The
Zombie State
By Am Johal
21 October, 2004
Countercurrents.org
For
the two years following September 11th, the Western public was inundated
with propaganda to such a vociferous degree that to be a critical voice
was to be heretical and be considered a traitor - we citizens became
passive consumers lodged in a 'Zombie State.' This period did not do
justice to the idea of a free and civil society, at least not one that
involves a critical citizenry. The idea of the 'Unconscious Civilization'
put forward by John Ralston Saul still holds very true. This period
showed how vulnerable free societies are to centralized power even in
democratic societies and the role that an uncritical mainstream media
plays in perpetuating myths and stereotypes.
Will this be the
age of Bush, Saddam, Enron, Martha Stewart, Halliburton, Bin Laden,
Hamid Karzai and Aaron Brown on CNN with the towers in the background?
We were all duped
into hating Arabs and believing in a war that didn't have to happen.
We were fed images we hadn't seen before of what came across as savage,
backward societies - exotic, from a different world. We didn't know
enough, but we were being taught to hate. And so we all got aboard the
American train thinking that bombing our way to peace was the answer.
Thousands of innocent lives were lost in the haste to pass judgement.
Instead of cultivating our better selves, we showed how primitive we
can be.
This will be known
as a backward time in human history, one that showed not only the worst
excesses of Muslim fundamentalism, but that Western societies are constructed
to be passive and uncritical. Through this trauma, hopefully it will
mean that American hegemony and its implications will be deconstructed
by its own citizens.
In the end, we allowed
the most public critics of the war to be vilified. We didn't ask the
most important questions until it was too late.
Now that the American
election campaign is only a few weeks away, the differences don't seem
very large. The grappling for the public mind is taking on an eery familiarity.
It's as if we've seen this all before - it's a rerun. Why shouldn't
the public feel disenfranchised, disinterested and exiled from the public
sphere? Why not vote Nader or just stay at home on election day?