Dominated Minds
Press Action
Thursday, April 29, 2004
http://www.pressaction.com/news/weblog/full_article/holmquist04292004/
By Micah Holmquist
David Letterman has more than once used a gag where he announces some milestone in his television career and then follows it up with saying he hasn’t cared since X number of years ago.
While this isn’t exactly good comedy, one could be excused for thinking that the Bush Administration has exhibited a similar attitude as of late when it comes to manipulating the public.
For example, “bad timing” could almost be defined by getting rid of longtime stooge Ahmed Chalabi just after Chalabi had criticized the U.S. for rehiring some of Saddam’s former thugs. And would it really kill the Bush Administration to name the entity to which they are not going to hand over control of Iraq to on June 30?
The Bush Administration would only be slightly more transparent if they danced around a fire like Rumplestiltskin or sang Bruce Springsteen’s “Stolen Car” in public, taking special glee in the lines, “Each night I wait to get caught/But I never do.”
Oddly enough, however, this sloppiness on the part of Team Bush showcases just how much they are in control of the agenda as it relates to what is by far their most important project, the “war on terror.”
As I said in “How the Mainstream Media Enables the Bush Administration ... and Why They’d Be Happy to Do the Same for Kerry and Friends,” the dominant discourse around the “war on terror” makes the same assumptions about this “war” that the White House does in justifying the conflict.
It is a given that the U.S. is fighting a “war” and that nobody should question why the Bush Administration doesn’t always act like this is the case. (War by convenience?) Similarly nobody with a “mass” audience points out that “the terrorists" do not exist as such.
The Bush Administration likes to talk about “freedom", but since they have never been asked to define what they mean by this nebulous word, it means whatever the Bush Administration wants it to mean at any given time in any particular place. Thus, within the context of the rhetoric of the “war on terror”, there was nothing odd about Vice President Dick Cheney talking about “freedom” existing in Afghanistan even though women have recently been banned from appearing on radio or television in one province of Afghanistan.
One would have to be “out there” to question whether all of the “threats” the Bush Administration claims to be fighting actually exist or to consider whether U.S. foreign policy has even helped to breed some of the threats that do exist. The message is, “If the Bush Administration says a threat exists, it does. If they don’t, it doesn’t.”
If that sounds extreme just think of the flak directed at Howard Dean in December after the then Democratic presidential candidate denied that the U.S. was any safer because Saddam had been captured. The funny thing about these complaints is that Bush didn’t think Saddam was much of a threat before being captured. “Iraq’s former dictator will never again use weapons of mass destruction,” Bush said on September 23 of last year. If Bush said Saddam was a threat, he was. If Bush said Saddam isn’t a threat, he wasn’t.
And it should go without saying that the lives of Americans are worth far more than those of people in other countries. The Bush Administration may feign concern for Afghans or Iraqis, but never in the context of the harm they have suffered as the result of U.S. actions. If a couple U.S. citizens die in Afghanistan or Iraq, in contrast, it is big news and we are all reminded of how costly “defending freedom.” If it is “only” people from other countries dying, we are given empty platitudes like, in the words of Michael Novak of the American Enterprise Institute and Pfizer, “War always brings pain.”
In a brilliant April 15 Open Democracy piece, Khalid Kishtainy comes up with a “humorous” intellectual justification for this disparity in coverage and concern. Americans tend to be far wealthier than Iraqis, he writes, and thus will lead better lives if they don’t die prematurely. Kishtainy concludes that American lives are therefore more valuable.
The impact of this situation isn’t hard to see. There is a “war on terror” that theoretically will never end but which will cause great harm to living things, a debased democracy in the U.S. where questions about state power can be brushed off with the non-question “Don’t you know there’s a war on?” and individuals such as the late NFL player turned Army Ranger Pat Tillman, who are in many ways admirable, are suckered into fighting so that the U.S. can dominate the world a little bit more.
It isn’t so easy to see the reason for this situation. Why do the people of the U.S. tolerate the Bush Administration’s absurd notions and effectively become Bush’s subjects? While it is most likely impossible to empirically locate a cause, my hunch is that a large number of people, easily the majority, want to believe the Bush Administration’s explanation of events. (Some no doubt would prefer John Kerry to be in charge of the war on terror but they accept the basis for it.) They want to believe that the government of their country has never oppressed people in other countries or done anything that would provoke retaliation against the U.S. They want to believe that the U.S. is in the process of “Winning the War on Terror,” which means they want to believe that it is possible to defeat a tactic without making any changes in the structures of the contemporary world. They most certainly do not want to believe that the U.S. government is a harmful force in other countries and that “our president” manipulates their own ignorance and lack of critical thinking.
Bush’s arguments don’t have to be right, something Peggy Noonan, a Bush partisan and former employee of George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan, conceded in an April 22 Wall Street Journal column. They don’t even have to make sense. They just need to make people feel good about themselves and their country.
An intellectual critique of the “war on terror” is consequently an insufficient response to this mass psychosis. We are attempting to counter a narrative that people want to believe and so either something must happen that forces the people in question to not believe it or we must come up with a counter-narrative that is more attractive. If any readers have ideas as to what the former could consist of, I’d love to hear them. From my perspective, if I accept that they regard “evil” as an operating force in the world, particularly the other world, it seems like nothing could convince them that the “war on terror” is not a just exercise of power.
Coming up with a counter-narrative may be an easier task, but if it is, it isn’t by much. Since “the world is a dangerous place and there isn’t much we can about it” isn’t likely to gather a large crowd, it becomes necessary to put forward the idea of a better world. This does mean a world without the current economic and political structures, but what should replace them? Unfortunately opponents of the “war on terror” tend to be lacking in answers to those questions, unless you count a return to the flawless Soviet model of socialism.
Until a viable alternative emerges, however, the “war on terror” seems destined to march on. Not because it is right, but because people want to believe that it is right.
Micah Holmquist, editor of Irregular Thoughts and Links, is a Cadillac, Mich.-based writer.