The lackadaisical John McCain. He claims we don’t really care how long we are in Iraq?
He is addressing the mindset psychology of the Casual Americans
I live in Arizona, and am glad to say I have never voted for either AZ Senator, but apparently many have. They get reelected, as many do in this nation, by the revolving doors of name recognition and voter non recognition of all the issues their vote will effect. I do not know one thing McCain did for me or my fellow Arizonans. I do know Senator Kyl constantly produces convoluted rationalizations to support the president and the neocon agenda of rights subjugation, also being a constant ideological apologist for failing conservative concepts, while blaming liberals for all of our ills.
During the economic booms of the last 20 or more years, much of Arizona has been dominated by the pro growth crowd. These tend to be pro business, not pro worker, or environment, or social responsibility to the disadvantaged etc, they ride high on their faux horses, riding up on the retirement and relocation flow into the Desert Southwest, which produces the look of expanding advancements.
Many low paying jobs in construction and many in service sectors are created here in a “right to work” state, which means a right for you to the lowest pay possible for your work. Under-regulated growth does provide a surge in jobs of a sorts, but the consequence of low wages and environmental degradations are passed onto the future, as are the common of the values of conservative delusions of superiority–they do not need to acknowledge the long term consequences of their actions or policies, or even the existence of a commons or fundamental cohesive societal contract.
RIGHT. THEY ARE THE ONES WE ALLEGEDLY TURN TO IN FEAR
Though Iraq had not an al-queada to be seen before the invasion, that invasion under false pretext has turned Iraq into a recruitment mecca for terror. It is said terrorist go there to train for “work” elsewhere. Yet stolen democracy here at home aside, our alleged spread of democracy to other places, was not the go along induced coma mantra the public was put into in 2003 to 2001. We were told we were going to be attacked so attack them first, remember?
The umbilical cords of power fed just the necessary amount of mis and disassociation’s to confuse the public as to this administrations actual hubris driven fantasy goals, and war profiteering interest. If anything; the level of naivete in the general populations was astounding; A VAST MAJORITY SUPPORTED WHAT THEY NOW ALLEGEDLY OPPOSE. The bill for the future for this public laziness of mind?
Many trillions of dollars and unknown blowback from those who perceive themselves to be harmed by the US actions in their area and to their kind. All to be payed for by this very same public! The price will include the tax of ever rising prices, of ignored energy and social needs. It will be the bill that just keeps on delivering. Around the world, the reaction to US power, exercised to the benefits of corporate profits and global hegemony, will create more and more adversaries which will then feed into the same dysfunctional cycle of reaction used by reactionary interest to validate those same reactionary interest. Truly a cancer of the human psyche.
Yet these very right wing apologist and corporate sycophants will rail against big government and tax increases. They will make the average individual think that waste and misbegotten government spending is the fundamental cause of what eats away at their paycheck. Exactly the phenomenon the powerful create with disintegrating infrastructures, eroding rights, global meltdown, genetically cross contaminated food genes getting lose, and the profit syphoning of wages earned by most regular Americans. In the make believe world of right wing ideologues, government waste, and profits go to my friends.
MANIPULATING AN IMPLIED LACK OF PATRIOTISM FROM QUESTIONING LEADERSHIP
We should be thankful for the troops who do their job, but not the falseness in the delusional minds who sent them there. Yet these entrenched oligarchy power groups attempt to have us assume we, or our neighbors, do not support the troops, for proclaiming support the troops assumes the troops are not supported. What was actually not supported in proclamations from the right, was how the troops are used as a political foil to stand in front of and hide a degenerating empires attempts to acquire diminishing world resources, to line the pockets of the big haves with ever increasing wealth and reward their loyal followers. The rest of us are left to our own devises, just as New Orleans was left to drown.
It is an amazing exercise in dumb-think to listen to the George Will’s of this world, and the Grover Norquist–the drown government in the bathtub guy. These individuals and their ideological deluded kin make a killing off of spreading the seeds of separation and contempt for the commons. As if governments only role is to kill the people they do not like, otherwise, stay out of the way of social and environmental plunder, and show no empathy or compassion to your fellow humans who do not adjust well to an exploitative and opportunistic predatory system. (their actual “spiritual” Darwinian false premise) These not only promote a form of totalitarian mind control by the few and for the many, they betray the very essence of the American Commons; the communal declaration of independence and mutual regard as human beings in collective relationships.
In the last several days I have had the opportunity to hear both of these people speak on interview shows. Norquist, prodded by Stephen Colbert, would never acknowledge that government should even fix roads. Who do these ideologues think is going to do all the work necessary to make this nation work, and work in some sense of fairness? The Halliburton’s? Exon-Mobile, since they still use tanker trucks? Whomever funds your personal think tank? Simply stunning in mind-blank and misanthropic contempt.
THE PUBLIC RESPONSIBILITY IN A DEMOCRACY
There were and are some Americans though, who could see through the smoke screens and deceptions from day one. Speaking for myself; I know what propaganda looks and feels like, and I know false arguments when I see them. Apparently, by the evidence, many of our fellow voters can not tell the difference, or take their citizenship responsibilities as some sort of very casual acquaintance, or ideological/party dumb-think.
The delusional mindsets of the right are hard at work again attempting to anesthetize the population by election time. If history is the example, they have to get within a few million votes to pull off a many fronted steal. If that proves to be an unlikely scenario, by summers end possibly, they will need to create the might is right jingoism parade to convince the casual Americans that it is patriotic to support false pretext, false assumption, false dichotomy, and otherwise false association impressions as to what we stand for here.
It now seems the conservatives are ready to stoke the mud slinging forked tongue express. McCain has sent an apparent signal for a go ahead with the Words of Mass Deception campaign to come, by expressing his lack of control for the things that may be said about his opponent. The casual Americans will meet over phone’s or talk after the smear add on TV and say; I didn’t know he was like that, how scary. But they will not mean the producers of the add and who it will serve, but the desired target of it.
As we have seen, and hopefully presumably know; say a lie often enough and it will stand side by side with the truth, and quite possibly, cover that truth with a coat of slime, so that we know longer know what it looks like. No. I do not mind being blunt in this piece. A country is at stake as is all of our futures. The time of talking to one another as if we were babies is over. A population that goes on to believe in misinformation long after the actual truth has come out has been induced into some kind of delusional mindset.
There is a whole cable news network dedicated to irrational ad-hominem reasoning masquerading as common sense and decent American values. It is part of a huge media conglomerate owned by and dispersing the ideological prejudice of its non US owner, who despises liberalism. Many other cable news networks went on to try to out mimic this one when irrationality was on such an ascendant just six years ago. In this pathetic follow the money leader breed of “journalism”, the nation is now subjected to ideological biases that come to be seen as truthful reporting of the issues. Almost always, cherry picked issues and ways of perceiving them. Stealthy biases such as loading commentators to the right of the spectrum, tends to gradually drag perceptions that way. This is why media consolidation is so essential to corporate control of information and ideas, necessary to wash the inconvenient facts and context away.
GET IN LINE AND CONFORM OR BE SEEN AS AN OTHER
We are to march like robots just as in 2003, not as a free people, but as an old world warlord bunch of followers afraid to think for themselves or stand up for the nations principles, instead, be more like a mind controlled cult. What have we actually learned of these war loving misanthropes? Once we are perceived to be under fears spell, we stop asking questions as to reality checks and viable strategy, as well as why we need then send our sons and daughters into harms way for our alleged defense. We are then the pawns of manipulators and predators of the nations very soul. All while the media makes catchy phrases to glorify the dumb-think parade and its floats and clowns.
We may have awaken a little from the nightmare mentality the spell casters had us in. Years of obvious misrepresentations and contemptuous incompetence has taken an obvious toll on the previous delusions of grandeur. Now, since that road to deception has proved to have become slightly problematic, the might makes right money making machinery of conflict seeks a more acceptable, to the casual Americans, way of war. A button pushing way to send terrible weapons to rain down upon both the suspecting and average people, including children and the unborn, of some other country. Unless America has woken up for good, the bad will come back to haunt our hearts once again. After we see the merrily wave flags and hear the issue statements of fighting the likes of the Nazis, we may well then go on to act quite like them.
THE PUBLIC TOO BUSY TO DO DEMOCRACY? THEN WE WILL LOSE IT
It is in this context of the casual Americans, too busy to bother with details of their governments doings in the world, or too confused or removed from history to remember what Dwight D Eisenhower once warned them of so many decades ago; about the collusion of the business and military industries and their congressional cronies, who see a war machinery as good for profit margins and great lifestyles. Now it seems the fourth estate, once the public interest guardian, is now most interested in what sells add space, and not the unbridled truth and its inevitable consequence.
We the People usually do not accept any accusations that we are asleep at the wheel. In fact, some manipulative interest use apparent criticism of the public as a wedge to bias the public to its pandering viewpoints. Notice how quickly Obama’s reflection on why some Americans seem stuck in certain ways to certain patterns. He actually said they cling to what they feel is steadfast in a way. Religion and keeping ones own defenses up. I do not disagree with that entirely at all, many of us value what we know as a sense of security in this many faced world where so few trustworthy institutions seem reliable.
Many Americans have every right to feel bitter, when they can see how Washington and the stolen government cares for itself above them. But these not quite well said words of Barack Obama were spun in circles like a spiders web to catch their prey. Not Obama exactly, but who might feel he is a new answer, attacking him through them. This is diverting attention to score a point, much more than the put down by Obama it was built up to be.
HURRY! ALL ABOARD!
The way Cognitive dissonance tends to direct accusations somewhere else. A convenient target is the one delivering the criticism. This kind of personal cowardice (a stress induced procrastination in self development, adjusted to in projection as seeming to be coming in from someone else) is a hallmark of many a dysfunctional human being. Now we are seeing this strange zeitgeist Teflon coating on John McCain, as if since he once served as one of the troops, he gets a permanent pass or bypass on criticism, especially on defense matters.
That most of his positions have gone around and around in circles, while he is seemingly not too concerned how correct he is about Sunni, Shia and al-queada profound differences and even hatreds of one another is mind boggling in its morass of contradictions. It is as if one more calm speaking (in front of the cameras!) conservative will melt down the casual Americans shield of suspicion, to once again accept the mind unplugging certitudes of conservative abstractions unconnected to actual realities on the ground. We are fine with staying in Iraq as long as we are not being killed? What? As permanent occupiers? Or as the symbol we were in Saudi Arabia which helped generate most of the 9-11 hijackers? That kind of fine and not being killed? No he suggest. Like Japan, Korea and Germany, entirely different issues in comparison to the Arab World I must say.
Remember Rove’s alleged comment; and I paraphrase; ‘You guys (reporters) are stuck in the reality world, the clumsy world of facts. We are the actors of history, its creators, we do things. You all just follow in our wake.’ Now John McCain seems headed toward the favorable 2 to 1 bias in his favor that Bush enjoyed over Al Gore pre-election. The “press” has long liked his congenial style and his once maverick notions of independence from the conservative dumb-think express.
Now, though he is seated on board that very express, his ex POW status is to make him invincible of the very security issues that are undermining the interest, the greater interest of the founding principles of this nation he once served in combat. Proving age, as well as experience, does not guarantee wisdom or truthfulness. McCain has been shown to have held the opposite position of many of the positions he now allegedly embraces. His spinning personality and its “free ride” is to benefit whom exactly? We the People?
THE GREAT BUTTER UP–Works Most Every Time
Years after a war is proved to be both ill conceived and misrepresented to the extreme, after untold thousands of lives were lost and uncountable ill will produced for generations to come. Oh, how we like those politicians and press who tell us how hard working, tough, decent and noble a public we are, as they laugh behind our backs, or at times, right out in public before their elite base goes on to consume the commons out from under your feet.
The easily frightened but casual Americans so prevalent throughout the population, will snicker about intellectual elites, latte drinking aloof liberals, you know who we mean, snicker, head shake. They know who stands for right. The aiders and abettors of the salve of ignorance and contempt applied by conservative sycophants to power in the press and media, will seek to emotionally bias the casual, hard working or not white voters, and those who embrace the interest of the casual elite, but hard working or not white voters lifestyle.
For once anyone is so far out on the plank of illusion, to call one deluded is taken in as calling one a name, which they will certainly take umbrage at. This seems to be the operational attack mode conservatives conjure up in election cycles. The media eats it up as all fair to the battle, the battle to bury truth in context for excitement value. The battle to get more market share and sell advertising space to the highest bidder.
RECOGNIZING THE CASUAL AMERICANS
There are definite traits to the Casual American. They see the nation as one divided into both parts and separate identities. They vote and listen for self promoting notions. They vote on these self absorbed at the surface issues. They vote for wealth maintenance, or poverty help. They vote for their gender, or their race.
They vote for their particular religious identity, or their job interest. They do not see the whole of things. They suffer under their own separation and alienation complexes viewpoints.
They do not vote by actual policy necessarily, but what looks like their kind of person who represents their kind of interest. They are lead to believe this is what responsible citizenry is about; about forwarding your own subjective view, and not the big view. They are seduced by pandering mechanisms to believe their view will dominate and become permanent. They are then seduced into separation in a more permanent way. They also can not see out of the box to notice what tactic’s and strategies are being used against them, or why the more things are said to change or be for the better, the less good that seems to actually spread throughout the nation.
In any country, these small viewed folks are seen by others, even those who might be just like them in their own ways, as self centered and spoiled. How and what spoils them might in the particular, have the appearance of opposites, but in reality their ideological views feel may well produce the same contemptuous feelings about the others in the culture not quite like them. This is the small lizard brain view of conservatism and orthodoxy, with its intrinsic shoot oneself in the foot behaviors, while feeling proud and true.
If we vote on this surface view of things like the Casual Americans, we are one. If we feel offended by someones behavior, even tough they share our beliefs, and go on to support its near opposite, in effect by tantrum outside the political realities to prove a point, we are voting self absorbed and not in the interest of the big picture. Now the pandemic individualism of the Westernized World “gives” us every right to do what we want, how we want, within the law (for some). That separation psychology does not in itself create the right behavior, but may well create the opposite of our actual belief’s even though we think we are acting in our own interest. That some manipulators have come to rely on this sort of contrapuntal confusion, is a testament to how much psychological warfare is going on at election times, and how little of the public knows how to perceive their own actual interest, nor how to factually identify the facts in context from fantasy.
The Casual Americans are expediting, not just a global meltdown, but one of Democracy as well.
Bateman: Hillary concedes nothing