����������������
An important question remains for Americans to ponder: Why have most people submitted so willingly to a new political order organized around fear? Other nations have confronted terrorism of a more sustained nature without coming thoroughly unhinged. I remember living in London briefly in the 1970s, when IRA bombings were a frequent occurrence. Daily life continued with stiff-upper-lip reserve (police searched ladies' handbags at restaurants, but did not pat down the gentlemen). We can only speculate on answers. Was it the uniquely horrific quality of the 9/11 attacks? Or the fact that, unlike Europe, the continental United States has never been bombed? For modern Americans, war's destruction is a foreign experience, though the United States has participated in many conflicts on foreign soil. Despite the patriotic breast-beating, are we closet wimps? America's exaggerated expressions of fear may look to others like a surprising revelation of weakness.
We can speculate. We can speculate that the media which played such a large role in the public's passive acceptance of the bizarre circumstances of Bush's election also contributed greatly to "Why...most people submitted so willingly to a new political order organized around fear". We can speculate that the media, as it was instructed to do, scared the shit out of most Americans after 9/11 and has kept them scared shitless ever since. As it was instructed to do.
Of course it's only speculation.
There's something seriously disheartening in someone of Greider's stature and accomplishments adopting that bogus philosophical stance - the posture of the television itself as it brainwashes and hypnotizes - of the American people's having any autonomy left to exercise, that Americans still think for themselves.
They do - they're told what to think about, and who - but they do think those thoughts they're told to think all on their own.
American attitudes are shaped entirely by the media; intentionally for the most part, but as with any half-drugged subject there's a risk of things getting out of hand. The illusion everyone's afraid to shatter is that the media is some kind of non-entity, just a willing little news machine telling us about the world, instead of a deceitful, treacherous, inhuman thief - the wolf in our grandmother's dress, smiling from the bed.
Is there an unbiased, even a relatively unbiased, journalistic media anywhere in the US? Where? Certainly not on television. Magazines? Not any with a large enough circulation to be called popular. Newspapers? Are there unbiased newspapers? In what town or city?
So we can speculate.
Something's coming soon. The control freaks, the arrogant bloodless men who ran the world into a ditch will now use the tragic results of their incompetence to justify further massive change, more control, and harsher measures to cope with an increasingly harsh landscape; making those familiar tough, masculine, responsible choices, reluctantly sacrificing and trimming, assigning value to human lives as they've always done.
We can speculate on that too, though it's not as poetic and soothing as meditating on the American character.
-
A new cast of leaders. Like Seinfeld. Only bigger.
