Tag: USA

2016-09-28

End game

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by Neil Godfrey

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A neat summing up, imho, of where we are at with the United States political scene right now:

How Did We End Up With Such Unpopular Candidates?

And do notice it’s published in The American Conservative. It’s true, I do subscribe to feeds from a range of media, including those on the opposite side of the ideological room from where I generally feel more comfortable. The article may contain nothing new for most of us, but it is a neat encapsulation of the what and why behind the Sanders-Clinton-Trump show this year, and a neat statement of the pits to which American “democracy” has finally descended.

Peter Van Buren’s conclusion:

Clinton is the ultimate end product of a political process consumed by big money. She is the candidate of the 1 percent. She believes in nothing but the acquisition of power and will trade anything to get it. The oligarchy is happy to help her with that.

Trump is the ultimate Frankenstein product of decades of lightly shaded Republican hate mongering. He is the natural end point of 15 post-9/11 years of keeping us afraid. He is the mediagenic demagogue a country gets when it abandons its people to economic Darwinism, crushes its middle class, and gives up on caring what happens to its minorities.

Both candidates are markers of a doomed democracy, a system that reached its apex somewhere in the past and has only now declined enough that everyone can see where we are. They’re us . . . .

And then I hear a surprising number of young people saying they don’t really care for democracy. Meanwhile in the background our planet’s climate is changing . . . .

Optimism, anyone? Is there any Optimism on today’s menu?

2016-09-11

“America, the most propagandised of all nations”

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by Neil Godfrey

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This post is a sequel to Propaganda in Modern Democracies

Man is essentially more rational than irrational when he has access to adequate knowledge. When issues are clearly understood, a generally sound judgment is in evidence. The tragic fact remains, however, that he still lives in a world which seldom allows him the full information he needs to display consistently rational behavior. . . . The American man in the street is, as Childs contends, the most propagandized person of any nation . . . (Meier 1950:162)

Nor do other nations that have come increasingly under the influence of the United States have room for complacency and future posts will look at instances where American propaganda techniques have become established in other countries.

Propaganda in a democracy has been most commonly channeled through commercial advertising and public relations.

In the United States over a very long time now these methods have been honed by incomparably more skill and research than in any other country. In the 1940s Drew Dudley, then chief of the Media Programming Division of the Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion, not only observed with satisfaction that ‘advertising is peculiarly American’, but added on a note of (perhaps rather less well founded) pride that ‘Hitler … employ[ed] the technique of advertising during the pre-war and war years, frequently referring to America’s advertising in glowing and admiring terms in Mein Kampf, and later utilising advertising’s powerful repetitive force to the utmost’ (Dudley 1947:106, 108, cited in Carey 1997:14).

Traditional media deployed: film, radio, TV, even comic strips, and now, of course, our new communication technologies daily vying for our attention.

Recall Jacques Ellul’s definition from the previous post to keep in mind what is at work through these media:

Propaganda is the management of collective attitudes by the manipulation of significant symbols.

There are certain characteristics of American society that has made it particularly fertile ground for the creation of durable emotional symbols charged with power to manipulate public attitudes.

goodevilOne of those characteristics is the historical predisposition of American society to fall in line with a dualistic or Manichean world-view.

This is a world-view dominated by the powerful symbols of the Satanic and the Sacred (darkness and light). A society or culture which is disposed to view the world in Manichean terms will be more vulnerable to control by propaganda. Conversely, a society where propaganda is extensively employed as a means of social control will tend to retain a Manichean world-view, a world-view dominated by symbols and visions of the Sacred and the Satanic. (Carey 1997:15)

Another quality is the pragmatic orientation of US society.

This is a preference for action over reflection. If the truth of a belief is to be sought in the consequences of acting on the belief, rather than through a preliminary examination of the grounds for holding it, there will be a tendency to act first and question later (if at all — for once a belief is acted upon the actor becomes involved in responsibility for the consequences and will be disposed to interpret the consequences so that they justify his belief and hence his action). If it is that American culture, compared with most others, values action above reflection, one may expect that condition to favour a Manichean world-view. For acknowledgement of ambiguity, that is, a non-Manichean world where agencies or events may comprise or express any complex amalgam of Good and Evil — demands continual reflection, continual questioning of premises. Reflection inhibits action, while a Manichean world-view facilitates action. On that account action and a Manichean world-view are likely to be more congenial to and to resonate with the cultural preference found in the United States. (Carey 1997:15)

Continue reading ““America, the most propagandised of all nations””

2012-01-05

Syria: What we are not being told

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by Neil Godfrey

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Map of Syria, showing its adjacent location we...
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Asia Times has a thoroughly documented article, A Mistaken Case for Syrian Regime Change, by Beirut based Aisling Byrne, a Projects Co-ordinator with Conflicts Forum. It is depressingly predictable reading.

In the last some weeks or more I have been only half-listening to any news of Syria I hear on the mainstream media for the simple reason that I have grown tired of hearing vague reports, unsubstantiated and contradictory reports, especially noticeable after I ever chanced to hear interviews in documentary type radio news programs, even on Al Jazeera, that all I have been sure of is that we are not being informed about what is happening there.

And Aisling Byrne’s article shows us why the news has been so unclear and incoherent. Except for the headlines that continually bombard us with the singular theme of genocidal tyrannical regime massacring its own people. I try to listen beyond the headlines and pick up some sourced facts and that’s where the headlines begin to turn into knotted strings beyond hope of unravelling. That leaves me suspicious that the headlines are a smokescreen for something. I eventually gave up listening because the detail was never there or never confirmed.

Read Aisling Byrne. It’s the same story as we experienced with the massaging of the Western publics to support the invasion of Iraq and then the humanitarian bombing of Libya. (Aisling has a little to say about that, too.)

Our mainstream Western media has for too many years now been the main cheerleaders for warmongering ventures of our governments acting on behalf of “our national interests”. (Translation of “national interest”: those specific interests within a nation that have the money and the power.)

Bush did it all wrong. He provoked ten million protestors to come out into the streets worldwide to try to stop a war. Ten million protestors don’t represent “national interests” so it would not do to make that mistake again. Libya showed a better way that became possible through exploitation of the Arab uprisings. Select target states (Libya and Syria) quickly found their peaceful civilian demonstrator replaced by armed gangs soliciting western military support. Curiously the same did not happen in states where popular protests threatened Western interests (e.g. Bahrain). Coincidence, of course.

Aisling Byrne’s article begins with the evidence that what is happening in Syria is the first chapter of a war on Iran, or at least regime change in Iran. This is confirmed by Under Secretary of State for the Near East Jeffrey Feltman and other sources.

What we are seeing in Syria is a deliberate and calculated campaign to bring down the Assad government so as to replace it with a regime “more compatible” with US interests in the region.

Remember that infamous Project for a New American Century? Well some of the same people behind that have been busy with a new document, Which Path to Persia? This is the “blueprint” for regime change in Iran produced by the neo-con Brookings Institute. A more recent appendix to this book is Towards a Post-Assad Syria produced by two neo-con think-tanks. It illustrates

how developments in Syria have been shaped according to the step-by-step approach detailed in the “Paths to Persia” report with the same objective: regime change. Continue reading “Syria: What we are not being told”

2011-09-28

Lights turning on in the U.S. again?

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by Neil Godfrey

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It’s great to read good news from the U.S.A. again. All the inspiring stuff has been coming out of south-east Asia, the Middle East, north Africa, Latin America, southern Europe. And now in the wake of the Occupy Wall Street and its sister movements I read of Elizabeth Warren, a voice of reason amid the madness, saying the obvious in a way that it needs to be communicated. Australia’s richest man, now dead, boasted that the one dollar he paid as tax was quite justified because it was he who was the one giving everyone else their jobs and incomes! Few at the time were able to reach the public media with the obvious retort that that blind arrogance deserved and that Elizabeth Warren is now saying according to the linked Al Jazeera opinion piece:

There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear:

You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did.

I read one sarcastic piece about the Wall Street demonstrators but many conservative-minded people fail to understand what even small protest actions can often do. They don’t bring the targets they are opposing down to their knees. But they do often spark the publicity, the attention, and initiate the public-discussion and awareness that does eventually mount the pressure to effect the change.

It’s great to see activism and clearly understood outspokenness in the U.S. once again. The U.S. has been under a very dark shadow for too many years now and all the wonderful lights have been burning elsewhere all this time. I find it very encouraging to see some flickering sparks once again from a region that has had very little good news for so long now.

2011-05-01

Return sympathies

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Politics & Society, Vridar
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American readers expressed concerns when my home town was hit earlier this year by that “inland tsunami”. My thoughts go out in return over the horrific news of weather calamaties in the U.S. now.

2008-10-22

An Open Letter to Sarah Palin

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by Neil Godfrey

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An open letter to Sarah Palin, from Marlene Winell, Ph.D.

Dear Sarah,

As a former fundamentalist, I’d like to call you on what you are doing.

This is not about disrespecting your private beliefs.  But you have a huge conflict of interest here by running for office and you can’t have it both ways (see Jesus’ words in John 2:15).

You have not been honest about the most important thing about you:  the fact that you are a born-again, literal Bible-believing, fundamentalist Christian.   Voters need to know you are not merely a “Christian” – a follower of Christ’s teachings.

Most people who have never been entrenched in the subculture of fundamentalist Christianity may not understand what this really means, but I do.  Like you, I was raised in the Assemblies of God and I was a zealous part of the Jesus Movement.  Like you, my life was consumed with seeking God’s will for my life and awaiting the imminent return of Jesus.   It’s clear to me that you want to do the Lord’s will; you’ve said and done things like a true believer would.  You are on a mission from God.   If that is not true, then I challenge you to deny it.

Former fundamentalists like me know that your worldview is so encompassing, authoritarian, and powerful that it defines who you think you are, the way you view the world, history, other people, the future, and your place in the world.  It defines you far more than hockey mom, wife, woman, hunter, governor, or VP candidate.

You believe that every bit of the Bible is God’s perfect word.  You have a supernatural view of reality where Satan is a real entity and where good and evil beings are engaged in “spiritual warfare” (Ephesians 6:12).   Like Queen Esther, you believe that God has “called” and “anointed” you to lead America.  This is why you have accepted blessing for office through the “laying on of hands” and prayer to protect you from witchcraft.

So what does this mean for governing?  What could Americans expect with you at the helm?

You cannot affirm basic human decency or capability, because according to your dogma, we are sinful, weak, and dependant on God. And so, your decisions would not be based on expert advice or even your own reasoning, but on your gut-level, intuitive interpretation of God’s will.   This would allow you to do anything and claim you were led by God.

Your thinking necessarily is black or white.  People and policies are either good or bad.  After all, Jesus said, “He who is not with me is against me” (Matt. 12:30).  Under your leadership, diplomacy and cultural nuance would be less important than not blinking.  In a spiritual war, you don’t negotiate with the devil.

Regarding social policy, as a believer in individual salvation, you would emphasize individual morality and responsibility, not a community approach with structural solutions.  You would be judgmental and controlling of personal choices regarding sex, reproduction, and library books instead of addressing global warming, torture, poverty, and war.  Your belief in eternal hell-fire, your deference to a literal Bible despite its cruelties and vengeful god, and your indoctrination to disbelieve your own compassionate instincts, are likely to leave you numb at your moral core.  You might recall the verse, “If a man will not work he shall not eat” (2 Thess. 3:10).  However, faith-based initiatives would be okay because they would use caring to evangelize.

How about science?  As it has in your governorship, your interpretation of the Bible would trump scientific scholarship and findings.  You would deny the human role in global warming because God is in control.  More importantly, you would not make the environment a priority because you do not expect the earth to last.

International affairs?  Since your subculture has identified the establishment of Israel in 1948 as the beginning of the end, you would see war, epidemics, climate change, and natural disasters, all as hopeful signs of Jesus’ return.  You would be a staunch supporter of Israel and deeply suspicious of countries like Russia identified with the antichrist in the end times literature.  (You have publicly said that you expect Jesus to return in your lifetime and that it guides you every day.)

The Christian fundamentalism that has shaped your thinking teaches that working for peace is unbiblical and wrong because peace is not humanly possible without the return of Jesus (1 Thess. 5:2,3).  Conflict, even outright war is inevitable, for Jesus came not to bring peace but a sword (Matt: 10:34-37).  Like millions of fundamentalist Christians, you may actually find joy in global crises because these things portend His return (Luke 21:28).

But all of this certainty and fantasy in today’s complex world is dangerous, Sarah.  There was a time when all of humanity thought the world was flat.  Today, the stakes for such massive error are much higher.

So we want to know, Sarah, Warrior Princess for God —  How dare you presume to take responsibility for our country and our planet when you, in your own mind, do not consider this home?   I mean home for the long haul, not just until your rescue arrives from space.  How dare you look forward to Christ’s return, leaving your public office empty like a scene from the movie, Left Behind?

What if you are completely wrong and you wreak havoc instead with your policies?  If you deny global warming, brand people and countries “evil,” support war, and neglect global issues, you can create the apocalypse you are expecting.  And as it gets worse and worse, and you look up for redemption, you just may not see it.  What then?  In that moment, you and all who have shared your delusion may have the most horrifying realization imaginable.   And it will be too late.  Too late to avoid destruction and too late to apologize to all the people who tried to turn the tide and needed you on board.

And you, John McCain, how dare you endanger all of us for the sake of your politics?  How dare you choose a partner who is all symbol and no substance, preying on the fears of millions of Americans?   Shame on both of you.

Leave this beautiful, fragile earth to us, the unbelievers in your fantasy.  It’s the only heaven we have and you have no right to make it a hell.

Sincerely,
Marlene

Marlene Winell, Ph.D.
October 21, 2008

Marlene Winell is a Bay Area psychologist who specializes in recovery from fundamentalist religion.  She is author of Leaving the Fold:  A guide for former fundamentalists and others leaving their religion. She is the daughter of Assemblies of God missionaries.   A longer article about Sarah Palin’s religion is on Dr. Winell’s website:  www.marlenewinell.net

Some aspects of Marlene’s book, Leaving the Fold, are covered in my Winell: Leaving the Fold tag.

2007-12-06

Australians believe in Space Aliens, Americans believe in God

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Politics & Society, Religion and Atheism
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I am glad I live in Australia rather than America.

Many of us here have cancelled plans to emigrate to New Zealand or Nepal since our erstwhile reactionary Prime Minister John Howard lost his seat at the recent election.

But even more happily invigorating is the latest HarrisInteractive poll on American beliefs, giving us the opportunity to compare the intellectual climate and health of the two countries.

82% of Americans believe in God, a statistic that makes me think of black overcast skies and Cromwell’s dreary England. Compare Australians. It is a statistical fact that “more Australians believe in space aliens than believe in God, despite the fact that more Australians have been to church than have been abducted by UFOs.” (Dale, 100 Things Everyone Needs to Know about Australia.) To be fair, space aliens in the original source refers strictly to the possibility of intelligent life out there and not necessarily to those little green creatures that abduct people in their sleep. But who’s splitting hairs?

See, Australians have checked out church and found it only has a ceiling or arch or stained glass up top. But no-one can justly accuse them of being incorrigible sceptics simply for the sake of scepticism. Australian’s can’t deny space aliens.

And the best part is that space aliens don’t make any claims on how people should vote or run the country or what films should be censored or what sexual leanings should be the basis of legal rights.

And they make much more interesting discussion topics than God when there are a few beers to get things going. I’m also sure they can offer much more fertile material for pick-up lines than God. One only has to compare “Have you had a close encounter lately?” with “Have you prayed today?”

And space aliens are much sexier than God. God positively frowns on sex. He will only reproduce by remote control through genetic-spirit implant into a virgin, — and he only ever went that far once in all eternity! Space aliens do much more interesting things while still working in mysterious ways with their abductees, as we all know.

Why Space Aliens are a more positive Belief Object than God

  1. Space Aliens don’t divide people morally over whether people believe in them or not
  2. Space Aliens don’t threaten to send you to hell if you don’t believe in them
  3. Space Aliens do not justify any wars
  4. Space Aliens do not make rules that mess up people’s sexual health
  5. Space Aliens expect you to believe in advanced technology but not in miracles
  6. Space Aliens do not command earthlings to keep impossible or silly rules
  7. Space Aliens do not censor the arts or any creative activity of earthlings
  8. Space Aliens do not want your money or your soul. (Some do want your body but only for a moment of experimentation after which it is returned without discernible after-effects.)
  9. When earthling attempts to communicate with Space Aliens are reciprocated it will be a scientifically verifiable event
  10. Space Aliens do not make any promises they can be accused of failing to keep
  11. Space Aliens do not take offence or get angry, — ever (even if you make graven images of them or have a laugh at their expense)
  12. Having a personal relationship with a Space Alien is entirely optional
  13. If you do decide to have a personal relationship with a Space Alien you are not required to go from door-to-door telling others about it.

2007-10-20

Millenarians and Nationalists

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by Neil Godfrey

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As a past student of American history and society I relished catching up with more recent publications a couple of years ago and one of the more interesting was America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism (2004) by Anatol Lieven. Sharing some notes from one section of this book — a discussion of the link between millenarian religious beliefs and American nationalism — with anyone else interested. Continue reading “Millenarians and Nationalists”

2007-04-16

America Right or Wrong / Anatol Lieven

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by Neil Godfrey

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Not sure if this series of posts is going to turn out to be more review or just notes and commentary on Anatol Lieven’s book, America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism (2004).

“This book seeks to help explain why a country which after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, had the chance to create a concert of all the world’s major states — including Muslim ones — against Islamist revolutionary terrorism chose instead to pursue policies which divided the West, further alienated the Muslim world and exposed America itself to greatly increased danger. The most important reason why this has occurred is the character of American nationalism, which in this book I analyze as a complex, multifaceted set of elements in the nation’s political culture.” (p.2)

Lieven compares America’s nationalist popular bellicosity and foreign policy stance to that of the great imperial powers of the nineteenth century — Germany, Britain, Russia — and observes that it is the European countries who tasted the fruits of that sort of belligerent nationalism in World Wars 1 and 2 who today look down on America’s belated attempt to continue that same path.

Lieven notes the irony of American isolationism, too. It is not something that predictably pulls America inward and avoiding any involvement with the outside world, but manifests itself as a sense of being alone, the light on the hill, the misunderstood white knight, who unilaterally involves itself with other nations. It is her isolationist stance that prevents her from understanding and truly effectively engaging with the world except in ways that only ‘blowback’ the consequences of scorn and contempt.

But one difference between America’s position and that of the Europeans of the 19th century: America’s population does not have the motivation to expend the vast amounts of energy required to maintain their empire. Many even deny that it is an empire that they rule. They fail to see that though they may not always rule as directly as did the British in India, they surely do rule in a manner that is little different from the way the Dutch in the 17th and 18th centuries ruled the East Indies — indirectly.

to be continued of course….

2006-11-27

Review Notes re Collision Course

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by Neil Godfrey

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There are two ways of reading John Norris’s ‘Collision Course: one can read it as a student of diplomacy and perhaps be soberly impressed with its contents; or one can read it as a complete outsider, as an Outsider in Albert Camus’ sense, as simply a fellow human who identifies with not only Americans but also Russians and Serbs, be totally depressed by the stark bullying of the stronger power that poses as “diplomacy”. Not only the bullying, but the willingness of the stronger power to quite knowingly risk full scale great power war and treat the slaughter of civilians as a “pressuring bargaining chip”. I suspect many Americans would be shocked to read a US diplomat having no discomfort with identifying openly with Chairman Mao’s dictum of “fight, fight, talk, talk”.

I have been wanting to finish a review of this book for weeks now and still have not had the chance to structure, cut down and complete my notes, especially the brief chapter by chapter contents. It shouldn’t be that hard. Maybe I want to achieve too much with it. But for anyone interested in the meantime here are my raw notes and quotations from the book:

Continue reading “Review Notes re Collision Course”

2006-11-21

American theocracy: the peril and politics of radical religion, oil, and borrowed money in the 21st century / Kevin Phillips (Viking, 2006). Review

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Politics & Society, Religion and Atheism
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If the details of the arguments of this work are not always persuasive the author nevertheless achieves his stated purpose: to demolish any illusion among his fellow Americans that the US is in any way “exceptional” in its place and role in the world. Rather, he argues that it is rapidly following in the wake of the demise of past imperial powers Spain, Holland and Britain. The extraordinary rise and influence of extremist religious tendencies; the financialization and extreme indebtedness of the economy as “real wealth production” is outsourced; and the inevitable decline and gradual replacement of the economy’s main fuel resource, are the three main streams that Phillips sees as once having broken their banks over previous leading imperial powers and that are now beginning to deluge the US. Continue reading “American theocracy: the peril and politics of radical religion, oil, and borrowed money in the 21st century / Kevin Phillips (Viking, 2006). Review”