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The news coverage was quite different. Back then, the slaughter in Vietnam was treated with the gravity that it deserved. Today it's treated as entertainment, and it is brought to you by war profiteering corporate news monopolies who have melded news and entertainment together, and who present news--particularly the horror of war--as little more than a video game. I first noticed this change in Gulf War I. I hadn't seen TV in a while (by choice), went to a big SF antiwar march (at least 30,000 were there), and then went to a friend's home that night, and watched the TV news. I was quite startled by it. They had a big glitzy logo especially for "the war." I think it said "The War in the Persian Gulf," or "The War in Iraq"--can't recall exactly--but it was like a theater marquee. Then these bobble-headed, heavily made up Barby and Ken dolls smiled and nodded their way through the war news, obviously thrilled to part of it all. The rather big march in SF got hardly a sound bite. And I don't know what's more disheartening--the theatrical presentation of war for fun and entertainment--or seeing what war is really like, as we did back in the 1960s. But I would say that the theatrics made me sick, while the war images in the '60s turned me into an activist.
This is a very, very important subject that you have brought up, McCamy Taylor. How we live our country through TV. We thought our country was "sick" back in the '60s (some 2 million people slaughtered in Southeast Asia before it was over, and for what? FOR WHAT?). But our country today is sick unto death. And I don't mean the obvious thing by that--sick unto death because our people can't feel and empathize. I think our people are fine, on the whole. Look at the PEOPLES' response to Katrina! Everybody immediately got organized to help, and showed great ingenuity and passion in doing so. I think the American peoples' ability to feel and empathize, and their desire for peace and justice, and belief in progress, are in tact. This is also confirmed overwhelmingly by opinion polls over the last two years. The American people have been astonishingly resistant to Bush junta propaganda--especially given how pervasive it is, 24/7, throughout the corporate media.
But they are "sick unto death" from a fascist coup that means them harm, and has already done them enormous harm, and here is where the corporate media HAS been effective: People are unaware of the CONSTANT MESSAGE fed into their heads that they are powerless to do anything to stop this junta. The message is direct in some ways--for instance, the news monopolies DOCTORED their exit polls, on election night 2004, to HIDE the information that Kerry had won the exit polls. They thus directly COLLUDED in re-installing Bush and in denying the American people strong evidence of election fraud. They had also black-holed the story of how this election system was set up, and what a fraud it was going in. The message: No matter how hard you work to oust a bad government, no matter how many friends, family members and co-workers you get to vote THIS time--because "this is the most important election in our history"--you can't win. You can't change things. You are powerless. The people don't matter. Or--another message--OTHER Americans must have gone nuts. OTHER Americans must have bought into this insane government in big numbers.
They are REALLY messing with our heads, in ways that many of us don't realize. And the images of death, dismemberment, torture, innocents slaughtered that are permitted into this newsstream may be INTENDED to make you weep and feel sick, but most of all, to feel POWERLESS to do anything about it. They are followed right up by the perky part of the news, or by some foaming at the mouth rightwing "discussion," or--at best--by analysis that never asks the basic questions that are on YOUR mind. They ACCEPT Bushite terms of war in the presentation. The impact is to trivialize your reactions to the images, and to trivialize war. It has no substance, no gravity. And it very often has no reality. You feel like you're in Alice in Wonderland.
You're NOT, though. It's all illusion and delusion. That "nation" they present, called the U.S., and that "president" they present are all fakery and illusion. YOU don't live there. You live in the REAL world. But you (and I'm speaking of all viewers here) are ATTACHED to that illusion of a nation, and delusion of order (that we have a president--I mean, come on--we have a PUPPET), in ways that you (we--all of us, collectively) have not made conscious. We may be attached NEGATIVELY--we hate what we're seeing/hearing--but we're nevertheless attached, and deeply so. And we are thus put through a wringer of helplessness and powerlessness. And it drains us.
When we say that "We are killing people in Iraq," this "we" has no meaning, these days. Back in the '60s, it did still have meaning. And for evidence, I would put forward what happened after massive antiwar protests began. We brought down a president! Johnson WITHDREW from the 1968 presidential election race BECAUSE of us. His Vietnam policy was a disaster. And he knew it. The people rejected it. And so he COULD NOT run for a 2nd term. THAT was real. THAT was a "nation." THAT was a president--a person in power who was accountable to the people.
Look at today. Nealy 60% of the American people opposed this "war of choice" by Bush way back before the invasion (in Feb. '03). And opposition has hardly dipped (only in the brief period of the invasion, with US troops at max risk). It's over 70% today--with EIGHTY-FOUR PERCENT opposed to any U.S. participation in a widened Mideast war. The Bush junta couldn't care less. They are operating outside any venue of accountability. And when the TV news and other news monopolies present the situation as if he WERE accountable, and subject to criticism (in their faked up debates), they are NOT TELLING US THE TRUTH. The "nation" is busted. The link between people and leaders is broken. We have no nation! We--you and me--have no president.
Realizing this is a GREAT HELP in overcoming the crippling kind of sorrow at what you think "we" are doing. If what you were looking at was just a dead baby from some other cause--say, an earthquake, or genocide in Rwanda--you would feel bad and sorrowful, but you would get over it. What is so hard to take is that it is OUR war machine that is inflicting this suffering--directly (or Israel by proxy). It's not "ours," though. We have NO INFLUENCE over what it does. None! Our democracy has been hijacked and what you see on TV is fake democracy.
This frees you to think strategically--and not to get lost in sorrow and helplessness. How to get our power back? How to get our RIGHTFUL power back to HAVE A SAY in what our government does? This is what we should be thinking of.
If your child were in mortal danger, all the way on the other side of town, and you had no car to get there, what would you be doing? You would be actively begging, borrowing or stealing a vehicle to get there. Your emotions would be secondary. Your emotions can't do that child any good, except to spur you to effective and specific, pointed, purposeful action, first to get there, and then to remove the danger.
It is all the children who are still in mortal danger from these war criminals who should be our concern, not the ones who are dead. We can mourn the murdered ones later, when we have restored our right to vote.
The feelings that you express in this OP are extremely powerful, and also a triumph! We can still feel--even when we go numb we continue to feel. We are aware of being numb, and then THAT bothers us. These feelings are more precious than gold. I am not saying, don't feel! God no! What I am saying is that part of the feeling is HELPLESSNESS, deliberately inflicted on our psyches by war profiteers and powermongers. If you were a nurse out on the battlefield, you would put sorrow off for later in your intense activity to protect and save the dying. And the way you can help the slaughtered innocents to come is to strategize and take action on effective ways to remove these criminals from power.
Don't let the sorrow cripple you. Use that energy to help save the future.
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