David Sirota listed at least a dozen issues that Obama and Romney are identical on, and not small matters. Both are war hawks, both will attack Social Security and Medicare, carry on with the fake drug war, fake terrorism scares at home, tax cuts and austerity. And yet, as I watched all of the cheers and beers last night, I realized again the power of American propaganda. Illusions are far more powerful than reality. Democrats really were scared of Romney and the mean old Republicans. The really cannot see – genuinely cannot see – the real agenda.
Please don’t get on me for being omniscient and better than you and stuff. It is what it is. It takes a special event, a flash of light, a new view on an old movie, to see what is all around you. Thought control is a powerful tool. After Sirota did his list, people still called in and insisted that there were “real and important” differences. When asked what they were, it was really weird. They were not specific – they only spoke in vague generalities. It’s real, they insisted. They did not know why. It’s just real. It is their reality.
Oh well. It must be advancing age. It’s probably always been like this and I was just blind to it. The turning point for me was reading “Propaganda” by Jacques Ellul back in the late 90’s. Only then did I begin to see the massive apparati that control our perceptions. Many (including Ellul) think it is done for benign reasons, and it true that in spite of it all, we have had some good leaders over the decades. Napoleon remarked that people simply do not want to be free. But it appears that with the Joe McCarthy charade and the infestation of our minds with anticommunism n the 1950’s that there has been a conscious fear regime used to assure support for American aggression all over the globe. Chomsky says that the government views the American people as “the domestic enemy,” and works to keep us under thumb along with every other enemy. Last night, I saw no domestic threats to existing power.
Our best hope is credible enemies to keep our troops parked at home. I see the rise of China and Russia as a good thing for world peace, and resistance movements in Latin America, Greece and some Mideastern countries as a sign of perpetual hope. People are born free. They have to be taught to live under tyrant regimes and better yet, imagine that they are free as their minds are enslaved. American indoctrination starts at a very young age, so I don’t see much hope here. But we are not the world. Others are not controlled by fear and yearn for real freedom, and are willing to spend blood to achieve it. Last night the lantern flickered and went out here in the Land of the Free, but it still burns bright elsewhere. Obama now sets out for four more years of house-to-house light-dousing.
The fight goes on.
Piece of Mindful 