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The Mindless American: A Tragedy In The Making
By Doug Soderstrom
10/18/05 "ICH
" -- -- As a result of nine-eleven’s jarring impact upon our
nation, journalists have discovered a near paranoid rise in
retaliation against individuals attempting to expose
governmental malfeasance. Increasingly government officials have
begun punishing individuals for nothing more than reasoned
attempts to inform the American public concerning: How the
military has systematically abused (tortured) foreign detainees;
How the government intentionally withheld evidence suggesting
that an attack upon the United States by Al Qaeda had been
eminent; How the military has begun to wage war upon soldiers
who, in good conscience, have come to believe that it is wrong
for them to kill in a war that, according to international law,
is illegal, one that, the reasons for going to war, were
fabricated by the President of the United States; How the United
States has a sixty-year history (1945- 2005) of assassinating
foreign leaders who have chosen not to support the government’s
foreign policy goals, initiating the overthrow of duly-elected
foreign democracies, while simultaneously supporting brutal
authoritarian dictatorships all in order to fill the coffers of
America’s military-industrial complex, an egregious
imperialistic force with but one goal: To take command of the
world economy.
As a result, many of these individuals have been incarcerated,
accused of being a traitor, of having sided with the enemy, told
that their career will be destroyed, and threatened with
extended imprisonment. Accordingly, on September 21, 2005, U.S.
immigration officials banned Robert Fisk*, an internationally
renowned British journalist, on his way to deliver a speech in
Santa Fe, New Mexico, from entering the United States of America
due to incisive criticism of the Bush administration’s handling
of the Iraq war. No doubt such a scenario has, and is, being
repeated many times over in our country. A rather sad fact for a
president who has chosen to make such a big deal about the
oft-quoted ideals of “freedom and democracy!”
But even more shameful is the fact that there are people who
seem not to care that such things are taking place in our
country; a rather ignorant crowd of jingoes more comfortable
choosing to sit back pretending that everything will be just
fine, a people with apparently little regard for the facts. As a
behavioral scientist, I am grieved at what appears to be a near
pandemic of disinterest in what is happening to our country.
Given the election of George Walker Bush as our president, our
country made it quite clear that it is pleased to have as its
president a scoundrel, a true terrorist, one more than willing
to bully the rest of the world, as opposed to having chosen a
real man, one that humanity might embrace as a man of true
character (someone like Jimmy Carter), an individual committed
to doing what is best for the world (rather than what is most
profitable for those running the petrol, armament,
pharmaceutical, and construction industries), one with a desire
to do what must be done in order to create a more humane world,
one of peace, justice, and love. Although we claim to be a
Christian nation, having chosen George Walker Bush to be the
leader of our nation is a scandal beyond belief, one that mocks
the very name of one whose life embodies that which we have been
said to believe.
However, now that I am well into my seventh decade of life and
very near retirement, I have come to the conclusion that the
world basically sucks, that there are few who seem to have the
investigative courage to take a good hard look at things that,
if discovered, would no doubt destroy one’s image of a land that
can do no wrong, one that they believe has somehow received the
eternal blessing of God. So I must ask: How is it that we have
become such a mindless nation, a society populated by deadheads,
folks who seem to have little desire to look beyond the
thinly-veneered surface of life?
As a behavioral scientist, it appears that a vast share of folks
in our nation have chosen to relinquish a quality no doubt
essential to authentic human life….. an existential
responsibility to think for themselves, an ontological need to
discount the petty concerns that drive the minds of those
directed by triviality. It seems that such individuals have
become so fantastically preoccupied with, essentially enamored
by, the norm of what others think, they have effectively
relinquished, through a process of cognitive foreclosure, the
capacity to think for themselves. Having become so extremely
alienated from the core of their own being, they have little
choice but to follow the crowd’s madding need to forge a
symbiotic attachment to, in essence relationship with, a
society, that for all practical purposes has become the basis of
their own identity, the bedrock of their very being. Having done
so, the image they have forged for themselves (who they believe
themselves to be) has become every bit as fabricated, every bit
as disconnected from reality, as their image of society. So in
wanting to have at their disposal a more a positive image of
themselves, they have been left with little choice but to
construct a glorified image of society; an image of what they
wish society would have been rather than what it has, in fact,
turned out to be. Something like having chosen to have built an
ego-incased frame constructed upon the shifting sands of inane
social rumor and outright public lies…… truly a flight of fancy
bordering on the absurd!
Very few would disagree with the proposition that in Hitler’s
Germany there was a determined effort to brainwash the people so
they might support Mein Fuhrer’s efforts to conquer the world.
However, what if one were to suggest that much the same is
occurring in the United States of America, that there has been a
determined effort through the socializing influence of our
schools, the government, the mass media, the churches we attend,
even that of our own parents, to pressure us into believing
(just as Hitler) that our country has received the blessing of
God, and because of this, we therefore have not only the right,
but more importantly, through the use of military weapons, a
divine responsibility to see that the world acquiesces to our
needs and expectations. Just as Hitler in the 1930’s prepared
his countrymen to accept the authoritarian control of the Nazi
government, much the same may well be occurring in the United
States. Just as Hitler indoctrinated his people to believe that
Germany had the right to conquer the world, George Walker Bush
“in the name of freedom and democracy” may well be doing the
same (preparing the American people to support his
administration’s imperialistic drive to dominate the world).
Behaviorally, it is clear that citizens, from cradle to grave,
are primed to conform to the dictates of those in power,
instructed never to question the validity of what those who
would like to take control of our lives have to say. Most
Americans have no idea; that what we are fed by the news media
(televised and paper-print news) is nothing more than a
portrayal of what powerful corporations (those who pay the
salaries of those who run mass media) want us to believe, that
what happens to pass as education is as often as not mere
propaganda (e.g. that Americans are the good guys and their
enemies are, without exception, always the bad guys), that what
we learn in church may have very little or nothing to do with
the truth, that what our parents teach us may be nothing more
than an accumulation of their own personal biases…… no doubt a
rather subtle modification of what they were taught by their
parents. And through such a process, governments and nations
around the world wield control as to what their citizens,
believe, value, and do.
And, of course, in our own society, the primary way most of us
are controlled, the way the vast majority of us are forced “to
tow the line,” is through the ominous threat of being fired.
Something like this: If you are interested in keeping your
career on track, that you would like to keep your job, then you
ought to consider the following in order to assure your employer
that you deserve the right to keep your job; get married and
have a couple of kids, become a member of a social club (such as
the Lions Club, the Kiwanis Club, or the Rotarians), be a good
capitalist, be a patriotic citizen who loves his country, and
make sure that you attend a local church so that everybody will
know that you believe in God almighty. However, if, for whatever
reason, you decide that you would like to become a rebel, that
you would like to begin thinking for yourself, then you’d better
brace yourself for trouble, because there is a reasonable
likelihood that you will be fired! You see, in America, there is
a rule of thumb concerning the working world which basically
says that those who do what they are told to do are likely to
keep their jobs, whereas those who tend to think for themselves,
tend to buck the system, (tend not to do what they have been
told to do) end up jobless, powerless, and left to fend for
themselves on the mean streets of society.
But why? Why does such a thing occur? Why would America the
beautiful, land of the free, do such a horrible thing to its own
citizens? The answer is quite simple: Knowing that knowledge is
power; the secret is control, controlling the out flow of
information, making sure that citizens know no more than they
“are supposed to know,” making sure that they remain relatively
uninformed, making sure that they are given “just enough” that
they will go along with, peacefully accept, the premise that
they are well informed, that they have a good idea of what is
going on. It is necessary then that the government keep the
people from learning the truth. Keep them from even wanting to
know the truth. Put the fear of God into them to the extent that
they will never question what they have been told to believe.
You see, those in power may say that they want their citizens to
be educated, to be well informed as to what is going on,
however, such is simply not the case. Ask yourself this
question: What happens to those of us (teachers, preachers,
philosophers, writers, journalists) who do not “tow the line,”
those intent upon proposing alternate ways of looking at the
world? Look at what happened to Jesus Christ, Martin Luther
King, Mohandas Gandhi, even Socrates. I mean, really now, who
among us wants to be crucified, assassinated, forced to drink
hemlock……. wants to risk the possibility of losing one’s job,
the ability to put food on the table for one’s family? However,
just in case you do not believe me, try this on for size…… the
next time you go to work tell the boss that you are an infidel
(that you have grown up and no longer believe in God), that you
have decided to become a socialist (that capitalism essentially
sucks), that you no longer give a shit about your country (that
you have decided to become a rebel, an actively-participating
antiwar protestor), and then see what happens. Do you get the
point?
There are many (Robert Fisk, Cindy Sheehan, Sybil Edmunds,
Bunnatine Greenhouse, Coleen Rowley, Captain Ian Fishback, Col.
Anthony Shaffer, Kevin Benderman, Jeremy Hinzman, Brandon Hughey,
Camilo Mejia, among others) who have illustrated the courage to
risk their jobs, their careers, their reputations, their
marriages, their wealth, imprisonment, and, in some cases, even
that of their own sanity. But the sad fact is that for every
hero out there, there are literally thousands of citizens (each
who no doubt consider themselves to be conscientious,
hard-working individuals who have a sincere belief in God and a
loyal commitment to their country) who yet, for whatever reason,
detest men and woman such as these who have shown the moral
gumption to put their lives on the line for no other reason than
to make a stand for that which is right, a willingness to tell
anyone, everyone who is willing to listen, that it is a far
better thing for one to have sacrificed his own life so that
others might see, than to have chosen to remain silent ensuring
the blind pretense that all is well, that there is nothing to
worry about, that Big Brother will no doubt take good care of us
as long as we simply keep our mouths shut and do exactly as we
are told.
Postscript: The most dangerous thing one can do is to tell the
truth…… the sentence for which, one way or the other, is always
death!
Doug Soderstrom, Ph.D.
Psychologist
Note from the author. 10/24/05
"Recently, it was brought to my attention that
Robert Fisk, the renown reporter of The Independent, was not banned
from entering the United States. Such was no more than an
unfortunate rumor multiplied many times over on the internet. If I
had pursued the information a bit more diligently, I would have
realized that Mr. Fisk had not been banned from entering the United
States, but was, in fact, simply detained from entering the U.S., at
that particular moment in time, due to the solitary fact that Mr.
Fisk did not have a "biometric passport," which is now required of
all citizens from nations like that of the UK on a visa waiver
program. For that mistake I offer a sincere apology first of all to
Mr. Fisk, for whom I have the greatest degree of respect as an
investigative journalist, and secondly to those who so diligently
took the time to read my article........ all in order that I as an
undoubtedly fallible human being might continue to do my best to
tell "the truth" the best that I can."
First posted at
www.civillibertarian.blogspot.com
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