[Peace-discuss] Fwd: Street / 9/12 Reflections / Sep 13

[Morton K. Brussel]

How timely! Our AWARE Presents visitor Paul Street's latest sally on  
ZNet; a polemic about the consumerist state and the perverse uses of  
9/11 by our government and its followers. He imagines he sees some  
light at the end of the tunnel, however. --mkb

>
> Today's commentary:
> http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2006-09/12street.cfm
>
> ==================================
>
> ZNet Commentary
> 9/12 Reflections September 13, 2006
> By Paul  Street
>
> "Through the tears, I see an opportunity."
> George W. Bush, September 14, 2001
>
>
> One thing I remember about 9/11 is that they stopped all the  
> commercials for four or five days.  It struck me as a remarkable  
> confession of sorts at the top of the American power structure.
>
> It was an admission that the nation’s corporate-imposed culture of  
> infantilizing mass consumption was a terrible embarrassment in the  
> face of grave public events that called for solemn reflection on  
> the part of a serious and adult citizenry. That culture made  
> America look weak, cheap, and absurd when the policymakers needed  
> it to look strong, noble, and significant.
>
> It was one thing to keep commercials blaring while Israeli tanks  
> bulldozed Palestinian homes and as U.S.-imposed economic sanctions  
> killed hundreds of Iraqi children each week or, for that matter,  
> while nearly three fourths of a million black U.S. children lived  
> at less than half the federal government’s notoriously inadequate  
> poverty level. Relatively few Americans knew or cared about those  
> ongoing tragedies and crimes.
>
> It was another thing, however, to broadcast cynical beer, SUV, and  
> cosmetic surgery ads between clips and discussions of a spectacular  
> mass calamity that had been criminally inflicted on predominantly  
> white Americans by officially evil Arab enemies.
>
> For roughly two weeks, those terrible images and somber discussions  
> crowded out the standard television diet of vapid soap operas, game  
> shows, situation-comedies, talk-shows/freak shows (e.g. the late- 
> imperial Jerry Springer and Maury Povich circuses) and  
> ideologically manipulative “reality shows” like “Survivor.”
>
> The gross commercialized pandering of the [Aldous] Huxlean mass  
> advertising and amusement culture had to stand down. Dedicated to  
> the endless creation of false needs within a degraded half- 
> citizenry, the commercials didn’t fit the [George] Orwellian  
> requirements of the moment.
>
> The architects of U.S. policy and opinion decided that we couldn’t  
> reflect in properly nationalistic fashion on the demonically  
> assaulted superiority of the American Way of Life – we couldn’t  
> muster the appropriately livid sense of the need to unite behind  
> our muscular leaders in exacting white imperial revenge – with such  
> evidence of our inner capitalized nothingness blaring across our  
> ubiquitous telescreens.
>
> Double standards aside, it was curiously refreshing to see the  
> intermittent mind-assaulting advertisements vanish even for a short  
> period. It was interesting to see public events momentarily push  
> the mass-propagated fetishism of commodities off the stage. It was  
> intriguing to imagine an electronic mass culture without constant  
> institutionalized hucksterism.
>
> The television commercial ban lasted for four (4) days. It took  
> less than half a week for the corporate networks to reinstate the  
> soulless regime of mass advertising.
>
> It took them longer to fully reinstate the at once conservative and  
> diversionary entertainment culture. But the most intense period of  
> the Orwellian hate spectacle passed fairly quickly. The regular  
> Huxlean amusement and consumption spectacle was back in full force  
> by the end of the year.
>
> The oppressive U.S. nationalism that prevailed after 9/11 was a  
> distinctly reactionary, regressive, and militarist exercise in  
> internal power consolidation and subtly racist imperial attack  
> preparation. The American rabble/citizenry was powerfully if  
> deviously directed to cower under the pseudo-protective umbrella of  
> the permanent Nation Security State. It was subtly encouraged to  
> accept escalated top-down attacks on domestic social protections  
> and civil liberties in the name of fear and something the president  
> called “freedom.”
>
> Open opposition to regressive tax cuts for the wealthy few (in what  
> was already the industrialized world’s most unequal country by  
> far), to the ongoing corporate-state assault on environmental and  
> welfare protections, and/or to the rollback of democratic and  
> personal liberties was painted as unpatriotic and dangerously  
> divisive.  Such inappropriate dissent was said to aid and abet the  
> terrorist enemies of “freedom,” who attacked New York and  
> Washington simply because of their loathing of liberty.
>
> Responsible American citizenship was equated with unquestioning  
> support for the secret corporate-imperial agenda and with eager  
> engagement in the atomizing rituals of mass consumption.  The  
> president encouraged all good Americans to fight the terrorists and  
> support the cause of “freedom” by refusing to be scared away from  
> the shopping mall and the car dealership. It was our patriotic duty  
> to resume our roles as cheerful spectators and consumers.
>
> And so the commercials returned, along with “Fear Factor,”  
> “Survivor,” Pamela Anderson, and an endless succession of celebrity  
> scandals and child abductions.
>
> We had been given our required post-traumatic nationalist fairly  
> tale about America the Good and its Endless Battle With Evil. It  
> was time to return to commercialized normalcy with a proper  
> suspicion of dangerous domestic dissenters, while the Masters of  
> National Defense and Forward Global Force Projection greased the  
> wheels of the rolling imperial slaughterhouse [and] prepared to  
> show the world who really knew how to pile up civilian death tolls.
>
> The message was clear: “Go back to sleep little children. The  
> nation’s newly legitimized rulers know what to do to protect you  
> and the freedoms you enjoy" here in what U.S. Senator (R-Texas)Kay  
> Bailey Hutchinson actually called --- in a speech supporting the  
> granting of unlimited war powers to George W. Bush --- "America,  
> the Beacon to the World of How Life Should Be.”
>
> Five years out, many of us know what our rulers did with  9/11,  
> their surreptitiously cherished “new Pearl Harbor,” while we slept  
> and cowered. With their greedy eyes fixed from the beginning on how  
> to use the great national tragedy as an opportunity to deepen U.S.  
> control of the oil-rich Middle East. As New York Times columnist  
> Frank Rich (no radical) noted last Sunday:
>
> “Bush’s war cabinet was already [in the first days after 9/11]  
> busily hyping nonexistent links between Iraq and the Qaeda  
> attacks.  The presidential press secretary, Ari Fleischer,  
> condemned Bill Maher’s irreverent comic response to 9/11 by  
> reminding ‘all Americans to watch what they say, watch what they  
> do.’ Fear . . . was already being wielded against Americans by  
> their own government. Less than a month after 9/11, the president  
> was making good on his promise of ‘no sacrifice whatsoever.’  
> Speaking in Washington about how it was ‘the time to be wise’ and  
> ‘the time to act,’ he declared ‘We need there to be more tax cuts.'
>
> Before long the G.O.P. would be selling 9/11 photos of the  
> president on Air force one to campaign donors, and the White House  
> would be featuring flag-draped remains of the 9/11 dead in campaign  
> ads. And so, here we are five years later.  Fear-mongering remains  
> unceasing.  So do tax cuts [for the wealthy, P.S]. So does the war  
> against a country that did not attack us on 9/11.  We have moved  
> on, but no one can argue we have moved ahead" (Frank Rich,  
> "Whatever Happened to the America of 9/12?," New York Times, 10  
> September, 2006, section 4, p. 12)
>
> As Rich might have added, the U.S. death toll in the criminal  
> occupation of Iraq (2,645 as of September 2, 2006) is approaching  
> the 9/ll death toll (2,973). The number of Iraqis killed by the  
> illegal and immoral occupation of their country likely runs into  
> the hundreds of thousands.
>
> That terrible Iraqi price has joined with the continuing oppression  
> of the Palestinians and the recent U.S.-sponsored assault on  
> Lebanese civilians to stoke the fires of Arab, Persian, Pashtun,  
> and Muslim rage like never before even as the Bush administration’s  
> plutocratic tax cuts have disabled serious efforts to prevent and  
> prepare for the seemingly inevitable next 9/11.
>
> Those tax cuts and the administration’s extravagant imperial  
> obsessions and related hostility to socially positive and  
> democratic government functions were key factors in the Katrina  
> travesty. They have drastically escalated domestic disparity,  
> transferring the lost Clinton era budget surplus to the wealthy few  
> and pushing the number of deeply poor children and families to  
> Reagan era heights.
>
> The United States’ stature in the world has fallen to an all-time  
> low and the traditional distinction that the world outside has  
> tended to make between the U.S. government (generally viewed with  
> disdain) and the U.S. populace (generally admired) is fading like  
> never before.
>
> There are encouraging political signs at home.  The messianic  
> militarist war party in power faces increasing majority disapproval  
> on the eve of important but dangerously gerrymandered mid-term  
> elections --- this despite the abject near irrelevance of the  
> alleged opposition party the Demcorats. The majority of the  
> population now rejects the White House’s “stay the course” Iraq  
> policy and repudiates the administration’s revolting insistence on  
> linking the terrorist occupation of Mesopotamia with 9/11 and the  
> “war on terrorism.”
>
> An antiwar electoral rebellion in Connecticut has put foward a  
> Democratic candidate for the U.S Senate who feels compelled to make  
> the connections between the cost of the war on Iraq and the under- 
> funding of schools and social programs in the U.S.
>
> The dangerously overworked American citizenry is starting to wake  
> up from dangerous, Orwellian fairly tales and increasingly ready,  
> perhaps, to shed Huxlean and other childish amusements. Maybe it is  
> ready to win back some respect from the rest of the human species  
> by carving out time and space to put some risk back in the American  
> democratic tradition. Something tells me that it is a matter of  
> life and death for the species and for the democratic ideal that it  
> discovers the will and capacity to act in such a fashion.
>
> It is one thing to privately express your disapproval with current  
> policies and the regime in power to like-minded grumblers at a  
> dinner party or over phone to an opinion pollster. It is another,  
> more courageous and significant thing altogether to act publicly  
> and collectively to punish the homegrown right-authoritarian  
> bastards who exploited the national tragedy of 9/11 and to work to  
> build the sort of democratic and participatory society and polity  
> where such vile actors could never return to such terrible power  
> and influence.
>
>
>
> Paul Street (paulstreet99 at yahoo.com) is an independent social  
> policy researcher and writer in Iowa City, IA. His
>
> publications include Empire and Inequality: America and the World  
> Since 9/11 (www.paradigmpublishers.com, 2004) and Segregated  
> Schools: Educational Apartheid in the Post-Civil Rights Era (New  
> York, NY: Routledge, 2005)
>
>
>
>

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