This article is written by Manuel Valenzuela (and reproduced here with full permission of the writer) and all the text links in this article lead to short video clips (that pop up in a new window) were collected by this diarist – who doubles as the webmaster of Empire Burlesque . Please visit Valenzuela’s website if you find some time. If you don’t have the latest Macromedia Flash 8 Player Plugin you may not be able to see some of the video clips.
Manuel Valenzuela is a social critic and commentator, international affairs analyst, current events observer, Internet columnist and author of Echoes in the Wind. Mr. Valenzuela welcomes comments and can be reached at manuel@valenzuelas.net. A collection of his work can be found visiting his archives and by searching the Internet.
Only in America
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 Arabs 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.
The Myth of the Superhuman Enemy
There is purpose behind having enemies, for their existence is the backbone of the corporatists. Indeed, there is a method behind their madness. Having enemies means having control both of fear and hatred of the people, as well as having control of the masses along with their animalistic emotions. Psychology can be manipulated at the push of a few buttons; an entire nation can be mobilized toward war in the time it takes two skyscrapers to be imploded. Nationalism and xenophobia make blind rational thought; ignorance makes deaf the sounds of wisdom.
The use of enemies distracts the minds of the people from their daily lives and chains truth to the dungeons of corporatists and neocons. The silhouette of the enemy helps supply the armies of invasion and occupation, it assists in mobilizing the nation’s economy into perpetual war readiness, and it distracts the people as their treasure is pillaged, just as it demands patience of the citizenry in the face of utter debacle.
The abstract illusion of the unseen enemy forces its disseminators and marketers to put a human face on clandestine evildoers. It is a technique used by the keepers at the gate to personify and insert a sense of reality to a war of fiction, thereby granting human flesh to illusion and cementing the idea of real struggle and real evil in the eyes of the masses. The appearance must be made to exist that the enemy is real, a human being whose evil ways must be stopped, regardless of the consequences.
Yet while the faces are real, the deeds and actions of the enemy’s masterminds are but the stuff of Hollywood legend, making of mere mortals demons of unnatural superhuman strength and ability, seemingly unable to be killed, leading their armies with the intelligence of gods and the leadership of generals. Present in multiple theatres of operation, these evildoers extraordinaire always evade capture, appearing to escape death and injury, as always inflicting damage upon our soldiers. Not even a $25 million bounty on their heads is of benefit to America’s soldiers and mercenaries.
The Osama’s and Zarqawi’s of the so-called war on terror are elevated by the propagandists and marketers to realms beyond mere mortality. It is as if these terrorists have had their fates decided by the scripts written by Hollywood writers, their abilities seemingly beyond comparison in the realm of human understanding. Yet their faces and names must be maintained and posterized, their reputation made to resound throughout America, for they are the symbols of the enemy we are fighting over there so we do not have to fight them over here. Their fictitious reputation, an illusion of psychological warfare against us, must be birthed sinister and wicked, deranged and psychotic, for the more dangerous the terrorist the greater the need to continue the war on terror.
With the abrupt disappearance of Osama the poster child of the enemy had to find new life. Thus the impenetrable Zarqawi was born, for his name and reputation impute Al-Qaeda directly into Iraq, allowing the corporatists to manipulate the war on terror, creating the impression that our soldiers are in Iraq because the enemy has made its nest there as well. The illusion of Zarqawi allows the government to claim that Iraq is infested with terrorists, that all attacks on our forces are directly attributed to Al-Qaeda. To the creators of reality the Iraqi resistance does not exist and native Iraqis are not fighting an insurrection against oppressive occupation of their lands.
Therefore the war in Iraq is marketed not as a battle of nationalistic freedom fighters combating oppressive occupiers, wanting American forces expelled, which it is, but rather as the convenient masquerade of pitting American forces against our enemy, jihadi terrorists belonging to Al-Qaeda (in truth, less than 6 percent of all arrests made by US forces are of foreigners, according to War Department research). The Iraqi homegrown resistance, along with the support of them by more than 80 percent of the population is never divulged to the masses, for this would fracture the smoking mirror that has sustained the Iraqi war chimera for three years.
The illusion that America is fighting terrorists, conveniently blamed for 9/11 so as to reenergize the emotions we suffered that horrific day, has helped sustain support for an illegal and immoral war based on lies. After all, we are fighting them there so we do not have to fight them here. In reality, the guerilla war being waged has the support of the vast majority of the Iraqi people whose lives have been spent in Hell on Earth thanks to America’s invasion and occupation.
Yet to the propagandists, we can never be seen as the evildoer or villain in this Hollywood production, which we are, murdering, oppressing, maiming, bombing, – torturing, dehumanizing and utterly eviscerating an entire people and culture. And so, it is said we fight terrorists, not freedom fighters, we fight for freedom and democracy, not oil and geopolitical expediency, and we invaded to topple a dictator, even if tyranny is worse than before.
The day will soon come when the face and name of Zarqawi will stop having the desired effect on the American population, his brand having matured. When that time arrives, a new evildoer extraordinaire will rise to claim the throne of propaganda matrix for the corporatists in power, his arrival launched like a new product, ready, willing and able to unleash terror upon the lands of Earth, intent to destroy America, hating us for our freedoms and democracy.
Like Osama and Zarqawi before him, this new evil one will see his reputation grow exponentially, his words and deeds disseminated for our consumption, and manipulation. We will be made to fear him, demanding he be killed after every act of barbarity attributed to him. One hundred of his second and third in commands will be killed in combat, his lieutenants’ names grazing the news sound bites we are given, and he will have evaded imminent capture dozens of times.
He will orchestrate bombings and death and heinous acts of terror, his face posterized for the masses to see and memorize. For a few years he will be most useful to those committing psychological warfare on the people, becoming a treasure trove of propaganda and distraction, his reputation growing with each newscast by the corporate media. His name will be uttered repeatedly, bombarded into our conscious, becoming, thanks to the airplay granted him, evildoer, terrorist, America’s new enemy. The new poster child for perpetual war for perpetual profit will captivate the minds of millions, who will be told to be afraid of attacks against their city and children.
His fictitious legend will live in infamy, giving fresh oxygen to the war on terror, rejuvenating a weakened marketing campaign. The deeds and actions attributed to him will make the Establishment more powerful, granting it sustenance for the continued embezzlement of billions of dollars in taxpayer money. Our treasure will disappear, going straight into the coffers of corporatists and capitalists who will have instructions to assemble and build the instruments of death and destruction the military-industrial complex will need for the next fifty years. Our children will be sent to foreign lands under the pretext of killing him, dying and being maimed for lies upon lies. Never captured, never found, existing like a ghost in our midst, the mightiest army the world has ever known will fail to bring him to justice, for in his freedom the corporatists maintain the illusion, the psychological war upon us, their most profitable war on terror.
In a war of fantasy, without a nation to blame, a face must be given to mystery and ambiguity, enabling the masses to maintain their illusion of a fight against terror, doing battle with an enemy possessing Hollywood prowess, engaged in conflict against Arabs and Persians and Muslims whose only crime is having lived for millennia atop a resource both addictive and essential to maintaining standards of living unsustainable and excessive.
Psychological Warfare
The manufacture of the war on terror – along with the systematic branding of Arabs and Persians as America’s enemy – has coincided perfectly with the race in a geopolitical chess match to see who can secure the remaining fields of the resource known as the devil’s excrement, the black blood needed to run the machines of mankind. Had the vast amounts of oil fields been in Latin America instead of in the Middle East and Central Asia the war on terror would be taking place in Brazil or Ecuador or Venezuela, and Hispanics would be today’s bogeymen. Instead, America finds herself having lied and deceived her own people, trying to find justifications to penetrate and control the remaining oil fields, unleashing psychological war on us the easier to manipulate the population and using terror as a pretext to invade and occupy a most important geopolitical and geostrategic prize, Iraq.
Subsequently, the occupation of Iraq has opened the door to the rest of the Middle East and has become a gateway to Central Asia and its vast quantities of oil. In its own right, Afghanistan, now in the hands of the Americans, has become a geopolitical prize of grand strategic importance, used for oil and gas pipelines and for the permanent military bases and the presence they provide needed to contain America’s next enemies, namely Iran, China and Russia. With Iraq and Afghanistan now for all practical purposes American colonies, its military firmly entrenched in permanent bases designed to protect and control the flow of oil, the high possibility exists of further intervention in Iran and/or Central Asia.
The war on terror, born on 9/11, has been the perfect instrument of control for the corporatists in power, its mechanisms allowing the preemptive invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq as well as the perfect excuse to retain a permanent stronghold in Afghanistan. Had the fierce Iraqi resistance not created the debacle now witnessed, trapping American forces in a tar pit of carnage, the charade that is the war on terror would have inevitably been expanded to invade Iran and Syria on the way to Central Asia.
Inside the hallways where neocon and corporatist vultures reside, the thinking was that 9/11 would be the new Pearl Harbor needed to mobilize the citizenry, by exploiting our fragile psychology, toward a perpetual war footing, that invading Afghanistan would be justified and very easy to take, that Iraq would be a cakewalk and that, in the wake of America’s blitzkrieg in the Middle East, the invasion of Iran and Syria would soon follow.
Thereafter, America would dictate terms to all remaining Middle East nations, controlling their leaders but most importantly, their oil fields, pipes, ports, waterways and infrastructure, deciding to sell oil from American and British markets, in dollars, not euros. From controlling the Middle East it would only be a matter of time before Central Asia offered herself to America, granting her terms, prices and barrels of oil favorable to her, deciding it safer to befriend the superpower rather than the Asian giants.
9/11 was the catalyst to the war on terror, the spring that gave sustenance to the imperialistic wet dreams of corporatists and neocons. It was a moment in time, though only affecting a few blocks of downtown New York City, that sent concussions of fear and hatred and immediate calls of anger and vengeance reverberating throughout the land, as if a nuclear bomb of psychological warfare had been unleashed into our atmosphere, transforming us into unthinking animals, our primate psychology and emotions set free, usurping our normal human intelligence.
At that point, after seeing the televised images of the horror and evil spawned that day, its recording repeated continuously without end, with angle after angle of carnage and death shown us, with the immediate propaganda of journalist buffoons penetrating our pores, with stenographers for power injecting us with their venom, we mutated into an army of robots, unwilling to listen to reason, unwise to the lessons of humanity, failing to control our raw emotions, becoming, in the end, a united herd of sheep that was easily corralled into following and obeying the dictates of the corporatists.
We became, with our jingoism, nationalism, patriotism and Nazi-like militarization of the nation a people on the verge of mass psychosis, ready to bomb and murder entire nations, ready to lose all sense of morality in order to attain the vengeance our mammalian brains sought.
Upon the destruction of the Twin Towers we succumbed to our masters’ wishes, allowing ourselves to be molded like fresh clay, becoming exactly what the Establishment wanted us to become. The hatred we felt was manipulated and directed, our attention made to focus on the dark skins and alien religion of the Middle East. Our fear was exploited, our fragile psychology abused, steered toward war against Arabs and Persians and Muslims, for clandestine reasons we did not wish to know or understand.
For control of oil and continued expansion of the economy psychological war was declared on 300 million Americans, the mechanisms of corporatism acting in unison to make of us a marching army of unthinking drones, willing to give up our rights and freedoms, willing to sacrifice our sons, daughters and treasure for the vengeance we felt and the thirst for blood we craved. We came under the myopic control of power, distracted from the war against us. Our animal instincts had taken over us; our human intellect vanished inside the clouds of 9/11, only returning a few years later to claim its rightful place alongside reason and logic. Such is the power of psychological war upon a population and such is the level of human wickedness by corporatists and neocons alike.
In the end, we allowed corporatism to fast forward in time, firmly cementing its claws into our land, slowly rising in stature, growing in power, its instruments becoming ingrained into society, our rights and freedoms slowly eroding. Its rise to prominence now seems inevitable, this stage of American capitalism feeds and sustains it, our acquiescence and apathy helps it grow. With another attack, real or created, America will usher in the era of the police state. Perhaps this has been the plan the overlords of Earth have had all along.
Into Orwellian times have we descended, and, after the corporatists no longer find usefulness to the Arab/Persian terrorist as enemy, a new one will be created, just in time to fit into the grand plans and goals of those in power, molded to entertain and distract us yet again, rising from the Far East to manipulate and control us.
Perpetual Enemy, Perpetual Control
Marketed to exploit our fears and hatreds, manufactured to mobilize our talents towards wickedness, the new enemy will evolve from the carcass of all those that have come before, rising from its cocoon, metamorphosis enabling it to acquire a different appearance, ready to terrorize and frighten us into obedience. It will once again work like magic, capturing our minds, manipulating our psychologies, pushing society in the direction the corporatists want us to follow. Those in power will make barbarians of an entire people, creating subhuman creatures wanting to destroy us for our freedom and democracy.
America’s new enemy will work like a charm, for it always does, always ready to push the interests of the few, willing to demonize the innocent and enrapture the ignorant.
Yes, a new enemy can be seen in the horizon. In a few years time the rivalry with China will grow and intensify, for this world cannot sustain both America and a nation of 1.4 billion people whose economy will surpass our own in a decade or two. A new Cold War will ensue, new enemies will be delineated, and new forms of conditioning will evolve. Two peoples will be taught to hate each other, brainwashed to see the other as evildoer extraordinaire, for the race to the last vestiges of natural resources has begun as the world runs out of water, oil and space.
Like the Soviet and Arab/Persian Muslim terrorist before him, the Chinese enemy will be deviously marketed, his exploits and evil deeds will be told and retold, his hatred of our way of life made to be everlasting. Our minds will be programmed to believe not reality but what the corporatists want reality to be. We will be manipulated to seek victory against the Red menace of China, told to sacrifice blood, sweat, and tears for the cause, for the salvation of America, and that of the corporatists. We will be forced to toil in the sweatshops and assembly lines of the military-energy industrial complex, our corporatist government engorging itself through conquest of land and resources, our wages given to the corporations that own us.
In time the Arab/Persian Muslim terrorist as enemy of America will vanish from our conscious, perhaps once again becoming the freedom fighter he has usually been marketed as, coming full circle in the minds of Americans. Perhaps he will join us in the new Cold War, ready to fight with us against the Chinese, becoming our friend and our ally. For China waits in the wings, growing by leaps and bounds, an ancient civilization wise and patient, a growing behemoth whose drums we now hear, methodically letting her future rival hemorrhage itself to death, letting America defeat itself.
In time we will once again be allowed to see the beauty and grandeur of Arab and Persian cultures, from Morocco to Iraq to Iran, free to explore lands both alien and mesmerizing, with architecture and fashion and decoration and design and music and ideas and ways of thinking as alien as they are appealing. Perhaps we will incorporate some of their culture into our own, for that which has never been seen by human eyes becomes beautiful, soon thereafter coveted and imitated. With the passage of time we will be able to learn from our Arab and Persian friends, for theirs is an old civilization, in many ways different than ours, yet in many ways similar as well, offering, like any culture, both good and bad traits.
In time we will see that the charade we have been living in since mid-2001 has degraded us as a culture, making us torturers and invaders and occupiers and murderers and pillager of human rights, in the process destroying history and culture and ancient civilizations. We will see that America is crumbling under the weight of its hypocrisy and its immorality, her foundations severely damaged by her crimes both against the planet and humanity. Perhaps we will even see the error of our ways, the madness we have allowed to enter our conscious and the destruction we allowed our power and wealth to unleash on innocent human beings.
But just as we are ready to forgive ourselves for what we have allowed to be done in our name and as we seek closure by asking for forgiveness from the world and the Iraqi people in particular a new enemy will be created to distract us away from the anger we now feel for being lied, deceived and manipulated. As the fear, hatred, nationalism and xenophobia engendered by 9/11 evaporates thanks to the passage of time and the escape from psychosis a new adaptation of psychological warfare will be thrust upon us, used to damage our minds and control our lives.
Just as we are finally ready to seek the justice denied us, ready to confront the real enemy among us, new terror will be unleashed to quiet us. New 9/11s, perhaps more destructive and deadly, will usher in an era of the coming American police state, granted to the corporatists by our own willful yet manipulated emotions. Just as we begin to ask questions and seek the accountability that has so far alluded us a new threat will be born, a new attack inside one of our cities will take place, conveniently captured by television, disseminated widely by a corporate media eager to recreate the cycle of propaganda seen on 9/11. Its inevitability is a foregone conclusion.
Once again we will fall for the same trap, becoming the pawns of corporatists, the army of “good Germans.” Terror new and real will arrive on our shores just in time to once again take possession of our minds, making us, yet again, unthinking animals sustained by raw emotion and instinct, becoming the sheep easily corralled, led and controlled by our masters. We will mobilize once more, marching to the trumpets of war and violence, becoming the instrument the corporatists need to further their goals.
An enemy will be chosen, his lands will be targeted, those that look like him will be bombed and all the while, sitting idly on our couches, languishing away our lives next to the television, we will be told what to think and believe, our animal brains commandeering our rational minds. We will be told that we are to fear, even though there is nothing to fear. We will be told we should hate, even though there is nothing to hate. We will be told our security is in peril, even though we are very secure. We will be told that reality is what we see on the monitor, not what our daily lives make it out to be.
We will be told to follow the orders of corporatist leaders, to place undying loyalty and trust in them and that, even though it seems they are pilfering our treasure and sending our children to certain death and destroying our reputation and bringing shame upon our land and leading us into incompetent debacle after debacle, we are never to question, never to protest, never to dissent, yet forever to become the ignorant drone that unbuckles his belt, bends over to the dictates of power and allows for the raping of his mind and the sodomy of his existence.
With the minds of tens of millions lined up, their ability to think independently erased from memory, ready, willing and able to sacrifice children, treasure and morality to professional puppeteers, becoming slaves to the system, the games of geopolitical and geostrategic chess can continue and the power of our corporatist masters can expand.
The name of the game is control, of our society, culture, lives and futures. The game of control is played for world domination, of its resources, peoples and lands, like a grand chess contest dictated by the sacrifice of pawns and the movement of kings. To the overlords of Earth, humanity is but a herd needing to be dominated and controlled; our lives and fates decided by the realities created and decisions made of those players who hold the reigns of ultimate power. It is the story of humankind, of a corrosive pyramid of hierarchy, of a system of castes, of the fortunate and the doomed, of a mechanism of perpetual control.
Civilization has not changed for millennia, it remains its predictable self, with the few at the top as always aggrandized by their control over the masses, and the masses forever easily led and maneuvered, electing to remain captives to what has always been, afraid to confront what could become. The making of the enemy is but one more form of control over us, for those whose power, control and wealth grows exponentially thanks to the making and marketing of enemies would not have it any other way.
