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.