Idiocy as WMD

As published at OpEd News, CounterPunch, Dissident Voice, Information Clearing House, Signs of the Times, Noticias de Abajo, Rebelion, Zonnewind, Intrepid Report, Fourwinds10.com, Desacato and Continente, 5/13/12:

 

Borges writes, “Dictatorships foster oppression, dictatorships foster servitude, dictatorships foster cruelty; more abominable is the fact that they foster idiocy.” A top thinker, Borges rightly considers the mind to be a man’s greatest asset, for without it, he’s nothing. The more oppressive a political system, the greater its assault on its subjects’ minds. It’s not enough for any totalitarian system to oppress and exploit, it must make its people idiotic. Every wrongful bullet is preceded, accompanied then followed by idiotic lies, but we’re so used to such a moronic diet, our trepanned intelligentsia don’t even squirm in their tenured chairs.

 

Sane men and women don’t consent to kill, rob and rape, much less be killed, robbed and raped to enrich their masters. That’s why their minds must be molested as early and as much as possible. Hence our nonstop media brainwashing us from the cradle to the grave. Fixated by flickering boxes, even infants are now mind-conditioned to become scatterbrained idiots before they stagger into kindergarten, to begin their transformation into docile and slogan-shouting Democrats and Republicans.

 

Savages killed, but, like apes, they mostly tried to intimidate and trash talk their way out of conflicts. Take the Maoris: from all accounts, they were rather belligerent, but their killing really took off with the introduction of the musket. The greater a civilization, the greater its ability to accomplish great tasks, including massacre. A savage tribe could never imagine wiping out entire cities by defecating exploding metal from the sky, or sitting in a brightly lit and spic-and-span office stroking a joy stick to ejaculate missiles half a planet away. Drone hell fire for y’all, with sides of bank-sponsored debt slavery and austerity, plus an unlimited refill of American pop bullshit. Would you like a public suicide with that? No, sir, these savages need to take webcast courses from us sophisticates when it comes to genocide, ecocide or any other kind of cides. When it comes to pure, unadulterated savagery, these quaint brutes ain’t got shit on us plugged-in netizens chillaxin’ in that shiny upside down condo on da capital-punishment-for the-entire-world, y’all, hill.

 

You’d think a government with absolute power would not bother with extravagant parades and stadium rallies, as are routine in North Korea, but such is the importance of propaganda and mind-control. America has gone way beyond Kim Jong-Un and his Nuremberg-styled pageantry, however, because the Yankee Magical Show is relentlessly pumped into our minds via television and the internet, at home, in office or even as we’re walking down the street, so we’re always swarmed by sexy sale pitches, soft and hard porn, asinine righteousness and imbecilic trivia. All day long, we’re stuffed with unlimited kitsch. Today’s urgent topic, “Sylvester Stalone Spotted in 16th Century Painting.” Yesterday’s, “Tom Cruise’s Daughter Gets Inked.” Imagine a triple-amputee Iraq vet or unemployed mother, sitting in an about to be foreclosed home with unpaid bills scattered across her kitchen table, staring at such headlines. At 48, I’m old enough to remember when it wasn’t this overwhelmingly stupid, though the dumbing down of America will only accelerate as this cornered and bankrupt country becomes ever more vicious to its citizens and foreigners alike.

 

Not content to kill and loot, America must do it to pulsating music; cool, orgasmic dancing; raunchy reality shows and violence-filled Hollywood blockbusters. These are also meant for its victims. In a 1997 article published by the US Army War College, Ralph Peters gushes about a “personally intrusive” and “lethal” cultural assault as a key tactic in the American quest for global supremacy. As information master, the American Empire will destroy its “information victims.” What’s more, “our victims volunteer” because they’re unable to resist the seductiveness of American culture.

 

Defining democracy as “that deft liberal form of imperialism,” Peters reveals how the word is conceived and used by every American leader, whether talking about Libya, Syria, Iran or America itself. Recognizing that his country’s lumpens are also victims of empire, Peters frankly acknowledges that “laid-off blue-collar worker in America and the Taliban militiaman in Afghanistan are brothers in suffering.”

Much has been made of the internet as enabling democracy and protest, but whatever utility it may have for the disenfranchised and/or rebellious, it’s most useful to our rulers. As Dmitry Orlov points out in a recent blog, the internet is a powerful surveillance tool for the state and, what’s more, it also keeps the masses distracted and pacified. Echoing Queen Victoria’s remark, “Give my people plenty of beer, good and cheap beer, and you will have no revolution among them,” Orlov observes that virtual sex thwarts rebellion. While the internet may allow John Michael Greer, Paul Craig Roberts or Orlov to publish their unflinching commentaries, it also drowns them out with an unprecedented flood of bullshit. Defending the empire, Ralph Peters cheerfully agrees, “The internet is to the techno-capable disaffected what the United Nations is to marginal states: it offers the illusion of empowerment and community.”

 

Though our only hope is to be ejected from this sick matrix, most can’t help but cling fiercely to this simulacrum of knowledge, love, sex and community as we blunder forward. A breathing and tactile life will become even more alien. Bands of unplugged weirdos will be hunted down and exterminated, with their demise shown on TV as warning and entertainment. Though sharing the same waste land, each man can lounge in his personal electronic ghetto. Until the juice runs out.

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