The Mindless American: A Tragedy
In The Making
by Doug Soderstrom
CommonDreams.org, October 17,
2005
As a result of nine-eleven's jarring impact
upon our nation, journalists have discovered a near paranoid rise
in retaliation against individuals attempting to expose governmental
malfeasance. Increasingly government officials have begun punishing
individuals for nothing more than reasoned attempts to inform
the American public concerning: How the military has systematically
abused (tortured) foreign detainees; How the government intentionally
withheld evidence suggesting that an attack upon the United States
by Al Qaeda had been eminent; How the military has begun to wage
war upon soldiers who, in good conscience, have come to believe
that it is wrong for them to kill in a war that, according to
international law, is illegal, one that, the reasons for going
to war, were fabricated by the President of the United States;
How the United States has a sixty-year history (1945- 2005) of
assassinating foreign leaders who have chosen not to support the
government's foreign policy goals, initiating the overthrow of
duly-elected foreign democracies, while simultaneously supporting
brutal authoritarian dictatorships all in order to fill the coffers
of America's military-industrial complex, an egregious imperialistic
force with but one goal: To take command of the world economy.
As a result, many of these individuals
have been incarcerated, accused of being a traitor, of having
sided with the enemy, told that their career will be destroyed,
and threatened with extended imprisonment. Accordingly, on September
21, 2005, U.S. immigration officials banned Robert Fisk, an internationally
renowned British journalist, on his way to deliver a speech in
Santa Fe, New Mexico, from entering the United States of America
due to incisive criticism of the Bush administration's handling
of the Iraq war. No doubt such a scenario has, and is, being repeated
many times over in our country. A rather sad fact for a president
who has chosen to make such a big deal about the oft-quoted ideals
of "freedom and democracy!"
But even more shameful is the fact that
there are people who seem not to care that such things are taking
place in our country; a rather ignorant crowd of jingoes more
comfortable choosing to sit back pretending that everything will
be just fine, a people with apparently little regard for the facts.
As a behavioral scientist, I am grieved at what appears to be
a near pandemic of disinterest in what is happening to our country.
Given the election of George Walker Bush
as our president, our country made it quite clear that it is pleased
to have as its president a scoundrel, a true terrorist, one more
than willing to bully the rest of the world, as opposed to having
chosen a real man, one that humanity might embrace as a man of
true character (someone like Jimmy Carter), an individual committed
to doing what is best for the world (rather than what is most
profitable for those running the petrol, armament, pharmaceutical,
and construction industries), one with a desire to do what must
be done in order to create a more humane world, one of peace,
justice, and love. Although we claim to be a Christian nation,
having chosen George Walker Bush to be the leader of our nation
is a scandal beyond belief, one that mocks the very name of one
whose life embodies that which we have been said to believe.
However, now that I am well into my seventh
decade of life and very near retirement, I have come to the conclusion
that the world basically sucks, that there are few who seem to
have the investigative courage to take a good hard look at things
that, if discovered, would no doubt destroy one's image of a land
that can do no wrong, one that they believe has somehow received
the eternal blessing of God. So I must ask: How is it that we
have become such a mindless nation, a society populated by deadheads,
folks who seem to have little desire to look beyond the thinly-veneered
surface of life?
As a behavioral scientist, it appears
that a vast share of folks in our nation have chosen to relinquish
a quality no doubt essential to authentic human life.. an existential
responsibility to think for themselves, an ontological need to
discount the petty concerns that drive the minds of those directed
by triviality. It seems that such individuals have become so fantastically
preoccupied with, essentially enamored by, the norm of what others
think, they have effectively relinquished, through a process of
cognitive foreclosure, the capacity to think for themselves. Having
become so extremely alienated from the core of their own being,
they have little choice but to follow the crowd's madding need
to forge a symbiotic attachment to, in essence relationship with,
a society, that for all practical purposes has become the basis
of their own identity, the bedrock of their very being. Having
done so, the image they have forged for themselves (who they believe
themselves to be) has become every bit as fabricated, every bit
as disconnected from reality, as their image of society. So in
wanting to have at their disposal a more a positive image of themselves,
they have been left with little choice but to construct a glorified
image of society; an image of what they wish society would have
been rather than what it has, in fact, turned out to be. Something
like having chosen to have built an ego-incased frame constructed
upon the shifting sands of inane social rumor and outright public
lies truly a flight of fancy bordering on the absurd!
Very few would disagree with the proposition
that in Hitler's Germany there was a determined effort to brainwash
the people so they might support Mein Fuhrer's efforts to conquer
the world. However, what if one were to suggest that much the
same is occurring in the United States of America, that there
has been a determined effort through the socializing influence
of our schools, the government, the mass media, the churches we
attend, even that of our own parents, to pressure us into believing
(just as Hitler) that our country has received the blessing of
God, and because of this, we therefore have not only the right,
but more importantly, through the use of military weapons, a divine
responsibility to see that the world acquiesces to our needs and
expectations. Just as Hitler in the 1930's prepared his countrymen
to accept the authoritarian control of the Nazi government, much
the same may well be occurring in the United States. Just as Hitler
indoctrinated his people to believe that Germany had the right
to conquer the world, George Walker Bush "in the name of
freedom and democracy" may well be doing the same (preparing
the American people to support his administration's imperialistic
drive to dominate the world).
Behaviorally, it is clear that citizens,
from cradle to grave, are primed to conform to the dictates of
those in power, instructed never to question the validity of what
those who would like to take control of our lives have to say.
Most Americans have no idea; that what we are fed by the news
media (televised and paper-print news) is nothing more than a
portrayal of what powerful corporations (those who pay the salaries
of those who run mass media) want us to believe, that what happens
to pass as education is as often as not mere propaganda (e.g.
that Americans are the good guys and their enemies are, without
exception, always the bad guys), that what we learn in church
may have very little or nothing to do with the truth, that what
our parents teach us may be nothing more than an accumulation
of their own personal biases no doubt a rather subtle modification
of what they were taught by their parents. And through such a
process, governments and nations around the world wield control
as to what their citizens, believe, value, and do.
And, of course, in our own society, the
primary way most of us are controlled, the way the vast majority
of us are forced "to tow the line," is through the ominous
threat of being fired. Something like this: If you are interested
in keeping your career on track, that you would like to keep your
job, then you ought to consider the following in order to assure
your employer that you deserve the right to keep your job; get
married and have a couple of kids, become a member of a social
club (such as the Lions Club, the Kiwanis Club, or the Rotarians),
be a good capitalist, be a patriotic citizen who loves his country,
and make sure that you attend a local church so that everybody
will know that you believe in God almighty. However, if, for whatever
reason, you decide that you would like to become a rebel, that
you would like to begin thinking for yourself, then you'd better
brace yourself for trouble, because there is a reasonable likelihood
that you will be fired! You see, in America, there is a rule of
thumb concerning the working world which basically says that those
who do what they are told to do are likely to keep their jobs,
whereas those who tend to think for themselves, tend to buck the
system, (tend not to do what they have been told to do) end up
jobless, powerless, and left to fend for themselves on the mean
streets of society.
But why? Why does such a thing occur?
Why would America the beautiful, land of the free, do such a horrible
thing to its own citizens? The answer is quite simple: Knowing
that knowledge is power; the secret is control, controlling the
out flow of information, making sure that citizens know no more
than they "are supposed to know," making sure that they
remain relatively uninformed, making sure that they are given
"just enough" that they will go along with, peacefully
accept, the premise that they are well informed, that they have
a good idea of what is going on. It is necessary then that the
government keep the people from learning the truth. Keep them
from even wanting to know the truth. Put the fear of God into
them to the extent that they will never question what they have
been told to believe. You see, those in power may say that they
want their citizens to be educated, to be well informed as to
what is going on, however, such is simply not the case. Ask yourself
this question: What happens to those of us (teachers, preachers,
philosophers, writers, journalists) who do not "tow the line,"
those intent upon proposing alternate ways of looking at the world?
Look at what happened to Jesus Christ, Martin Luther King, Mohandas
Gandhi, even Socrates. I mean, really now, who among us wants
to be crucified, assassinated, forced to drink hemlock. wants
to risk the possibility of losing one's job, the ability to put
food on the table for one's family? However, just in case you
do not believe me, try this on for size the next time you go to
work tell the boss that you are an infidel (that you have grown
up and no longer believe in God), that you have decided to become
a socialist (that capitalism essentially sucks), that you no longer
give a shit about your country (that you have decided to become
a rebel, an actively-participating antiwar protester), and then
see what happens. Do you get the point?
There are many (Robert Fisk, Cindy Sheehan,
Sybil Edmunds, Bunnatine Greenhouse, Coleen Rowley, Captain Ian
Fishback, Col. Anthony Shaffer, Kevin Benderman, Jeremy Hinzman,
Brandon Hughey, Camilo Mejia, among others) who have illustrated
the courage to risk their jobs, their careers, their reputations,
their marriages, their wealth, imprisonment, and, in some cases,
even that of their own sanity. But the sad fact is that for every
hero out there, there are literally thousands of citizens (each
who no doubt consider themselves to be conscientious, hard-working
individuals who have a sincere belief in God and a loyal commitment
to their country) who yet, for whatever reason, detest men and
woman such as these who have shown the moral gumption to put their
lives on the line for no other reason than to make a stand for
that which is right, a willingness to tell anyone, everyone who
is willing to listen, that it is a far better thing for one to
have sacrificed his own life so that others might see, than to
have chosen to remain silent ensuring the blind pretense that
all is well, that there is nothing to worry about, that Big Brother
will no doubt take good care of us as long as we simply keep our
mouths shut and do exactly as we are told.
Postscript: The most dangerous thing one
can do is to tell the truth the sentence for which, one way or
the other, is always death!
Doug Soderstrom is a psychologist in Wharton,
Texas.
*****
article correction from author
Doug Soderstrom
"Recently, it was brought to my
attention that Robert Fisk, the renown reporter of The Independent,
was not banned from entering the United States. Such was no more
than an unfortunate rumor multiplied many times over on the internet.
If I had pursued the information a bit more diligently, I would
have realized that Mr. Fisk had not been banned from entering
the United States, but was, in fact, simply detained from entering
the U.S., at that particular moment in time, due to the solitary
fact that Mr. Fisk did not have a "biometric passport,"
which is now required of all citizens from nations like that of
the UK on a visa waiver program. For that mistake I offer a sincere
apology first of all to Mr. Fisk, for whom I have the greatest
degree of respect as an investigative journalist, and secondly
to those who so diligently took the time to read my article........
all in order that I as an undoubtedly fallible human being might
continue to do my best to tell "the truth" the best
that I can."
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