A
Disneyland Of Militant Ignorance: The American Normalization Of
Mass Murder
By Phil Rockstroh
13 August, 2007
Countercurrents.org
Given
the nation's tottering infrastructure, imperial overreach abroad and
vandalized constitutional process by a lawless executive branch, what
will it take to scare the general public, mainstream press and political
classes into immediate action to bring about meaningful change? At this
twilight hour of the American republic, there must come a paradigm shift
of seismic proportions or else the republic will perish. I'm less than
optimistic. Insomuch as, I suspect, that if, during a rare press conference,
George W. Bush's face were to suddenly shed its skin, right on camera,
live on national television, on all channels, broadcast and cable, to
reveal the countenance of a Gila Monster -- the elitist beltway punditry
would begin to catalog the merits of his reptilian single-mindedness.
Then proceed to an interview with an "expert" from a right-wing
funded, zoological think tank, "The American Institute for the
Advancement of Predatory Policy," who would assure us that: "...in
an era when evil is as proliferate as flies around the stinking dumpster
of the world, Americans will be kept safe by a lizard-faced leader who
eats flies for breakfast." And the general public would only be
concerned because the broadcast happened to preempt the finals of American
Idol.
To survive as a republic, a great many American idols will have to topple,
and not only those inane, fame-obsessed clowns and crooners sharp-elbowing
each other on the Fox Network's televised exercises in Pop Stardom for
Dummies. As far as idolatry goes, by far the most pervasive, ruinous,
and in need of toppling is the position of unquestioning worship the
US military holds in American life. One would think that after the Götterdämmerung
of macho folly we've witnessed over the past half-decade that the country
would have had its fill of self-proclaimed alpha male posturing and
adolescent-minded, military hagiography.
The media is rife with right-wing fantasist nonsense about the "feminized"
American male, when, in fact, the country has grown outright psychotic
from testosterone-induced toxicity (TIT). In the 1960s, hippies were
ridiculed for their naive assumptions that life on earth could be magically
transformed into an egalitarian paradise of free love, good dope, waterbeds
and Lava Lamps for all, if "the straights" could simply be
induced to "raise their consciousness" by the engagement in
and the utilization of the erotic acts, illicit substances and goofy,
counterculture accouterment mentioned above. Accordingly, the current
fantasy -- that all US soldiers are good, righteous and brave, standing
ever vigilant against all threats to the Homeland -- could be regarded
as a kind of Woodstock Militarism.
Thus, this puerile glorification of American servicemen and women is
a view of human nature that is every bit as naive as the hash-pipe dreams
of Sixties idealists involving peace, love and flower power -- and one
that can't be blamed on a communal use of L.S.D. Excuse me, but why
should the military establishment and its foot soldiers hold a position
of being beyond scrutiny or even reproach? The last I looked "our
troops" were being used as mindless instruments of our country's
imperialist aggression. Moreover, the perpetually pimp-slapped and habitually
on-their-knees before Bush's macho-narcissistic bluster, congressional
Democrats, who gained a legislative majority on the strength of the
anti-war vote, are up to their lickspittle lips in the legalized mass
murder being perpetrated in the name of our nation. It is time to see
through and reject the right-wing propaganda and liberal paternalism
of viewing the soldiers of the US military as victims ... Oh cry me
a river of Iraqi blood ... When the truth is: We are a nation of people
possessed of Bronze Age minds, who are armed with 21st Century weapons.
Ergo, our soldiers are the delivery system of said weaponry.
This is the reason the American military machine exists on such a massive
scale: Our leaders wish to establish, by force, if necessary, global
hegemony. Accordingly, what do platitudes such as, "I support the
troops" translate to when those troops are engaged in an illegal
and immoral occupation of a foreign land, invaded under false pretenses?
Where is the line to be drawn between having empathy for an army comprised
to a large degree of economic conscripts and giving tacit approval to
the war crimes they commit? Since the enacting of the Nuremberg Laws,
the claim of "I was only following orders" has been ruled
an inadmissible defense. Shouldn't the plea of "I couldn't get
a good job after high school, so I joined the military, was shipped
off to Iraq, where I grew so scared, frustrated and angry, that, every
once in a while, I lit-up a few Haji civilians, with my M16, turning
them into twitching jellyfish" be regarded as equally inadmissible?
To bestow unquestioning and unilateral support for the soldiers of a
ruthless empire's immoral invasion of a sovereign nation is a recipe
for war crimes and atrocities. Soldiers represent a cross-section of
a nation's population, evincing a mix of human traits and characteristics,
some admirable and worthy of support and others reprehensible and deserving
of condemnation and contempt. Accordingly, many soldiers are not heroes
and all heroes need not be soldiers. Resistance and the refusal to fight
immoral wars constitutes bravery as well.
This most recent version of the proto-fascist glorification of the military
has its origins in the rightist revisionist history of the Vietnam War.
Over the decades, the right has deftly and dishonestly framed the narrative
and succeeded in foisting its mythos of unquestioning loyalty to all
things military upon the history-bereft, reality-resistant American
populace.
At its dark and deceitful heart, this is a fantasy that is as fact free
as it is invidious. Accordingly, the public of the United States was
bilked into believing conservative propaganda such as the preposterous
urban legend involving hippies spitting on returning Vietnam vets. Yep,
that sounds plausible: scrawny hippies, afflicted with pot-induced cotton
mouth, expectorating on trained killers, just returned from the killing
zones of Southeast Asia. If you believe that nonsense, I'll sell you,
on Ebay, the Stairway To Heaven -- the very one that inspired the Led
Zeppelin song.
Almost every utterance on the subject by conservatives is either bullshit
or an outright lie. The biggest of the Big Lies was and remains roughly
as follows: The Vietnam War was lost, not during the battles and skirmishes
fought in that country's emerald jungles and muddy rice paddies, but
in the privileged confines of college campuses and in the sun-drenched
enclaves of Hollywood liberals. To hear conservatives tell it, the North
Vietnamese Army and Vietcong guerillas were all but on their knees,
beaten, on the verge of surrender, when Jane Fonda flew to their side,
rallying their flagging spirits with the succor of her American troop-hating,
commie-suckling sedition, hence rallying them on to final victory.
Next, under the influence of that cultural laughing gas known as Reaganism,
Hollywood created a Vietnam mythos even more preposterous than the one
chronicled above. Whereby, in the nineteen eighties, Chuck Norris and
Sylvester Stallone refought the Vietnam War and won. In these epics
of testosterone-poisoned kitsch, Norris and Stallone, freed of government
restraint and hippie bad mojo, reaped revenge on the godless, yellow
hordes, by deploying the terrible weaponry of their male pheromonal
musk defoliates and hairstyling jell napalm. It would seem, from the
POV of these movies, that the Vietnamese communists were brought to
heel with prop automatic assault weapons and blow dryers. On the screen
of suburban cineplexes, Asian extras, costumed as Vietnamese soldiers,
fell before Norris' and Stallone's barrage of blanks like Hollywood
Indians of old.
Once again, the world had been set right; those runty, upstart, Southeast
Asian bastards had been put in their place. The United States was victorious.
Of course, not in historical truth -- but in the only place that mattered
to us -- in our Cold War fevered minds, a place where Americans believed
that the "Evil Empire" plotted to invade our post-war, consumer
paradise, because the commie hordes lusted to collectivize our Buicks,
our blondes, our pool furniture and our lawn statuary. All in the same
insane way, we hallucinate, at present, that "Islamo-Fascists"
scheme to invade us and put Lindsey Lohan in a Burka.
In truth, the only place the people of Vietnam ever constituted a threat
to the United States was within the toxic mindscapes of paranoid cold
warriors. This death-enamored realm -- where the most psychotic is king
-- is the place (and only place) where Iraq's weapons of mass destruction
existed, and is where, at present, Iran's threat to the United States
looms. Resultantly, we have erected this walled and fortified domain
of delusion, this heavily armed Disneyland of militant ignorance, with
all its attendant, noxious myths of the sacrifices of its noble warriors,
for a less than noble reason and purpose. The purpose of this jingoistic
blarney is to shield the general public from the ugly reality of how
and why an empire's armies exist; because an empire's armies are mustered
-- not to protect the Homeland -- but to secure plunder for its ruling
elite and provide mollifying bribes for its hoi polloi.
By necessity, the fantasy must be large and all pervasive. Within it,
a frightened citizenry must believe that all its potential leaders must
embody the traits of a bona-fide, baptized in blood, warrior king. Ergo,
the gun-caressing, bible-clutching, dog-baiting, "the-ruling-class-took-everything-leaving-me-with-nothing-but-my-masculine-pride"
crowd is never going to accept the junior senator from the state of
New York, currently vying for the throne -- even if she has re-branded
herself as Hillary W. Bush.
At this point, it is imperative that we let the world in on a dirty,
little secret that many naive liberals have managed to lockout of their
minds: (Bill) Clintonism was a continuation of Reaganism, sans the Grecian
Formula and pomade. Furthermore, Bill Clinton was the diametric opposite
of FDR, not in personal style -- but in his administration's domestic
policies and social priorities. While Roosevelt was accused of being
a "traitor to his class," for betraying his aristocratic ilk,
by the enacting of The New Deal, Bill Clinton, also, proved to be a
traitor to his class, by betraying those who shared his laboring class
beginnings, by means of his ruinous neo-liberal trade policies and his
anything-for-the-boys-on-Wall-Street economics. As far as his relationship
with the nation's military/industrial complex, Clinton, because he had
avoided military service during the Vietnam War, had to prove he wasn't
a patchouli-reeking peacenik by constantly kowtowing to the Pentagon
establishment. Withal, the situation will be worse with Hillary, who,
time and time again, will have to establish her macho credentials by
bombing somebody, anybody, anytime and anywhere.
In this way, due to his charm,
intelligence and his almost preternatural talent to feign empathy --
Bill Clinton was more dangerous than George W. Bush -- because Bush,
at least, reveals to the world the true face of empire. Although, at
present, most Americans are unwilling or unable to face our true face.
Accordingly, the crack-brained narrative of the present moment goes:
to be viable as commander-in-chief, Hillary must prove her toughness,
preferably, in some he-man display of resolute stupidity. Since the
flight-suit on the deck of an aircraft carrier gambit has been played-out,
perhaps her handlers could set-up a photo-op involving the masculine
iconography of the World Wrestling Federation. It should be arranged
that she wrestle and then body slam two midget wrestlers portraying
Dennis Kusinich and Ron Paul. Such an act of political stagecraft could
prove to be Hillary Clinton's so-called "Sister Souljah moment."
Sarcasm, you say? Barely.
Our collective mindset regarding the nation's pernicious militarism
rises to about the level of thoughtful insight and searching introspection
that is on display in the realm of professional wrestling. Furthermore,
at least, the wrestlers themselves (and most of their audience) know
the violence of the sport is staged. Unfortunately -- while the political
theatre of US politics is fake as well -- in Iraq, the blood isn't.
Phil Rockstroh, a self-described auto-didactic, gasbag
monologist, is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York
City. He may be contacted at [email protected].
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