Selling War

Consider the Odds.

Nearly all of the ubiquitous U.S. commercial media (“Public” Broadcasting included) are pushing for an invasion of Iraq….either outright, or with this or that pre-condition. These are the media that can hype and sell anything…media that allow virtually no alternative views… media that have on hand the best psychological-manipulating experts from Madison Avenue to the D.C. Think Tanks. Yet, it cannot “sell” this invasion to its usual large and receptive audience…even to those who might elsewhere be persuaded that McDonald’s sells actual food…or that this or that movie is a Must See. The bucket of lies here is just too big and too obvious. It could be that the obviousness is intentional as a terrorizing ploy to control the population by creating fear of irrational, lawless, violent authorities… but that’s conjecture for now.

What are the odds? In SPITE of overwhelming media saturation with stuff about the “evil” of Iraq, Al Qaeda, “terrorism”, and the rest, and with barely a word of opposition allowed to get too far…it is resisted significantly. An odds-maker might bet that EVERYONE would jump on the war ships and shout for the US of A and against “evil”…but it didn’t happen. About a third of the Senate and third of the House rejected the “war resolution”, sometimes, maybe, out of a sense of morality, law and justice…sometimes due to avalanches of calls, faxes and e-mails…not to mention public demonstrations.

Members of the public and of government who opposed this resolution have all been threatened repeatedly by accusations of being “un-American” or “supporters of terrorism” or by threats of travel restrictions, monitoring of communications, and even arrests, beatings and denial of rights…yet STILL they opposed! How many hundreds of thousands, if not millions, oppose as well…but, for their own reasons, have so far kept their heads low and uncounted?

Based on this wide opposition reaction…and lack of reaction to the hype…it may be said that each person who openly opposes this oily, imperialist, lawless viciousness represents MANY others who do not come forward. How many? A hundred? A thousand? More? Imagine if there was any semblance of an Open Media in the people could SEE the stunning scope of U.S. and global opposition. The reason this news is not made available to the public is precisely that it would inspire others to come forward due, at least, to the feeling of safety in numbers. Censoring this information, or Self-Censoring (as many editors do), tells us that this corporate/military establishment KNOWS that it is an undemocratic and illegitimate entity that it cannot possibly make its case to convert the public. A Level Playing Field here would show a smattering of fat, wealthy, well-dressed, well-armed goons at one end of the arena, and millions of people of all ages, races, religions and walks of life at the other. No contest. Therefore, no level field allowed. Why play if winning is impossible even for these, the swaggering, smirking “toughest of the tough”? There are only two options for this establishment: The people of the U.S. and in foreign lands must be forced at gunpoint to shut-up, sit-down, and comply; or, the corporate/military statists must give up. Question is: do they have enough compliant cops and troops to put us all at gunpoint?… and, if so, for how long? And, what if cops and troops start feeling funny about beating up on so many innocent non-combatant, non-violent people? What if they wise up about the threats this system presents to themselves and their own families? A mutiny isn’t that different from a revolution.

JOHN JONIK lives in Philadelphia. He can be reached at: jejonik@juno.com