is THIS what your favorite liberal intel op is telling you?
I think not.
If ANYONE tells you ANYTHING other than this kind of truth for ANY period of time…turn the motherfucker off. You are being hypnotized.
“Language is actually employed to keep thought at bay. The words ‘the American people’ provide a truly voluptuous cushion of reassurance. You don’t need to think. Just lie back on the cushion. The cushion may be suffocating your intelligence and your critical faculties but it’s very comfortable.”
It is INDEED a scintillating stratagem.
And it is working.
On YOU just as well as on the rest of America.
NEWSTRIKE!!!
It’s your only option.
AG
Read it and weep.
If you are still capable of tears.
AG
Thanks AG, this has of course been diaried before, but I personally think it can’t be diaried enough–so am recommending this.
But, as I pointed out in my blog Historical Footnotes (cross-posted here a couple of days ago), it’s not just the media he’s talking to and about: he’s talking to US as US citizens as well.
Wake the fuck up is right.
Read it and weep is right.
(Better yet, watch the video).
Watching him, you can see the utter outrage, the utter disgust, utter absolute fucking big question on his face: “what the fuck are you people thinking? Where have you been? Will you wake the fuck up and smell the genocide?”
….Must say, every bit of his outrage is what I have felt for the duration of my life on this planet–as a US citizen–toward my fellow citizens and my government.
Guess it goes down better when a “foreigner” says it.
We should not let ourselves off the hook by passing this shit off on the media. To cite our friend Jerome, “We are responsible.”
A few Google News headlines, 7:15 EST, 12/10/05
Update 23: 150 Nations Agree to Future Climate Talks
Sub-headline in little print: “US Stands Alone at UN Climate Conference Los Angeles Times”. Stands alone in resistancxe to the conference.
Lawyers Evaluate Censure of Merck
Nothing TO evaluate. They lied about Vioxx and killed thousands.
Crimes suspect flown to The Hague
When I first saw this my heart skipped a beat. I thought they had arrested Cheney. But nooooo…just some minor murderer who was on the wrong side of a losing war.
Update 1: LA Leaders Seek Peace if Williams Dies
Oh. NOW I understand why der Schawrzenegger is even CONSIDERING commuting this Crips founder’s sentence. Afraid of Watts Riots III.
Lieberman’s Iraq Stance Brings Widening Split With His Party
A paid mole. bet on it.
Despite low ratings, Bush brings in funds
Duh. “Ratings.” How many people believe him. If those “ratings” were skewed to include how many dollars each respondent owned, Butch would have about a 99% approval rating. Take one million broke motherfuckers and one billionaire. Mix well and see where the ‘ratings” go. AND the funds.
UN condemns Iran Holocaust remarks
The REAL story? An Iranian politician suggested
1-That as many or more Muslims have been harmed by the actions of the west as there were Jews harmed by Hitler.
and
2-That if the west really felt guilt for the crimes of Hitler, Stalin, and the rest of the European nations over about 2000 years against the Jews, why didn’t they give the Jewish people a nice piece of Europe instead of a piece of the Middle East? Say…Bavaria. Subtext? Israel is is the west’s attack dog in the oil rich Middle East. All the rest is bullshit.
NATO Chief: Rice ‘Cleared the Air’ on Detainee Charges
Riiiiight…
Glad THAT little misunderstanding is all taken care of.
Station WTFU signing off.
Wake the fuck up.
AG
.
Update 23: 150 Nations Agree to Future Climate Talks
In diary – Tiny Step Forward at UN Climate Change Conference Montreal
Crimes suspect flown to The Hague
In diary – Beautiful Dutch Democracy ¶ June 1, 2005
Lieberman’s Iraq Stance Brings Widening Split With His Party
In diary – “U.S. World Leader Human Rights”
UN condemns Iran Holocaust remarks
In diary – “Hariri Assassination By Suicide Truck Bomb ¶ Mitsubishi Stolen in Japan” and a comment
NATO Chief: Rice ‘Cleared the Air’ on Detainee Charges
In diary – The Woman Who Came To Dinner … ¶ Condi Rice Reception @NATO
“Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
I read this very powerful and incisive speech yesterday.
What Pinter describes, and what you as the diarist allude to without specifically describing it as such, is that the “salesmanship”, the “selling of the American concept”, is representative of a cult-like program for recruiting and deceiving followers into embracing an all-powerful, exclusive and infallible ideology.
Not since Reagan has the “Cult of America” been pushed so relentlessly as it is now by the Bush regime and it’s MSM minions.
As Pinter points out and you expand upon, the rhetoric, the grandiosity of flag-waving patriotism, the absurdity of the concept of “American exceptionalism”, the false nobility at the heart of the idiotic notion that “supporting the troops” equates somehow with “agreeing with the President”; all of this ridiculous rhetoric is specifically designed to undermine and prevent independent thought. Rhetoric like this is designed to operate on the emotional plane, not the rational plane, so thought and analysis become unneccesary in the long run.
All cult’s employ this tactic of controlling the language in order to more effectively control their followers. All cults instill fear in their followers and then propose overly simplistic solutions to eradicating that fear. And the solution they propose is always basically; “Do what we say without question and all will be well.”
Many people will interpret Pinter’s speech as a polemic, a one-sided unwarranted diatribe against the US inspired by who-knows-what kind of ideological bent. I myself am in no way a knee-jerk “America basher” like so many are. I’m born and raised in the US, I fundamentally like living here, even though I have none of the nationalist fervor or defensiveness so many of my fellow citizens have. I am however, thoroughy disgusted by and ashamed of the terrible acts my home’s government has committed over the past 50 years or so, even while acknowledging that there are good things my home country has done during this time.
With all this in mind I applaud Pinter for his insight and for the directness of his commentary. If more of my fellow citizens could acknowledge the truth of his words the US could be dramatically improved with respect to how it comports itself with the rest of the world. I’m not holding my breath though.
Well, I certainly hope you don’t have me pegged as a knee-jerk America basher: especially as a person of Native American descent, I am deeply, deeply in love with and eternally tied to this country.
You know the old “love it or leave it”? Well, in 1984 I realized I loved this country too much to stick around and watch what I knew Reagan was going to do to it (and above all to its international reputation!), I did leave it. I had to. My heart was breaking over what Reagan did not only to this country but to Central America and everything else within reach of his ABMs. I couldn’t watch. I couldn’t be a part of it.
At the same time, it was excruciatingly painful to be an American expat in those years. I attribute my near native proficiency in the German language to this dynamic: it was so embarrassing to admit that you were an American in Europe during the Reagan era that it was better to perfect your German so you could pass as a German (now if that doesn’t tell you something, I don’t know what does: better to pass for a German in Europe than an American? Wo.)
When I returned to this country in 93, I saw the way that this jingoistic cult mentality had spread–even to my formerly “left wing” and even some “radical” friends. Everyone was drunk with it. I was shocked. Shocked and dismayed. Everyone, everyone it seemed, had fallen asleep at the wheel. Reagan, the guy who we saw portrayed with a Hitler moustache on posters in German, had become a national fucking hero and saint over here. It was disgusting.
I came back here to care for my Native American (Ojibwe) great grandmother, and after that, I realized I didn’t have it in my heart to leave again–because my entire life, my entire existence, the whole and the sum of the parts of who I am is simply TIED to it.
So I am tied to and deeply in love with this land. The people, now more than ever, make me sick. Not because I “hate” them–I don’t. I don’t have ROOM in my life or in my heart for hatred. Some people do. I don’t.
The people make me sick because they are not “being all they can be.” Because, for the past 50 years, they have been more than willing to stand by and watch as this country runs roughshod over “human dignity” throughout the world.
Our reputation in the rest of the world….well, just get on a plane to Europe if you want to know about that. And the downward spiral of our international reputation began with REAGAN, not with BushCo. BushCo has just allowed us to hit rock bottom in that regard.
To this day, I correspond with people in Europe who constantly, constantly are asking me: “What is WRONG with you people? Why don’t you vote? Why aren’t you staging massive strikes? How is it that a country of how many billion people can’t get their government under control? Why are you so apathetic? Or are you just politically inept? (And, as Pinter says, the 40 million below the poverty line are considered exempt from this).
The people of Europe are not just pissed at Bush. They are pissed at us. And I know it, because I get it every day. Every damn day. Day in and day out. We have become the pariahs of the world.
Me? I’m not pissed. I’m disgusted. Heartbroken. I can barely go out the house anymore because I simply cannot look my fellow Americans in the eye. After Katrina especially. HOW, how how how on Earth is it that we, with our numbers, our relative wealth, our means and masses, cannot stop this shit from happening? Even in our own country.
From what I can see, this is how: we’d STILL rather be SHOPPING. We’d rather get up at 3AM and stand in line at the Walmart to get that cheap fucking iPod than pitch our tents in front of the White House (as the Ukranians did, for example) to demand a better life, a better way for EVERYONE (at the moment, most urgently for the people of NOLA).
Our crime is INDIFFERENCE. To the plight of others. In the rest of the world, and even to our fellow Americans.
Let them eat cake.
Let them eat grass.
Let them eat shit.
I got mine, so fuck the rest of the world.
That is America’s problem, as far as I can see. And that’s been a problem for a long fucking time, not just the last 5 years.
End of rant.
I’m not seeking to peg anyone as a knee-jerk America-basher, only acknowledging that such people exist.
It’s typical of the fractured logic used by the Bush regime that they routinely bash people like us for being anti-American just because we seek to make our homeland better by challenging those who bring dishonor to it through their own ruthless aggression and greed and by their betrayals of virtually every principle upon which the modern US nation is supposed to be founded upon.
BushCo’s reverse logic, (that if you challenge the government it means you hate your own country), is typical of the inverted “cause and effect” irrational thinking that makes their own insanity seem legitimate to those fooled by their idiotic and hollow rhetoric.
More and more people are realizing that the essence of the current Bush regime is not only “anti-democratic” in virtually every respect but is also the primary anti-American movement in the country today, the movement most enthusisastically engaged in dismantling our adherence to the principles enshrined in the constitution and in repudiating the only truly legitimate reason for government to exist in the first place, that reason being to serve, protect, and improve the lives of the people it purports to govern. In keeping with their reverse cause and effect logic, BushCo behaves as though they believe the exact opposite; that the people’s job is to serve and support the government.
I agree with you about Reagan’s reign being the one in which the genesis of the current aggressive decline of US integrity and stature around the world began it’s precipitous slide into the abyss.
I’d add that it was during the Nixon regime that the “preamble” to this slide, to the institutionalized atrocity I associate with Reagan, began. I spent quite a bit of time in South America, mainly Argentina, during the late ’70s and early ’80s and witnessed first hand the abominations the Nixon regime, via the psychopath Kissinger, deliberately helped facilitate. But it was during the Reagan era that this globally aggressive brutality was finally made an integral and flagrant part of official US foreign policy, and things have accelerated downward ever since.
The American empire, such as it was, has already come to an end some time ago. What’s happening now are the violent attempts to deny that fundamental reality. Ithink this may be a small part of wehy the Bush propaganda is so successful. Our reptile brains recognize the unsustainability of our self-absorbed lifestyle and yet our neo-cortexs are afraid to admit it. Consequently, the fear such dissonance causes leads many to seek comfort in the rhetoric and propaganda that tells us that everything is ok. So many want to believe that they’re willing to disregard reality in exchange for (temporary) respite from their fear and insecurity.
This is the biggest problem facing the world now I think.
yes, yes, yes, to both your comments. We are on the exact same page.
Keep talkin….. đŸ˜‰
I’ll do the same
Maybe someday someone will listen.
“…all of this ridiculous rhetoric is specifically designed to undermine and prevent independent thought. Rhetoric like this is designed to operate on the emotional plane, not the rational plane, so thought and analysis become unneccesary in the long run.”
Yes. Exactly.
Thus my ongoing recommendation to any and all who wish to kick this nasty addiction.
To wake up from this totally media-enforced sleep. Because WITHOUT control of the media, without their broad and almost total acceptance of this tactic, it simply WOULD NOT WORK.
NEWSTRIKE!!!
Cold turkey until the urge to shoot up (“Just this once, man. PLEASE!!!”) is totally gone.
NEWSTRIKE!!!
And its more effective cousin, MEDIASTRIKE!!!. (More effective, but harder to do…like a junkie giving up heroin AND cigarettes AND coffee simultaneously. Almost never happens.)
There really is no other way to kick.
Believe me when I tell you this.
AG
I’m going to stick to my guns on this: it’s not JUST the media.
I think it all goes back to this business of “rugged invidualism,” the myth of the “self-made man” and the notion of “freedom” as absolute, no-holds-barred-freedom and an equally absolute disregard for the needs of the collective that are the foundational principles on which this country is founded.
Based on my experience of having lived and worked in Europe, pretty much “in cognito” as a European, I notice this difference in so many “little things”–classically “American” behaviors that most Americans take for granted as “normal,” but which would not make sense to a “European sensibility”.
Let’s just start with PARKING. I don’t know how many times I come home at night to find the SUVs lined up on my street–6 of them parked in a space that COULD accommodate 10. The thinking behind it: I’m just going to park my fat old ass down here and take up as much space as I want with absolutely no regard for the fact that 20 of my neighbors might just need space too. Anyone in Europe who persistently engaged in that kind of behavior would A) be labeled as a social pariah and B) probably have a hell of a lot of dents in his/her vehicle from other cars trying to squeeze in between them.
Sigh. I’m too tired to cite any more, but doesn’t that alone kind of illustrate my point? I mean as just one small totally insignificant example of the “American mindset” which demonstrates absolutely NO regard for anyone but, me, myself and I?
It’s not just the media. It’s the whole conceptualization of “I-meism” that was given such a healthy dose of Viagra during the Reagan era.
There are 10,000 more examples I could cite. The parking thing is just one that occurs to me on a daily basis.