Beware The Corporate Media: Indispensable Midwife To Imperial Assaults
By Patrice Greanville
19 June, 2012
The Greanville Post
The corporate media shamelessly sold us the Iraq war, Afghanistan, Libya, and is now busy selling us again Syria and soon enough Iran. The question before us is: how do we make them stop?
The corporate media write lies on the American public's consciousness with impunity, as if it were a blank slate incapable of understanding or remembering anything.
The power of the corporate media to deceive the people is simply astonishing, but, mind you, it depends on an already distracted, ignorant, semi-passive multitude whose marching values have been carefully cultivated.
In 2003 we went into Iraq under scandalously false pretexts, guns blazing--bragging about our ability to deliver "shock and awe" with impunity (the mark of the bully)--and with one goal in mind: to rob and rape that country blind of its riches. The official excuse was that Iraq and Saddam were mortal threats that had to be neutralized.
Within a matter of weeks if not days, the official line--adopted without missing a beat by the entire punditocracy--was that we had gone in "to save Iraq", "make it a democracy," and all the rest of the self-serving claptrap we use over and over again to justify our uber-criminal behavior. With a straight face the official voices declared that those who had the audacity to resist our criminal violence were ingrates. Don't believe it? You may be forgiven: it is rather unbelievable.
Not too long after that, another somersault in logic and truth took place. This time the contortion was of Olympian quality, as we saw the same pundits--a great many of them liberals--talking with a straight face (as did the man in the White House and other administration flacks) that if the Iraqis continued to "misbehave", continued attacking our troops, imagine that, "we'd leave"--yeah, that's right, their punishment would be that we, the self-annointed saviors, would leave!
Buwahahahahahahah! Isn't that a threat to soil your pants? The criminals and tormentors were actually threatening to leave, pull up stakes, if the country failed to behave in a gracious and grateful manner. Never mind that most Iraqis to this day never saw us as liberators!
Reality quiz
What would you do if you were the victim of a brutal home invasion; if the home invaders raped your wife and daughter, killed your animals, beat the s**t out of you, and robbed you blind, to boot--oh, and reduced your house to rubble--and then they declared with a straight face that if you were not grateful for all that, if you didn't beg them to stay "they'd leave? How's that for the mother of all Orwellian nonsense? How's that for off-the-charts cynical audacity?
It's fairly obvious that if a country 1000 if not a million times more powerful and advanced than the US invaded this nation under false pretenses, reduced our infrastructure to rubble, subjected the population to the rigors of a harsh, often criminal occupation, plunged most of the inhabitants into the hell and uncertainties of constant warfare, privation, and unemployment, most of the population would be resentful if not mad enough to take the first weapon they could find to fight back. What's so darn difficult to understand? Gratitude? You gotta be kidding.
Yet such perversions of logic are common in the United States. For the utterly confused public is the perfect soil in which to plant such enormous lies. Doubtless only under conditions of almost generalized brainwash can the revolting media creatures that pass for journalists and commentators in the US foist such a huge con on the public mind with nary an audible protest.
Yeah, it's pathetic alright. And it carries tremendous historical consequences. More importantly, if we don't do something effective about it, something that goes well beyond mere whining, it will happen again. This time the countries marked to receive America's beatific generosity, again under all sorts of lies and pretexts, are Syria and Iran--and who knows which other hapless nation will be next.
Media critic and former economist P. Greanville is The Greanville Post's founding editor (http://www.greanvillepost.com/). He also serves as publisher for Cyrano's Journal Today
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