Necessary Illusions

In his book Necessary Illusions, Noam Chomsky summarised the stark divide separating media treatment of state crimes:

In the case of enemy crimes, we find outrage;

Allegations based on the flimsiest evidence, often simply invented, and uncorrectible, even when conceded to be fabrication;

Careful filtering of testimony to exclude contrary evidence while allowing what may be useful;

Reliance on official U.S. sources, unless they provide the wrong picture, in which case they are avoided... vivid detail;

Insistence that the crimes originate at the highest level of planning, even in the absence of evidence or credible argument; and so on.

"Where the locus of responsibility is at home, we find precisely the opposite:

silence or apologetics; avoidance of personal testimony and specific detail;

World-weary wisdom about the complexities of history and foreign cultures that we do not understand;

Narrowing of focus to the lowest level of planning or understandable error in confusing circumstances; and other forms of evasion. The Myth of 'America'

What galls many about the United States is the hubristic set of pernicious and enduring myths that portray our nation so disingenuously.

Since the founding of our so-called republic, textbook authors, historians, teachers, our government, the mainstream media, and the moneyed elite have striven tenaciously to convince the working class, the rest of the world, and perhaps even themselves of our moral superiority and exemplary virtue.

Recently the Bush administration’s egregious and blatant breaches of morals, ethics, and laws have rendered the illusion of American Exceptionalism virtually untenable.

Yet not unlike Joe Pesci’s witness in My Cousin Vinny, whose testimony could only have been true if the “laws of physics ceased to exist on [his] stove”, there are still many among us in the United States who make claims that could only be true if the “laws of human nature” ceased to exist in our country.

We are as prone to cruelty, greed, gluttony, selfishness, and the like as the rest of the human race. In fact, our refusal to own our collective shadow (coupled with our possession of nearly unlimited economic and military power) has heightened our nation’s tendency to behave like a rogue.

Why do so many amongst the poor and working class of the United States embrace the spiritual cancers of consumerism, patriotism, nationalism, blind allegiance to corporations, and delusional thinking so readily proffered by a relatively tiny group of aristocrats who reside on the other side of a wealth canyon that was once known as a gap? Jason Miller

Misled America: Propaganda Masquerading as Information

Having spent forty years as a psychologist teaching at college level, I now realize that we, as teachers, have done a terrible thing. We have chosen to mislead our students.

We have led them to believe things that are simply not true. Rather than educating them, arming them with the knowledge necessary to understand “the realities of the life,” we have inadvisably placed an inordinate emphasis upon preparing youth for the workplace, essentially training them to become robot-like cogs in the machinery of mankind.

Rather than vesting them with the power to think for themselves, the power to reason in a critical manner, the sagacity to understand the complex nature of the moral dilemmas set before us, we have, through the power of propaganda, chosen to domesticate our youth, deciding that it is preferable that they become flag-waving patriots, loyalists, apologists chauvinistically pledging their allegiance to the Fatherland.

Consequently, as a counterbalance to the many myths (fictions, fantasies, and fabrications) taught in our public schools, I am proposing that youth be taught to face the reality of the world in which they live. So, some home truths.

From the very beginning our country has been enmeshed in violence. First, there was the decision to go to war with the British Empire. Then a near-genocidal attempt to destroy the American Indian, the original inhabitants of our country, followed by a centuries-long exploitation of the Black race.

Along with this, our country has a time-honored tradition of conflict with a multitude of others.

Threatening to destroy our adversaries (nations unwilling to align themselves with that of our interests) through the use of an arsenal of deadly (many of them nuclear) weapons.

Willingly participating in the overthrow of numerous popularly elected governments unwilling to abide by our rules.

Demanding that other countries allow us the right to exploit their natural resources in order to maintain our own standard of living.

Involvement in the trafficking of drugs around the world; assassinates foreign leaders, aids terrorists, and supports “death squads.”

We have committed a multitude of crimes against humanity, allowed the CIA, an organization much like that of the Mafia, to terrorize the world.

We kidnap suspects and tortures prisoners; imprisons more of its own people than any other country in the world.

America is the only nation in the West that kills it’s own people through the use of the death penalty.

America is an international pariah, a true maverick, refusing to work with the rest of the world in order to resolve problems confronting humanity and has a long and varied history of aligning itself with a rather vicious assortment of dictators, tyrants, and despots willing to do our bidding at the expense of their own people.

As such, is increasingly beginning to resemble the fascist movements of Adolph Hitler in his nascent 1930’s attempt to take over the world.

Perhaps the greatest propaganda surrounds the fundamental ideology of our culture. We are led to believe that capitalism, an economic system in which it is assumed that self-interest (exclusive concern for one’s own family and personal welfare) is an undeniable good, that greed can (and perhaps should) be tolerated. Doug Soderstrom

tags: illusions  myths  america  propaganda  ideology  

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