X-From_: a.finlayson at swansea.ac.uk Fri Mar 1 11:46:53 2002 From: "Finlayson A." <A.Finlayson at swansea.ac.uk> To: "'owner-lbo-talk-digest at lists.panix.com '" <owner-lbo-talk-digest at lists.panix.com> Subject: Re: Zizek Date: Fri, 1 Mar 2002 16:48:50 -0000 MIME-Version: 1.0
OK, so:
Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> wrote:
>So, reading Zizek basically leads you to the conclusion that it is
>not the American power elite but American commoners who love to
>"stomp all over the rest of the world"?
No, reading Zizek doesn't. Reading newspapers does. That and being half American.
>Why then do the American policy elite go to such great lengths to hide
>information from _even those Americans who make active efforts to seek >it,
using FOIA suits and the like_, even about US government actions >taken many
decades ago in the good old days of the Cold War and before >it?
Well, it isn't very well hidden is it seeing as how you know all about it. The US (presumably to many people's surprise) is very open about information. Much tougher legislation forcing disclosure than in European countries. And stacks of net activists publicising every little thing. And a tradition of expose journalism. We know all about the things the US government did in the Cold War, you make big movies about it and there are lots of books all about it. We go and ask you guys to tell us what it is that our government is hiding from us. The actions of the 'policy elite' need little explanation. The acceptance of the US public and their willingness to accept what they are told is what requires explanation AND action.
>Why do the owners of the media sanitize the coverage of war by excluding
>images
>and information of enemy casualties (especially civilian casualties),
>using such euphemisms as collateral damage, and so on? Why not show
>all the consequences of US state terrors, past and present, if
>Americans are truly prepared to accept them as necessary costs for
>their happiness?
Because US citizens don't want to hear about it (and others would like it too much - I think many US citizens would be even more gung-ho than the Bush administration, very happy to nuke). But I also think that the US media is concerned about losing customers if it tells them things they don't want to hear. Anecdotal but I saw a v. interesting dicussion on CNN (the CNN the rest of the world gets not the CNN broadcast to the US only) about the reporting of the 'war' in Afghanistan etc. in which the London corresopondent of the Washington Post said quite clearly that any story he wrote exploring the reasons behind the attack on New York, on what people in the rest of the world feel about the US, would be spiked by his editor because pepole do not want to hear about that right now. I believe this. In a few short months I have seen fairly intelligent and very decent people retreat into their shells, hide from the world and get ready to cheer on the killing. I understand their panic. But I think that many people know that time to wake up from the American Dream is long overdue but they are putting their fingers in their ears and hoping the bad stuff will go away just like it does in all the films, in the TV shows and if you eat enough sugared sweets.
>The truth is that the American policy elite do not trust the American
>masses to support them in all actions necessary for the maintenance
>of imperial power. American elite secrecy and hypocrisy is, in a
>sense, a tribute to the latent capacity for democracy and solidarity
>with others that ordinary Americans do possess.
Are you sure? Are you really, really sure? Do you really think that all those millions of people in the middle of the US (the real people, the ones who work for a living and don't live in fancy cities and hang out in fashionable cosmopolitan places and don't go to seminars) really want to go and find out about life for the average Iranian, really want to go and find out about the profound debt they owe to Arabic culture, would love to learn French and go to Senegal? Do you really think that as they pull the station wagon up to the gas pump they are thinking 'hey, I wish our consumption of petroleum wasn't effectively subsidised so that we can conusme more than the rest of the world put together and I wish I did accept along with everyone else in the world the need to control carbon emissions and yes i would much rather that my government signed up to internaional agreements on this and that my President would agree to work with other nations to reduce the arms trade rather than refuse just so that a few jobs in the US biochemical industry can be saved'. Is that REALLY what they are thinking? Are tou sure they aren't thinking 'nobody can tell me what to do, other countries should stop whining, we're american and we're great and we're god's people'.
Are you sure that your reliance on the innate common sense and solidaristic decency of the 'common' American isn't just a re-run of classic US fantasies, Thornton Wilder and Frank Capra and all those other reactionary and Christian homilies spun by politicians of all persuasions, all those preachy bits that wind up the talk shows? Are you sure that blaming it all on the elite on 'them' isn't just a version of the same fantasy that Rush Limbaugh and Noam Chomsky share, a fantasy that aids in the evasion of responsibility, in the admittance that all the people, every one is to BLAME?
The most powerful people in the world today are the average citizens of the United States. Their consumption, their desire to eat, drive, play the stock market and watch TV, drives the world economy. Their values permeate the popular culture of half the world and get recycled out of the mouths of little kids (like mine) who think that everbody uses dollars, goes to 'high' school and that alumninium is pronounced in a way that bears no relation to its spelling. Every day in the White House the daily polls are pored over to see what that average American is feeling. The economy depends on how they feel. The war depends on how they feel. Sure, their feelings are manipulated by politicians and entertainers just like a big fat dog rolls over when given a treat and tickled on the tummy. Is that an excuse?
I don't want to get ranty or anything. ANd its probabaly all down to what the New Criterion and the Wall Street Journal think is the jealousy of Europeans because they lost. Well, maybe. Maybe not though. It's just a thought.
Ranty English-American Snob