Michael Parenti | Democracy vs US Domination 2004

34:46

War does some other things too. War also has domestic political advantages. War makes your leader a great hero. We know some of our compatriots, don’t we? We know some of our fellow Americans who never stop saying, who are quite capable of saying, cynical things: “Politicians, politicians. They say one thing to you to get elected, then they do something else when they’re in office. They talk for the little guy but they end up helping the fat cats.” I mean, you hear people say that. But when those same politicians wrap themselves in the flag and point to some evil out there, some threat that’s going to come get you, why, then our same compatriots suddenly discard their cynicism, discard their skepticism, and with childlike trust, they say, “We’ve got to support the President. We’ve got to support the President.”

I heard a student once say to me, “That’s the difference between you and me. I have faith in President Bush.” He was talking about George the First. He said, “I have faith.” I said, “Excuse me? You have faith in the President? What are we doing here, religion or politics? You have faith in Georgie Bush like my Italian grandma had faith in Saint Anthony? Do you have a picture of Bush on your bureau with a little candle you light?” He said, “Well, I trust the President.” I said, “You trust the President? Trust? Is that what we’re dealing with here? Trust, which is something that you should reserve only for your friends and close companions or close family members, and even then, check them all out once in a while, right? No, democracy is not about trust. Democracy is about distrust. It’s about accountability. It’s about exposure. It’s about debate. It’s about getting things out on the table. It’s about challenging them. That’s what it’s about.”

So, perpetual war is very useful to these people, to this slimebag who’s President now. Georgie Bush wants war all the time, except this last one isn’t going that well, so he’s cooled back a little. But war suspends the critical judgment of people. They all rally around the leader. You know, the Germans were doing that. Some segment of Germany was pushing that line. It was called the Führerprinzip, the leadership principle: in the Führer, the leader of the state, there’s the embodiment of the state, and what he says is the expression of our very souls. As Rudolf Hess said about Adolf Hitler at the big Nuremberg rally, “Do not search for Adolf Hitler with your brains. You will find him with your hearts. Adolf Hitler is Germany, and Germany is Adolf Hitler.” In an American idiom, that’s sort of what we’re getting here. It means that Americans wouldn’t go quite for a line like that, but to say, “Trust our leader. We have to do this. We’re facing these dangers, and we all have to rally. Support our troops,” blah, blah, blah, and check your brains at the door. Check your critical faculties, and any expression of critical intelligence will be treated as a manifestation of lack of patriotism, treason, and cavorting with the terrorists. That’s the kind of line that they’re trying to feed us. Well, perpetual war, perpetual crisis, does that. It’s also a way of covering up domestic sins.

Federalist Paper Number 6, Alexander Hamilton, 1787. He said, “Many a leader pursues overseas adventures so to distract the people from their domestic grievances.” Does that sound familiar at all? In July of last year (not this July, the July before), the Republican Party was reeling from scandals: Enron, Halliburton, Harkin, all of these things. The Republican Party was seen as the party of corporate scandal, and two of their top leaders, the President and Vice President, were both implicated in insider trading, obviously refusing to cooperate, refusing to hand over documents. In July of 2002, by October, the airwaves were filled with war talk. Iraq, Iraq, war talk, war talk. The Republican Party now re-emerged as the party of defense, patriotism, a strong America, protecting us from this mortal threat, this imminent danger: Saddam Hussein, who was going to attack us any day with weapons of mass delusion. And they won a midterm election that they should have never won.

We hear that the terrorists are after us because we’re rich, we’re prosperous, and we’re free, and they hate this about us. But you know what? I’ve been doing some reading. I read an interview of Osama bin Laden by Robert Fisk in an old issue of The Nation, 1998. I just happened to find it in a pile of materials. He says, “America is the demon and is our enemy because they have betrayed us. They’ve come here, they’ve destroyed our way, they’ve undermined us.” The guys who tried to blow up the World Trade Center and killed how many, 200 people, the first time, remember in 1993? When they went on trial, they said, “We attacked you because you won’t leave us alone, because you’ve come to our countries, you’ve taken our wealth, you take our land.” That’s what they say. They don’t say it’s because, “Oh, we’re just so jealous of you. You got everything, and we got nothing.” They say, “We just want you to leave us alone. We want you to get your boot off the back of our neck.”…

Don’t take my word for it. Everything I’m saying here, don’t take my word for it. We always say that actions speak louder than words. There are times when words speak louder than actions, when you’re trying to decide what is the intent of an action where the person can’t deny the action, but they deny the intent, and they give you another thing. The problem with trying to establish the intent is that nobody’s ever seen an intent or a motive. It’s not empirical. It’s not an empirical thing. Intent is something that is only ascribed or imputed or deducted. You say, “Well, he did that because of this, I think,” and you look at it that way. Now, what’s very interesting is when some people, like rulers, come out and actually give the real intent. They don’t talk about democracy and this and that. They tell you what their real interests are. Let me read you one of a member of the ruling class. He was a partner, senior partner, in one of the richest corporate law firms in America, in New York. It was called the Dulles brothers. His brother, Allen Dulles, served for a stretch as Director of the CIA. He himself, John Foster Dulles, was Secretary of State under Dwight Eisenhower. This is what he says. He actually comes out and says it.

He says, “In order to bring a nation to support the burden of maintaining great military establishments all over the world and at home, it is necessary to create an emotional state akin to war psychology. There must be the portrayal of external menace. This involves the development to a high degree of the hero nation versus the villain nation ideology and the arousing of the population to a sense of sacrifice. Once these exist, we have gone a long way on the path to war.” And he’s being very positive about this. He’s saying this is a good thing, a clever thing. That’s John Foster Dulles. So they come out and they say it.

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. …We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. …In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons…who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.”
― Edward Bernays, Propaganda