America –
The Most Frightened Nation On Earth
By Finian
Cunningham
May 20, 2016 "Information
Clearing House"
- "SCF"
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America is exceptional alright. It is
the most frightened nation on Earth, subjected to
hysterical propaganda over decades warning about
foreign enemies and ideologies. No wonder its
supposed democratic freedom is in so appallingly bad
shape, when the preponderant population is
imprisoned by their rulers in a virtual cage of
fear.
Paradoxically, though, the dissonance
of supposed freedom could not be more abysmal. At a
press conference at the Cannes film festival last
week American screen actor George Clooney digressed
from his latest movie to talk about Republican
presidential contender Donald Trump. Clooney, who is
well known for his liberal brand of US politics and
a big supporter of Democrat candidate Hillary
Clinton, predicted that
rightwing business tycoon Trump would not win the
forthcoming November presidential contest.
Clooney dismissed Trump as a
demagogue sowing fear and divisive tensions along
racial and xenophobic lines. Which is fair enough.
Of interest here is not so much the actor’s views on
Trump’s chances of political success. Rather, it is
Clooney’s premise that Americans would not succumb
to reactionary fear peddling.
Seated at the press conference
alongside his American co-star Julia Roberts and
film director Jody Foster, Clooney told his Cannes
audience: «Fear is not going to drive our
country… we’re not afraid of anything».
Well, sorry George, but you are dead
wrong on that score. Fear is the paramount emotional
driver in American politics since at least the
Second World War, and probably decades before that
too.
Contrary to Clooney’s bravado,
Americans are very, very afraid.
The biggest bogeyman for the US
public was the Soviet Union, whose specter dominated
American politics for nearly 50 years. This specter
has been conjured up again through casting Russia
and its President Vladimir Putin as intent on
«resurrecting the Soviet Union».
It was Hillary Clinton – Clooney’s
political champion – who made the ridiculous and
historically illiterate charge that
Putin is the «new Hitler». Many other senior US
political figures and Western news media have since
stampeded like a herd in likewise demonizing the
Russian leader.
The unquestioned consensus in
Washington, from President Barack Obama to his
foreign secretary John Kerry, and from senior
Congressional figures to the Pentagon chiefs, is
that Russia is an existential threat to global
security.
America’s new NATO military chief
General Curtis Scaparrotti has warned that
the US-led alliance must be prepared to go to war
against Russia at any moment due to alleged Russian
aggression towards Eastern Europe and the Baltic
states.
The Cold War has thus been
rehabilitated a quarter of a century since the
Soviet Union dissolved. As in former times, fear is
once again fueling American politics. Consistently,
there is negligible objective basis for this mass
phenomenon. Russia today is not a threat to the US
or its NATO allies, just as the Soviet Union was not
a threat.
Bombastic claims about Russian
«annexation» and «invasion» of Ukraine are factually
tenuous, spurious or devoid. The claims don’t stand
up to scrutiny. But that’s hardly the point. The
point is that the false narrative – propaganda – of
alleged Russian malevolence is amplified and
repeated over and over again in Western
«independent» media, not unlike the Big Lie
technique of Nazi spinmeister Josef Goebbels.
US and Western allies, with the help
of pliable news media, in effect are able to
construct their own false «reality». It is not
objective reality. It is a subjective, delusional
«reality» one in which Western nations are portrayed
to be under threat from a stalking, salivating enemy
in the form of Russia.
Fear is a powerful lever for control
over populations, as English author George Orwell
keenly perceived. Get the public to fear for their
lives from an external enemy, and they will be
easily manipulated into accepting authority, no
matter how draconian and illegitimate that authority
is. Fear is the key to surrendering democratic
rights and submitting to a cage.
From the end of the Second World War
in 1945, the West immediately needed the Cold War
with the Soviet Union as a bulwark against more
progressive, democratic development within their own
countries. American writer David Talbot in his
book, The
Devil’s Chessboard, clearly depicts how Wall
Street, the Pentagon and ideologically inclined
politicians were able to construct the monstrous
military-industrial complex and its gargantuan
consumption of economic resources for the enrichment
of an elite ruling class – based on Cold War angst
and trepidation about the «evil Soviet Union».
When a minority of skeptical, more
independently intelligent politicians, authors or
artists questioned the Cold War assertions they were
peremptorily ostracized as «Reds», «traitors» or
indeed assassinated by the military-industrial
complex, as David Talbot convincingly argues in the
case of President John F Kennedy.
This perverse distortion and waste of
US economic resources – a $600 billion military
budget year after year overshadowing all other
social needs – is engineered precisely through fear.
American military might must be supreme and
sacrosanct in order to «defend» or «protect» US
vital interests and those of its allies from
«existential threats». Russia, and to a lesser
extent China, continues to be designated in the role
of global threat.
To this end, Americans have been
subjected to a relentless psychological program –
euphemistically referred to as «news» – for the past
seven decades. Europeans too. Perhaps in the whole
of Europe the British media is the most toxic and
reactionary when it comes to demonizing Russia.
The manipulation of the Western
public mind is flagrant. The claims against Russia
are preposterous, but astoundingly the manipulation,
to a degree, succeeds.
However, the domination through fear
is not as omnipotent as it once was. During the
former Cold War, the Western public were far more
susceptible to the depiction of «evil» Soviet
menace.
This is no longer the case. Western
media have long been discredited over fabricating
lies, such as the pretext for the Bush-Blair war on
Iraq and other criminal US-led regime-change
operations, including Libya, Syria and Ukraine.
Today, Western citizens have more access to
alternative information sources, including Russian
mass media and critical internet news outlets within
their own countries. The Big Lie technique, while
still potent, is not quite as effective as it was in
former times.
This new historical development in
public awareness is reflected in the growing,
popular discontent across Europe towards governments
that are seen to be slavishly toeing Washington’s
policy of aggression against Russia. Citizens are
angrily questioning why they are made to accept
economic austerity while US-led sanctions against
Russia are hitting their jobs, businesses and export
revenues. Citizens are rightly furious that they are
told there are no financial resources for public
services and infrastructure, while billions of
dollars are pumped into NATO forces to recklessly
provoke tensions with Russia.
Of course, the anomalies in Western
government priorities with regard to meeting public
needs are ludicrous, unjustifiable and
unsustainable. And the only way that Western rulers
can get away with such absurd denial of democratic
realities is to play the fear factor. Nowhere has
the fear factor been played more than in the US –
ironically, the nation which proclaims from the
rooftops to be exceptional, free and democratic.
George Clooney would do better to
stick to the silver screen where his heroics and
valor shine larger than life – in fiction. «The
American people are not afraid of anything», he
claimed in real life. George, with respect, your
people are the most scared on the planet; and the
brainwashing system is so good, that you and they
don’t even know that. Indeed, haven’t even an
inkling of the gross manipulation. |