< HOME  Saturday, August 26, 2006

Repeat a lie often enough . . .

Americans are free.

Americans are free.

Americans are free.
"What constitutes the bulwark of our own liberty and independence?

It is not our frowning battlements, our bristling seacoasts, the guns of our war steamers, or the strength of our gallant and disciplined army. These are not our reliance against a resumption of tyranny in our fair land. All of them may be turned against our liberties, without making us stronger or weaker for the struggle.

Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in our bosoms. Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of ALL men, in ALL lands, EVERYWHERE.

Destroy this spirit, and you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors. Familiarize yourselves with the chains of bondage, and you are preparing your own limbs to wear them.

Accustomed to trample on the rights of those around you, you have lost the genius of your own independence, and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises."

- Abraham Lincoln
They hate us for our freedoms.

They hate us for our freedoms.

They hate us for our freedoms.

Diet Coke. Designer tags. MTV.
What afflicts the people of the United States in these days, that they have developed the capacity not only to tolerate, but even to cherish, the blatant lies and hypocrisies, the injustices, the evasions, and of course the invasions perpetrated by George W Bush and his neo-conservative cabal?

How can even conservatives themselves stomach this internationalist, interventionist, activist-court-packing, states'-rights-suppressing cat's-paw of the transnational culture of control that is the only heartfelt homeland of the corporate elite?

* * *

Let us not put too fine a point upon it: we are in danger of reverting to fascism.
We live in a democracy.

We live in a democracy.

We live in a democracy.
Fascism is a disease endemic in our species, a periodic fever whose tremors induce a psychosocial orgasm in its sufferers, tantalizing them with physical delusions of both security and power.
The greatest nation on earth.

The greatest nation on earth.

The greatest nation on earth.
[I]t is fascism's capacity to make a nuanced oppression seem both nurturing and empowering that makes it so dangerous. It is this nuance of fascism - more than the Big Lie techniques and the brute force fascists also employ - that makes the Bush/Cheney administration and its police and propaganda mechanisms a true threat to humanity in general and to the United States - formerly respected as an icon of liberty - specifically.

The fundamental appeal of fascism to the everyday person is threefold. It consists of:
  1. The promise of security. Fascists typically posit threats, external and internal, that are easily identified but difficult to fight, and then promise to protect you from them - if only you will give them absolute power to do so.

  2. We will protect you.

    We will protect you.

    We will protect you.

    Air Force. Navy. Army. Marines.

    Social security. Health insurance. Car insurance. Life insurance.

  3. Relief from uncertainty. It is no accident that Orwell had his dictator characterize himself as Big Brother. The fascist relieves you of the responsibility to make difficult decisions. You simply follow orders - given, of course, by Big Brother.

  4. Mutual Funds.

    Pension Funds.

    Hedge Funds.

  5. A share of strength. Most insidious, Big Brother will let you exercise power over others - as long as you exercise Big Brother's power Big Brother's way.

  6. Make money, live large.

    Make money, live large.

    Make money, live large.
This last is the stroke of genius. The fascist enlists the sufferers of fascism themselves as petty dictators over those who have been designated as "below" them. And we the people are all too often eager to enlist.
Convince a slave that he is free and he will never resist.

Promise him a piece of the pie and he may gladly do your bidding.

Either way, the little green bill with the pyramid on back constitutes the chains of bondage to which Lincoln alluded and against which he warned.

Americans will never be free until we rid ourselves of our decrepit, corrupt dollar and the men who control it.




__________________
Thanks, LanceThruster

8 Comments:

At Saturday, August 26, 2006, Blogger The Sphinx said...

Well, you can say the same lie 1000 times, it still doesn't make it any more true

 
At Saturday, August 26, 2006, Blogger Erosoplier said...

Thanks Qrs.

mmark, in light of what you say here, I think the PTB would as soon put a bullet in you as they would in any of the rest of us here. Why nuke Iran if you're not going to hang around to steal their oil??!

 
At Saturday, August 26, 2006, Blogger Citisucks said...

And don't forget one of the biggest lies of all is your vote counts. We have bogus elections where, as throught out US history, non-whites are denied the right to vote. Beyond that bogous election system, is a bogus political party system where their is no opposition party, only a fake opposition party that calls itself and opposition party. The fake opposition party repeats these same lies. Just look at their websites if you don't believe me.

Fight back. Fight the lies. Do whatever you need to do to fight the lies!

 
At Saturday, August 26, 2006, Blogger Mike said...

Refreshing post, qrswave.

 
At Saturday, August 26, 2006, Blogger Lew Scannon said...

Ethnic cleansing? World domination? Those don't sound like American ideals, mmark, more like fascist ideals.
BTW, ethanol requires more energy to produce than it yields, making it a "mute" point.

 
At Sunday, August 27, 2006, Blogger LanceThruster said...

qrswave - Thanks for reminding me that quote by Lincoln and associated piece was out there. It certainly is timeless and I was in awe of it the first time I saw it. The "Speaking Freely" piece by Richard Risemberg in the Asia Times touches on so many of those mundane aspects that help move the descent into fascism along and you do an excellent job framing that.

For me, possibly one of the most unsettling aspects of his essay, was his observation that it's not who has the power necessarily, but the corruption that comes from wanting to ensure that the power is not relinquished which inevitably involves consolidating and expanding powers.

Your site provides much food for thought for sleepwalkers everywhere as well as for those with eyes wide shut.

I'll offer another quote I came across that puts things in perspective for me. On the "Great Books" series on cable, I saw author Joseph Heller say that, "Catch-22 means people have the right to do to you anything that you cannot prevent them from doing to you."

 
At Sunday, August 27, 2006, Blogger Mike said...

I personally thought that mmark was just being tongue-in-cheek, sort of acting over the top in order to illustrate how absurd the current direction really is. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think he was being serious.

 
At Tuesday, September 28, 2010, Blogger Unknown said...

We end up believing what we want, perhaps a lie repeated so many times ends up as truth but it will eventually end as a lie. No matter how many times some says the don't Buy Cialis the truth will arise eventually.

 

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