Category Archives: Perversion and Propaganda

Consumerism and Militarism

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The following was written by Paul Nyklicek, a Catholic, husband, father, psychotherapist and frequent visitor to CAM. We thank him for this contribution to our blog.

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Consumerism has become our national religion. Ours is a capitalist nation that happens to have some Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and other actually religious people living within its borders. As a nation, however, we are fundamentally materialistic. Increasingly, our lives consist of the pursuit of more and more “stuff” to create the illusion that we are happy. Part of this “pursuit of happiness” is the belief that there is only so much “stuff” to go around. We have to compete for the “stuff” we are conditioned to want because we believe we can’t be happy unless we get it. Competition means fighting for what we want. Militarism is the logical extension of this concept.

Militarism has become a “normal” part of our lives. In our culture today it is not only normal but revered. Calls to “support the troops” are commonplace. Militarism is also increasingly a part of our civilian police force as they accept and utilize military equipment. There are also indications that civilian police are adopting a militaristic philosophy as well.

We must not confuse “supporting the troops” with supporting the military-industrial complex. We must resist marketing efforts to blur the line between these very different ideas. Militarism has been defined as “the belief or desire that a country should maintain a strong military and be prepared to use it aggressively to defend or promote national interests” as well as “the tendency to subordinate all other interests to those of the military”. The troops are the means to that end. Popular support is also essential because without it the mechanism does not work smoothly.

Every public event that gives recognition and respect to military personnel becomes, by design, a reinforcement of and support for national militarism policies and actions. To disagree with or outright reject those policies and actions has become a kind of social blasphemy. Those who voice their dissent are running the risk of public ridicule and scorn. According to this artificial link, if one disagrees with government philosophy and policy then one is disrespecting the men and women who are risking their lives “for us” and “our freedom”. Such disrespect is seen as unpatriotic and loathsome.

This illustrates the need for the manufactured bond between the respect given to (and expected for) the men and women who serve in the military and the government that puts them in harm’s way in order to protect “national interests”. The specific nature of such “interests” are rarely, if ever, defined. Are “national interests” a matter of democratic principles that support the Constitutional Republic we are supposed to be? Or could it be that “national interests” are synonymous with the financial interests of powerful transnational corporations? Do our men and women in uniform fight for the Red, White, and Blue or are they killing and dying for Monsanto, IBM, Raytheon, Halliburton, Rand, and General Electric? If the chief beneficiaries of militarism are corporations, how do you sell that to the public? How do you convince young people to voluntarily risk their lives and kill strangers for the financial gain of a handful of CEO’s?

Again, it is important to make the distinction between military personnel and militarism. The people who serve in the military are human beings who deserve love and compassion. Militarism is a sociopathic system that has exactly the opposite agenda. Militarism is a sociopathic system in that it functions from the belief that it is acceptable and proper to impose destructive and lethal power on any opponent without regard for the value and integrity of that opponent. That is to say that the opponent is sufficiently dehumanized and therefore unworthy of continued existence. The destruction of an opponent is the means to the desired end. It is sociopathic in its assumption that the end justifies the means. This is “right” according to sociopathic logic. Winning is everything. It’s all that matters.

It is also important to recognize that militarism is an organizing system. An organizing system absorbs and orients its members into group-action and group-think. The latter term actually means that individual members disengage from their own individual critical thinking in favor of the established culture and tradition: “That’s the way we do things around here.”

The welding together of patriotic respect for military personnel with the support for a corporatist agenda (a.k.a. the military-industrial complex) is no coincidence. It is a carefully manipulated and manufactured consent. The point is to establish maximum control and make a lot of money.

Consider the following questions: If all financial profit were removed from the military-industrial complex how would foreign policy change? If armed conflict within and between nations were to occur on a strictly non-profit basis how would national and international problem-solving be different?

Most wars are waged under the illusion of ethical principles like self-defense or protecting someone who is incapable of self-defense. This is how militarism is promoted. It is thus packaged and sold for public consumption. This completes the necessary illusion for the consent of the governed. What is not presented for public consumption is the truth about how much money certain corporations make from the “business” of war. One of the most decorated men ever to serve in the United States military, General Smedley Butler, stated nearly a century ago: “War is a racket”. General Butler elaborates: “I spent 33 years in the Marines, most of my time being a high-class muscle man for big business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for Capitalism.”

What would happen if the truth of corporate profits from this “racket” were prominently displayed? Would anything change if it were common knowledge that all the fighting serves to make a few very wealthy people even wealthier?

We have a responsibility to love and respect the men and women who serve in the various branches of the military. They choose to serve in this way. They are our brothers and sisters and we are theirs. All men and women are part of the same human family. They deserve love and compassion. Nothing less.

At the same time, we have an equal responsibility to respectfully refuse to obey any sociopathic social system. This kind of social entity is recognizable by its lack of a functional conscience. It acts with no soul. “The end justifies the means” is the sociopath’s creed. There can be no honorable cooperation with a sociopath, whether it is an individual, a group, a corporation, or a government organization. 

The “enemy”, if we can use the term loosely, is the sociopathic system itself, not the men and women who comprise it. Militarism is the problem. Corporatism is the problem. Action not guided by a functional conscience is the problem. Soullessness is the problem.

The solution exists in the growing awareness that each of us is so much more than a little cog in some vast machine. Each one of us has a largely unrealized power of dissent. There is a growing awareness of the extreme dependence of Big Business and its consort Big Government on the consent of individuals who have been lulled into complacency. When people recognize that they have the power to withdraw their consent and begin to exercise their power of respectful refusal, empires fall.

Part of saying “No” to a soulless system is also saying “Yes” to the natural world around us. The world around us is our world in that we are an intimate part of it. It is not our world in the form of owning or possessing it. It is our world in the form of mutual belonging: We are part of it and it is most certainly part of us. Seeing the world merely as a vast array of material resources for a privileged few members of our species to plunder is highly problematic. This perpetuates the illusion of our separateness and we do so at our own peril.

Empire wants individuals to believe that they are mere “consumers” of goods. It does not want us to realize that each of us are actually investors and stewards. As investors we directly contribute to the quality of our world. As stewards we own full responsibility for the care and well-being of our world. We are investors with every choice we make regardless of the size of our bank account. We continually invest our time, energy, and skill. On one particular level we are given a paycheck in exchange for our work. We then do whatever we do with our money. This is one way we invest in our world.

At this point each of us has real power. This is where we can speak the language that business best understands. How we spend or don’t spend our money (which represents our life energy, time, and skill) is the voicing of our approval or disapproval to the business owner. When we buy a product from Company X we are telling Company X: “I like what you’re doing. Keep doing it.” If we choose not to buy a product from Company X we send the message: “I don’t like what you’re doing. Cut it out!”   This is the fundamental language of business. It also demonstrates their extreme dependence on each of us for their existence. If the business does not adapt it will cease.

The alternative to business adaptation is persuading people that they want or need what’s being sold regardless of the truth. This is the world of advertising. This is the art and science of manipulating what people think, believe, and desire. In order for a business to avoid substantive change it is critically important to convince enough people that they really want what is being offered to them (particularly when they don’t really want it or need it). The marketing campaign for the many forms of militarism follow this basic formula:

“You want more War on Terror.”

“You want more defense spending.”

“You want more militarized police.”

“You want more people imprisoned.”

So it becomes a question of whether or not we succumb to the hypnosis of this marketing campaign. Either we stay asleep or we wake up from the spell that has been cast. If we stay asleep, Empire will be happy and we will have counterfeit satisfaction. If enough people wake up they will be very unhappy with the Empire of Lies and refuse to cooperate with it. Noncooperation with any evil system will not make for an easy life. If an evil system is met with noncompliance it will attempt to force compliance via threat or physical harm. This is the manifestation of its own fear. All sociopathic systems are, at their core, fear-based. Fearing the end of their own existence, they seek to survive by projecting fear into others. Empire wants us to be afraid. It needs us to be afraid. It wants us to believe that it is God. When we recognize that no empire is God we shed our fear and it loses its power over us.

As important as it is to say “No” to any sociopathic system and to say “Yes” to the natural world, it is equally important to say “Yes” to something else. We need to start saying “Yes” to ourselves and who we really are. We can and need to reclaim our true identity as profoundly loved Children of God. There can be no exclusions. We can no longer say that We are God’s beloved people and They are not. We need to say “Yes” to our true nature as beings of great compassion. Compassion for ourselves, each other, and all of Creation. We can then connect with each other on the level of compassion and recognize our real kinship with each other.

Fear is no match for Love.

— Paul Nyklicek

 

 

Manhattan Project Park

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I believe stories like this, lauding nuclear weapons and defending our supposed need for them, will likely become more prevalent in the ensuing weeks and months in an effort to gain support for their use.

New Mexico Community Marks Opening of Manhattan Project Park, ABC News, November 11, 2015

 

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Our “Just” Wars

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“I think that if there is one truth that people need to learn, in the world, especially today, it is this: the intellect is only theoretically independent of desire and appetite in ordinary, actual practice. It is constantly being blinded and perverted by the ends and aims of passion, and the evidence it presents to us with such a show of impartiality and objectivity is fraught with interest and propaganda. We have become marvelous at self-delusion; all the more so, because we have gone to such trouble to convince ourselves of our own absolute infallibility. The desires of the flesh — and by that I mean not only sinful desires, but even the ordinary, normal appetites for comfort and ease and human respect, are fruitful sources of every kind of error and misjudgment, and because we have these yearnings in us, our intellects (which, if they operated all alone in a vacuum, would indeed, register with pure impartiality what they saw) present to us everything distorted and accommodated to the norms of our desire.” Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain

Should Catholics Join the Military?

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Sure, why not? Not only does the military now allow “women in combat” but new moms can now have 18 weeks of paid maternity leave before they are shipped off to be blown to pieces by IEDs in Afghanistan or elsewhere.

“Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said establishing more liberal leave was intended to help recruit and retain more women in the two services, but was also a way of thanking them for their service.”

Here’s the article.

 

DoD’s latest “Law of War”

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Now journalists who report things that the government doesn’t like (things that are critical of the government and/or military) can be detailed indefinitely. It’s the latest update to the Pentagon’s “Law of War” manual. But no worries; I’m sure everything will go back to normal as soon as this undeclared, unwinnable “war” is over.

 

Seymour Hersh Visits My Lai

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Full transcript of the interview here.

And here is Hersh’s piece in The New Yorker, “The Scene of the Crime.”

“They went in in the morning, a group of boys—and you’ve got to give them credit. You know, they toked the night before, and they did their whiskey the night before. They had their—you know, their drugs. But that morning, they got up thinking they were going to be in combat against the Viet Cong. They were happy to do it. Charlie Company had lost 20 people through snipers, etc. They wanted payback. And they had been taking it out on the people, but they had never seen the enemy. They’d been in country, as I said, in Vietnam for three or four months without ever having a set piece war. That’s just the way it is in guerrilla warfare—which is why we shouldn’t do it, but that’s another story. And they went in that morning ready to kill and be killed on behalf of America, to their credit. They landed. There were just nothing but women and children doing the usual, as you said in your intro—cooking, warming up rice for breakfast—and they began to put them in ditches and start executing them.

Calley’s company—Calley had a platoon. There were three platoons that went in. They rounded up people and put them in a ditch. And Meadlo was ordered by Calley. He was among one or two or three boys who did a lot of shooting. There was a big distinction, basically, between the white boys, country boys like Paul Meadlo who did the shooting, and the African Americans and Hispanics, who made up about 40 percent of the company. In my interviews, I found that distinction. Most of the African Americans and Hispanics, that was Whitey’s war. The whole thing was Whitey’s war for them. And they did shoot, because they were afraid that their white colleagues might shoot at them if they weren’t participating, but they shot high. One guy even shot himself in the foot to get out of there. I mean, we had that going on, too, above and beyond the normal stuff.

The other companies just went along, didn’t gather people, just went from house to house and killed and raped and mutilated, and had just went on until everybody was either run away or killed. Four hundred and some-odd people in that village alone, of the 500 or 600 people who lived there, were murdered that day, all by noon, 1:00. At one point, one helicopter pilot, a wonderful man named Thompson, saw what was going on and actually landed his helicopter. He was a small combat—had two gunners. He just landed his small helicopter, and he ordered his gunners to train their weapons on Lieutenant Calley and other Americans. And Calley was in the process of—apparently going to throw hand grenades into a ditch where there were 10 or so Vietnamese civilians. And he put his guns on Calley and took the civilians, made a couple trips and took them out, flew them out to safety. He, of course, was immediately in trouble for doing that.”

As the U.S. government embarks on a massive PR effort to reconstruct the image and perception of the Vietnam War (see here and here), it is interesting to keep in mind what Rev. Walter H. Hannoran said about it. Father Halloran was the priest that took part in the exorcism that spawned the book and film The Exorcist. He also received two Bronze Stars for serving as a paratrooper chaplain during the Vietnam War. I read once that he said something along the lines of “I saw more evil in Vietnam than I ever saw in that boy’s bedroom.”

 

“Necessary” for the “Greater Good”

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How We Learned To Kill, by Timothy Kudo, The New York Times, Feb. 27, 2015

This article by Timothy Kudo is one of the more honest accounts of the way killing works in war. It would be a great article if not for the punt at the end, which sails right over all of the deep and serious questions he manages to raise. He ties everything up at the end with a cheap bow, offering us predictable and banal justifications: “It’s all necessary for the greater good” and “We live in a state of nature.”

This is a larger pattern I’ve noticed in the mainstream media, the willingness to publish pieces that at first seem critical of the War on Terror, but inevitably swing back around to a position of confidence and assurance that what we are doing is if not good then at least necessary, and thus right, or a shrug like, “What else can we possibly do?” These essays give the appearance of a free press, the cursory impression of a questioning mind, and the illusion of an earnest public debate. These articles are usually written by military folk who, at the risk of sounding harsh, often seem lacking in moral imagination; after all, they have been trained to prevent their moral qualms  from leading them to undesirable conclusions. Your job is to act. Leave the thinking to someone else. And if what you are doing is wrong, it’s not your fault; you’re just taking orders.

Whether this pattern is a sign of censorship (mainstream media outlets are too afraid of the government to publish anything that seems to oppose our foreign policy) or just proof that the military does a very good job at demolishing the capacity for critical thinking on the part of their subjects, or whether it is just a sign that a person tends to cling to rationalizations for their own choices and actions in order to avoid cognitive dissonance, I don’t really know. Maybe a combination of all of the above.

The insinuation at the end that nobody is responsible for the state of affairs in this country because everyone is “just taking orders” –even the President– is downright scary, reminiscent of Nazi Germany. Who is the Commander-in-Chief taking orders from? Oh, right: us. This bizarre accusation holds up only if you still believe what the United States government taught you in the fourth grade: that the United States government is a government of, by, and for the people.

He is essentially saying, “This is what the people want, otherwise it wouldn’t be happening. So it’s your fault.” This echoes a theme from an article he wrote for The Washington Post in 2013 in which he seemed to imply that our country goes to war because every day citizens don’t understand how awful it is, and if the citizens of this country had any idea, then there wouldn’t be so many wars. And of course there is some truth in that but it strikes me as an attempt to abdicate responsibility.

The Times would not have run the article without the punt in the last two paragraphs. If you want to be able to say you’ve been published  in The New York Times, so you can have one more impressive credential on your LinkedIn page, or more followers on your Twitter account, and if you want to write about a current American war, you can be as honest as you want as long as you include some kind of “but in the end it’s worth it” message. You can be as honest and truthful as you want about the ugliness of war as long as you don’t go so far as to imply that it stop.  We wouldn’t want to piss off the government now would we. I simply don’t believe this article would have been published if the author’s wrestling with moral issues led him to file for conscientious objector status or to some decisive turn against the war.

Kudo seems to have a bit of a chicken-egg problem when he writes: “If this era of war ever ends, and we emerge from the slumber of automated killing to the daylight of moral questioning…” The assumption here is that the war would have to end before we can begin to morally question the war. What comes first, the end of a war or the moral questioning that puts pressure on political leaders to end a war? Let’s not forget: If that public process seems too tedious, the soldier can always choose to cut out the middle men, the “people” and the politicians and the electoral process, and simply say “I quit.”

How We Learned To Kill, by Timothy Kudo, The New York Times, Feb. 27, 2015