Tag: propaganda

What the US is still good at

The great George Carlin once said:

“Can’t build a decent car, can’t make a TV set of VCR worth a fuck. Got not steel industry left. Can’t educate our young people. Can’t get health care to our old people. But we can bomb the shit out of your country all right.”

Mr. Conductor is right, as usual, but he is missing one other thing we excel at, making propaganda. I would love to see a course on finding the bullshit in the media. It’s not easy, our propaganda masters are subtle these days.

Take for example, this AP article about the recent shooting of 16 civilians in Afghanistan by a US soldier.

The article details the troubles of one particular Army base, Lewis-McChord. It tells us that this base has produced more soldiers who commit suicide and more problem soldiers than any other base.

In order to control people in a democracy you can’t use force, you have to change their minds. In this masterful stroke, the AP does the job. Leading us to believe that the problems in Afghanistan are because of a few “bad apples.”

It totally ignores the well known fact that to subjugate a people, you must humiliate and intimidate them. While this soldier did not receive those orders, he only made the logical conclusion of what he must do to fulfill his mission.

The article fails to point out that when we decided to invade Afghanistan that we decided these things will happen. Because they always happen in war. That we knew right from the start that we would be having our young people slaughter innocents. Even if the act is unintentional, we are guilty because they are the inevitable consequences of are actions.

Do more good than harm

It’s really surprising me the amount of vehemence going into attacking the Kony 2012 movement. Some real hardcore propaganda is going to town on this.

One of the folks I follow recently shared this article, calling the Kony 2012 campaign a “phony youth movement.” Yet when you read the piece it gives no evidence for their statements.

“While KONY 2012 attempts to portray itself as an indigenous activist movement bent on bringing justice to African children, its parent organization is affiliated with the upper echelon of the US corporate media and a network of foundation-funded pro-war civil society groups with a long history of fomenting pro-US regime change under the banner of democratic institution building.”

The link they provide leads to a NYT article about the US sending advisers to Uganda to help combat the LRA. Note, they provide no sources or evidence for the supposed affiliation with the corporate media. Making statements like that is some bullshit journalism.

Once again. I do not support a military solution for this problem. I DO support using this great opportunity to start a real dialogue about the problems in Africa and what we are responsible for. I think my fellow tumblr friends would be doing a better service doing that than just attacking a social movement.

The bewildered herd is a problem. We’ve got to prevent their roar and trampling. We’ve got to distract them. They should be watching the Superbowl or sitcoms or violent movies. Every once in a while you call on them to chant meaningless slogans like “Support our troops.” You’ve got to keep them pretty scared, because unless they’re properly scared and frightened of all kinds of devils that are going to destroy them from outside or inside or somewhere, they may start to think, which is very dangerous, because they’re not competent to think. Therefore it’s important to distract them and marginalize them.

Noam Chomsky – Propaganda and the Public Mind (via noam-chomsky)