Today's Stories

December 4-6, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
The Twin Frauds of Obama

December 3, 2009

Jeff Ballinger
Helping Dicatators Look Good

Paul Fitzgerald / Elizabeth Gould
What are We Fighting for in Afghanistan?

Christopher Brauchli
Innocent Dead Men Walking

Laura Flanders
All-Too-Familiar Line on Afghanistan

Franklin Lamb
Hezbollah's New Manifesto

Mark Weisbrot
Unavoidable Differences: Brazil vs. Washington

Gary Leupp
Obama's Tortured Rationale

Stephen Fleischman
Envisioning an Exit Strategy?

Bill Christison
Obama's Unjust Iran Policy

December 2, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
The Obama Puppet

Gareth Porter
The Power Struggle Behind Obama's Speech

Zoltan Grossman
Afghanistan: the Roach Motel of Empires

Mike Whitney
The Path to Full Employment: an Interview with Marshall Auerback

Ron Jacobs
The Escalation Begins: an Exchange with Anand Gopal

M. Shahid Alam
The Groveling of Pakistani Elites

D.K. Wilson
Is Tiger Woods Black Enemy Number One?

Fran Shor
Obama and the Dying Empire

Susan Galleymore
African Realities in the Wake of World AIDS Day

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Caught in the Cross Fire

Website of the Day
Rebel Without a Conscience

December 1, 2009

David Price
Human Terrain Systems, Anthropologists and the War in Afghanistan

Afshin Rattansi
The Dubai Disaster: a Familiar Fall

Carlos Benemann
Dubai FUBAR

Dean Baker
Is "Helping Homeowners" Washingtonspeak for Bailing Out the Banks?

Bouthaina Shaaban Rejecting Westocentrism

David Rosen
America's Failing Sexual Health

Susan Galleymore
Global Connections and the Arc of War

David Macaray
Labor's Beating Heart

Miriam Pemberton
Bush-Style Military Spending Not Over Yet

Farzana Versey
Condoms, Hunks and the AIDS Celebrity Circus

Website of the Day
The Story of Cap and Trade

November 30, 2009

Gary Leupp
A "Necessary War" -- for a Gas Pipeline

Mara Ahmed /
Judith Bello
Pakistan and the Global War on Terror

Mike Whitney
Crisis in Dubai

Steven Higgs
Growing Up Toxic

P. Sainath
Pay-to-Print: "News" Stories for Cash Scandal Rocks India

Jonathan Cook
Israel's Arab Women Workers Need Not Apply

Norm Kent
On the Suicide of Mike Penner: Why the Transgendered Need Civil Rights Protections

Dave Lindorff
Obama as the Manchurian Candidate

Normon Solomon
The Hollow Politics of Escalation

David Michael Green How Dare You Clean Up Our Mess?

Website of the Day
The America's Program Needs Your Help

November 27 - 29, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Auld Triangle Goes Jingle Jangle

Carl Ginsburg
Planning for Poverty?

Mike Whitney
Blame Larry Summers

Franklin Spinney
Obama as LBJ

Joshua Frank
Coal Kills

Saul Landau
The True Price of Oil

Heather Gray
Overtly Racist Regimes in the 20th Century

John Ross
The Timeline for a New Mexican Revolution Comes Due

David Macaray
Adventures in Polarization

Franklin Lamb
Lebanon: 52 Words That Shook Washington

Shamus Cooke
The Devastating Consequences of the Corporate Health Insurance Bill

David Ker Thomson
The Transformers

Martha Rosenberg
Cash for Cheesedogs? The Recession Takes a Bite Out of Meat Consumption

Ramzy Baroud
A Paradigm Shift in Singapore?

Ron Ridenour
Post-War Internment Hell for Tamils

Amanda Mueller
Saving Grace: Negotiating Abortion and the Catholic Faith

James Rothenberg
China Kowtow

Travis Kelly
Mayday, 1960: the U2 Files

Don Monkerud
Big Beer Takes Over

Ron Jacobs
Science Fiction and Politics

Charles R. Larson
The Autumn of Chinua Achebe

David Yearsley
What Father Made Us Sing Before the Turkey

Poets' Basement
Catherine Zickgraf and Mickey Z.

Website of the Weekend
Good to Be Alive

November 26, 2009

Vijay Prashad
Mumbai in the Shadow of Kashmir

Greg Moses
We Remember the Popol Vuh

Jayne Lyn Stahl
How About a War on Poverty Instead?

Jeff Cohen
Get Ready for the Obama / GOP Alliance

John Blair
The Gasification of Indiana

Ann Robertson /
Bill Leumer
A Surge in Demands on Goverment for Jobs

Farzana Versey
The American East India Company

Sam Husseini
Moral Relativism at Fort Hood: Guilt, Therapy and the System

Tom Mountain
The Truth Behind the Turkey

Website of the Day
A Thanksgiving Prayer by William S. Burroughs

November 25, 2009

Dave Lindorff
The Bush-Blair Conspiracy on Iraq

Marjorie Cohn
The Case of Lynn Stewart

Belén Fernández
An Interview with Honduran Coup General Romeo Vásquez Velásquez

Ralph Nader
Weak-Kneed in China

Rannie Amiri
The Impending Release of Gilad Shalit: What Palestinians Deserve in Return

Missy Beattie
Finish the Job?

Rob Stone, MD Health Care Delusions: Better Than Nothing?

Norm Kent
In Praise of Adam Lambert

Binoy Kampmark Handing It to France: the Sporting Trial of Thierry Henry

Ron Ridenour
International Support for Sri Lanka

Website of the Day
The Credit Card Game

November 24, 2009

Mary Lynn Cramer
Health Care Reform and the Skinning of Seniors

Dean Baker
Too Big to Kill? The Vampire Banks Rise Again

George Ciccariello-Maher
Occupy Everything! Behind the Privatization of the UC, a Riot Squad of Police

Eric Walberg
Canada's Guantanamo

Andy Thayer
Lessons From a Lynching: the Murder of Jorge Steven Lopez-Mercado

David Macaray
The Delphi Incident: How the White-Collar Tribe Got Shafted

Laura Carlsen
The Perils of Plan Mexico

Gary Leupp
Obama as Hamlet

Adam Federman
Poisoning Dimock

William S. Lind Mission Creep: Counter-Insurgency in Salinas?

Website of the Day
Geography of the Recession

November 23, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
A Trial That Will Convict Us All

Jonathan Cook
Have Israeli Spies Infiltrated International Aiports?

Edward S. Herman / David Peterson
Vulliamy's Smears

Bouthaina Shaaban
What's New? It's Always Been Like This

Helen Redmond
Health Care's Historic Flop

Rannie Amiri
Saudi Arabia's Attack on Yemen

Dave Lindorff
Abortion and Health Care

Rev. William E. Alberts
The Self-Delusionary American Tragedy

Mike Whitney
Is American Casino the Best Picture of the Year?

Mark Weisbrot
Honduran Dictatorship is a Threat to Democracy in the Hemisphere

David Michael Green
The Placeholder Presidency of Obama

November 20-22, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
CounterPunch Diary
It's Show Trial Time!

Gareth Porter
New Light on the Qom Facility

Mike Whitney
The Great Stimulus Debate of '09: Crybabies need not apply

Fred Gardner
Mammography
Pushes Back

James J. Brittain
It's Really a War on the Poor
A War on Coca Nobody Believes

Jonathan Cook
Rabbi Followers 'Terror Cell in Parliament'

Alan Farago
Bulletin from the Dark Side: Florida's Republican Ultras

David Macaray
A Hindu Version of the UAW
Labor Strife in India

Binoy Kampmark
The Israeli Exception: Gilo and East Jerusalem

Ben Sonnenberg
Ashes and Diamonds
Retirement Norwegian Style

Ron Jacobs
Judge Roy Bean Takes Manhattan

David Yearsley
200,000 Testicles Offered Up to the Gods of Song

Brenda Norrell
A Border Runs Through Them:
The Struggles of the Tohono O'odham

Ron Ridenour
The Tamils and Equal Rights of Self Determination

November 19, 2009

Christopher Ketcham
The Dumbest Newspapers at the Center of the World

Shamus Cooke
A Fraudulent Jobs Summit

John V. Walsh
Impotent in China

Saul Landau
Dissidents Make Noise--Oops, News

Ralph Nader
Exiting Afghanistan

Nikolas Kozloff
Blackout in Brazil

Fred Gardner
Reputable MDs Buy NorCal Health Care

Charles R. Larson
Voices of the Silenced

John A. Murphy
Nader v. Dodd

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Obama's Gray World

November 18, 2009

Uri Avnery
A Religious Scoundrel

John Ross
Hot Oil!

Conn Hallinan
Strategic Towns: Why Gen. McChrystal's Plan Will Fail

Mike Whitney
Obama's China Junket

Ray McGovern
The Bogus Success of the Surge

Nelson P. Valdés
Cyber Cuba: Internet, Broadband and Foreign Policy

Ramzy Baroud
Globalization Unchecked

Ron Ridenour
Tamil Eelam: the Historic Right to Nationhood

November 17, 2009

Mike Whitney
Let's Get Fiscal

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Double Crossed: War Vets Deported

Brian M. Downing
Do They Subscribe to GQ at the Pentagon?

Jonathan Cook
Israel's Two-Tiered Justice System

Joanne Mariner
A First Look at the Military Commisions Act

Dean Baker
Obama's Nuclear Option on the Yuan

Martha Rosenberg
Pig Hell at Wal-Mart Supplier

Danny Weil
Fear in Nicaragua

David Macaray
Retail Sales as Combat

Laura Flanders
Buried Bonanza for Over-Builders

Walter Brasch
Rush to Judgment on Terror Trials

November 16, 2009

Alan Nasser
Obama's Flawed Case Against Single Payer

Jonathan Cook
Campus Watch Copy Cats

Mark Weisbrot
Obama, China and the Dollar

Carol Miller
We Need Health Care, Not Insurance

Gary Leupp
The Andolan in Kathmandu and the Revolution to Follow

Harry Clark
Justice Goldstone at Brandeis

Ray McGovern
Shining a Light on the Roots of Terrorism

Norman Solomon
California Democrats Urge Obama to Leave Afghanistan

Ron Ridenour
Genocide in Sri Lanka

Norm Kent
Doctors Light Up

Brenda Norrell
Torture Resisters Arrested at Fort Huachuca

November 13-15, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
A Man in a Hundred

Patrick Cockburn
Meet Our Afghan Ally: Stealing Money, Selling Heroin and Raping Boys

Tariq Ali
Short Cuts in Afghanistan

Douglas Lummis
Obama, Hatoyama and Okinawa

Vijay Prashad
Can the Major Speak?

Carl Ginsburg
Cornering the Market on Ambition

Manuel García, Jr.
The Purpose is Pork

Rannie Amiri
The Disastrous Presidency of Mahmoud Abbas

Mary Lynn Cramer
Death By Denial: the Militarization of Mental Health

Fred Gardner
Pot Doc Down

Dave Lindorff
Health Care Reform: DOA

Robert Jensen
How I Stopped Hating Thanksgiving and Learned to be Afraid

David Macaray
Wal-Mart Death Stampede Revisited

Corporate Crime Reporter
Exposing Timberland: Nike Foe Jeff Ballinger Zeros in on a New Target

Ron Jacobs
No More Star Spangled Eyes

David Model
NATO's Chimerical Enemy in Afghanistan

John V. Walsh
Godless China: What Obama Will Find

Jon Mitchell
Beggars' Belief

Stuart Easterling
Blaming the Narcos in Mexico

Dan Bacher
Big Oil Takes Over Marine "Protection" in California

Franklin Lamb
Lebanese Students Advise Obama on How to Get It Right

Farzana Versey
Moderns, Models and Martyrs

Charles R. Larson
War, Peace and Paramilitaries in Colombia

Saul Landau
The Coen Bros. Brutalize Job

David Yearsley
When the Cirque Meets the Beatles

Lorenzo Wolff
At the Side of the Frontman

Poets' Basement
Blaine, Rivas and Cox

November 12, 2009

Robert Weissman
Maniacal Deregulation

Franklin Spinney
The Afghan War Question

Nadia Hijab
After Fort Hood

Afshin Rattansi
Night Vision: Why US Sanctions on Syria Will Kill American Soldiers

Paul Craig Roberts
America's Dismal Future

Ralph Nader
Failing the People on Health Care

Belén Fernández
Tourists of the Honduran Counter-Revolution

Allan J. Lichtman
A National Peacemaker's Day

Dave Lindorff
President Peacenik's War

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Headline of the Year

November 11, 2009

Andrew Cockburn
The Crafting of a Loophole

Mike Whitney
A Small "d" Depression

Rev. Jesse Jackson
Where's the Jobs Stimulus?

Jeff Nygaard
Iranian Irrationality? Maybe Not

Stewart J. Lawrence
Honduran Regime Reneges on Political Deal

James Ridgeway
The End of the Little Red Cars: Memories of East Berlin

Eamonn McCann
Blood on Their Hands

Michael Ortiz Hill
Unbecoming War and Terrorism

Shepherd Bliss
From Oklahoma City to Fort Hood

Walter Brasch
"This is Jenna Bush Reporting ... "

November 10, 2009

Ellen Cantarow
Heroism in a Vanishing Landscape

Dean Baker
How to Raise $140 Billion a Year From Wall Street Banks

Rose Ann DeMoro
The Truth About the House Health Care Bill

Ramzy Baroud
Inch by Inch, House by House: How Israel Won the Settlement Battle...Again

Peter Lee
The Dalai Lama Sticks His Thumb in the Dragon's Eye

Dave Lindorff
Blaming the Workers

Roberto Rodriguez
Running Past PTSD (Or My Susto Profundo)

Winslow T. Wheeler
The Self-Dismembering F-35

Alan Farago
The Rising Tide

Joseph Grosso
The Legacy of Albert Parsons

November 9, 2009

Patrick Cockburn
Leave Afghanistan to the Afghans

Linn Washington
Fox Finds a New Black Boogeyman

Carl Ginsburg
To be Young and Unemployed Forever

Jeff Leys
War Funding, 2010

John A. Murphy
Can Lieberman Save Single Payer? Why Progressives Should Back a Filibuster

John Halle
Bard and the Lobby: Final Thoughts on the Kovel Affair

Bouthaina Shaaban
Clinton Dances With Netanyahu

James Ridgeway
Heath Care: Winning a Battle, Losing the War

Dave Lindorff
The Kafka Economy

David Macaray
The Philadelphia Transit Strike

Stephen Fleischman
The Tea Party System

Website of the Day
Cap-and-Trade: The Huge Mistake

November 6-8, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Too Fat to Fight

Mark Grueter
Inside the American University of Iraq

Paul Craig Roberts
The Evil Empire

Patrick Cockburn
Friendly Fire

Gareth Porter
Karzai's Cabinet of Warlords

Mike Whitney
The Battle of Seattle, 10 Years Later

James Bovard
How the Media Enables Government Lies

Dean Baker
Don't Touch the Banks!

Robert Lawless
Empires and the Sullying of Anthropology

Saul Landau
Afghanistan: a War Without Logic

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Black Ops and Fort Hood

Stephanie Westbrook
My Memories of Fort Hood

M. Shahid Alam
How Eurocentric Are You?

Marc Levy
Walking With Mr. Muhammad

Franklin Lamb
Obama's Mid-East Mess

Ron Jacobs
A New Map of Hell

David Ker Thomson
Afternoon With Tulip

John V. Whitbeck
Moment of Truth

Julien Mercille
Drugs and Afghanistan: the UN's Misleading Report

Rannie Amiri
Egypt's Next Unelected President?

John Ross
Legalize It!

David Michael Green
Can You Hear Us Now?

Carl Finamore
Strike One for Hotels in San Francisco

Farzana Versey
The Farce of Fatwas and Political Expediency

Missy Comley Beattie
No to Single Payer, Yes to Prayer?

Charles R. Larson
Business as Usual in India

David Yearsley
Anna Magdalena, Music and the Art of Dying

Kim Nicolini
"Paranormal Activity:" a DIY Horror Film

Poets' Basement
Three Poems by Devreaux Baker

November 5, 2009

Pam Martens
The Fire Sale of America

Vijay Prashad
The Great Heretic

Brian Gallagher
The Soldiers From Standard Oil: Harvard, ROTC and American Foreign Policy

Norman Solomon
The Next Phase in Health Care Apartheid

Nadia Hijab
The Battle for Palestinian Representation

Joseph Shansky
And the Winner in Honduras is ... the United States?

Andy Thayer
Questions and Answers From Maine

Tracy Rosenberg
Pacifica and the Barbarians Who Pay the Bills

Website of the Day
All Folked Up

November 4, 2009

Stan Cox
The Inflated Promise of Natural Gas

Andy Worthington From Gitmo to Palau: Who are the Uighurs?

Robert Weissman
The Medicare-for-All Moment

Susan Galleymore
Of Veterans and Volunteers

Ralph Nader
Hoh's Afghanistan Warning

Michael Leonardi
Italy's Secret Ships of Poison

Bitta Mistofi
Death to No One: Isolating and Taunting Iran Will Only Empower the Regime

Robert Bryce
From Lahore to Copenhagen

Martha Rosenberg
Is Your Doctor's Continuing Ed Funded by Drug Makers?

Dave Lindorff
Democrats Crash and Burn

Website of the Day
Single-Payer Backtrackers

November 3, 2009

Patrick Cockburn
The Delegitimization of Karzai

Mike Whitney
Why the Crisis Isn't Going Away

Franklin C. Spinney
Katrina and the Paralysis of Fear

Laura Carlsen
The Little Coup That Couldn't

Serge Halimi
Don't Blame the Internet

John Stanton
Social Decay in America

Sophia Weeks
A Guatemalan Lament

Dave Lindorff
Country Joe, Kenny Rogers and Obama

November 2, 2009

Steven Higgs
Autism Spikes, Toxins Suspected

Ishmael Reed
White in America: Behind the Scenes at CNN

David Macaray
UAW Members Vote Down Ford; and the Media Attacked the Union

Bouthaina Shaaban
Settler Colonialism: Return to the Middle Ages

David Michael Green
Coming to Get You

David Swanson
The Two Percent Robustness

Ellen Brown
Cutting Wall Street Out

Adam Federman
Trading the Watershed to Trash the Catskills

James McEnteer
Doppleganger Politics: Star Wars, Clone Wars

Stephen Fleischman
Foot in the Door: Capitalism and Health Care

Website of the Day
Secret California Park Giveaway

October 30 - Nov. 1, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Long Gaze of the State

Jeffrey St. Clair /
Joshua Frank
Facing Down the Machine: Mike Roselle Draws a Line

Carl Ginsburg
Living in the Shadow of Yankee Stadium

Mike Whitney
Obama Goes Wobbly Over More Stimulus

Joe Bageant
The Iron Cheer of Empire

Gareth Porter
Security By Warlords: the CIA's Afghan Payroll

Saul Landau
The Cuban Embargo

Anthony DiMaggio
Conspiracy, Inc.: Wild Tales From the Reactionary Right

Dave Lindorff
Happy Talk Amid the Wreckage: Stocks Up, Jobs Down

Rannie Amiri
The Spooks of Beirut

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
An Afghan Travelogue

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Who Will Reform the Health Care Reform?

Rev. William E. Alberts
God's Favorite Team (and Nation and Religion)

Alvaro Huerta
The Abominable Mr. Dobbs

Martha Rosenberg
Marketing Drugs to Psychoneurotics

Binoy Kampmark
Don't Give Us Your Wretched: Refugee Policy in OZ

Norm Kent
Not Just Zig-Zag Any More: Medical Marijuana Goes Mainstream

Charles R. Larson Roth's "The Humbling:" Nothing Like a Novel From an Old Pro

Ron Jacobs
One Man's Truth, Another Man's Lies

David Yearsley
Not Loud Enough by Half

Lorenzo Wolff
The Vulnerability of Lauryn Hill

Kim Nicolini
"Big Fan:" Football, Class and Sexuality in America

Poets' Basement
Davies, Heyen and Orloski

Website of the Weekend
Coal Country Music

October 29, 2009

Michael Neumann
Criticism of Israel: a Wonderful Hiding Place

Mike Whitney
Housing Rebound? Not So Fast

Gary Leupp
Matthew Hoh Speaks Truth to Power

Conn Hallinan
Roman Roads and Modern Emperors

Marshall Auerback
Obama's Bogus Populism: Pay Curbs and Bank Loans

Laura Flanders
Palin's Pet Doug Hoffman Has Taliban Ties

Eamonn McCann
The War Criminal Vote: Blair or Karadzic for EU President?

David Macaray
Strange Invaders: Can Ignorance and Arrogance Win Hearts and Minds?

Mark Weisbrot
When Small Countries Lead the Way

Stephen Soldz
Psychologist Complicity in Torture Challenged

Christopher Brauchli
Will the Pope Bring the Taliban Into His Flock?

Website of the Day
The USS Liberty Affair and the Problem of Truth in History

October 28, 2009

Moshe Adler
How to Reduce Unemployment, Rebuild the Middle Class and Free Ourselves From Wall Street

Dave Lindorff
America's Drug Crisis: Brought to You by the CIA

Frank Joseph Smecker
Agaisnt Prometheus: an Interview with Derrick Jensen on Science and Technology

Alexandra Early
What a "Jobless" Recovery Means for Young Workers

M. Shahid Alam
Israeli Exceptionalism

Vijay Prashad
Sahelian Blowback: What's Happening in Mali?

John Ross
Three Years Later, Brad Will is Still Dead

Franklin Lamb
A Rare Victory for Lebanon's Palestinians

Gregory Travis
The Dismal Science: Elinor Ostrom's Nobel

Susan Galleymore
Peace Cycle to Palestine

Website of the Day
Newspaper Decline, a Graphic Display

October 27, 2009

Mike Whitney
Black Tuesday and How We Got Out of It

Patrick Cockburn
Bombs Will Go Off in Baghdad, Whether the US is There or Not

Stewart J. Lawrence
Honduran Coup Myths Dispelled

Alan Farago
Power Plays in Florida: Rate Increases, Nukes and Deception

Ralph Nader
Obama: Form Letters and Business as Usual

Dave Lindorff
Pentagon Dirty Bombers: DU in America

Bouthaina Shaaban
The Danger of Towing the Line Behind Israel

Brian M. Downing Elections in Afghanistan, the Second Time Around

Iain Boal
How You Can Save Pacifica

Carl Finamore
Hotel Workers and the Law of Momentum

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Here Comes That Third Party: Palin and the Constitutionalists

Website of the Day
How Bank of America Charges for Perfect Credit

October 26, 2009

Bill Quigley /
Deborah Popowski
When Gitmo and Abu Ghraib Come Home

Paul Craig Roberts
Are You Ready for the Next Crisis?

Uri Avnery
A Tsunami Called Goldstone

Mike Whitney
Will the Dollar Remain the World's Reserve Currency in Five Years?

Michael Snedeker
The Execution of Cameron Willingham

Shamus Cooke
Obama's Dirty War on Immigrants

David Michael Green
Paranoia for Breakfast

Martha Rosenberg
Gagging Michael Pollan

Patrick Bond
Gridlock on the Way to Copenhagen

Binoy Kampmark
Heading for the Tiber

Website of the Day
Goldman Sachs Abandons Kittens

Weekend Edition
December 4-6, 2009

In Search of Morale

Are Americans Too Broken for the Truth to Set Us Free?

By BRUCE E. LEVINE

Can people become so broken that truths of how they are being screwed do not “set them free” but instead further demoralize them? Has such a demoralization happened in the United States? Do some totalitarians actually want us to hear how we have been screwed because they know that humiliating passivity in the face of obvious oppression will demoralize us even further? What forces have created a demoralized, passive, disCouraged U.S. population? Can anything be done to turn this around?

Can people become so broken that truths of how they are being screwed do not “set them free” but instead further demoralize them?

YES. It is called the “abuse syndrome.” How do abusive pimps, spouses, bosses, corporations, and governments stay in control? They shove lies, emotional and physical abuses, and injustices in their victims’ faces, and when victims are afraid to exit from these relationships, they get weaker; and so the abuser then makes their victims eat even more lies, abuses, and injustices, resulting in victims even weaker as they remain in these relationships.

Does the truth of their abuse set people free when they are deep in these abuse syndromes? NO. For victims of the abuse syndrome, the truth of their passive submission to humiliating oppression is more than embarrassing -- it can feel shameful; and there is nothing more painful than shame. And when one already feels beaten down and demoralized, the likely response to the pain of shame is not constructive action but more attempts to shut down or divert oneself from this pain. It is not likely that the truth of one’s humiliating oppression is going to energize one to constructive actions.

Has such a demoralization happened in the U.S.?

In the United States, 47 million people are without health insurance and many millions more are underinsured or a job layoff away from losing their coverage. But despite the current sellout by their elected officials to the insurance industry, there is no outpouring of millions of U.S. citizens on the streets of Washington D.C. protesting this betrayal.

Polls show that the majority of Americans oppose U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as the taxpayer bailout of the financial industry, yet only a handful of U.S. citizens have protested any of this.

Remember the 2000 U.S. presidential election? That’s the one in which Al Gore received 500,000 more votes than George W. Bush. That’s also the one that the Florida Supreme Court’s order for a recount of the disputed Florida vote was over-ruled by the U.S. Supreme Court in a politicized 5-4 decision, of which dissenting Justice John Paul Stevens remarked: “Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law.” Yet, even all this provoked few demonstrators.

When people become broken, they cannot act on truths of injustice. Furthermore, when people have become broken, more truths about how they have been victimized can lead to shame about how they have allowed it. And shame, like fear, is one more psychological way we become even more broken.

U.S. citizens do not actively protest obvious injustices for the same reasons that people cannot leave their abusive spouses. They feel helpless to effect change. The more we don’t act, the weaker we get. And ultimately to deal with the painful humiliation over inaction in the face of an oppressor, we move to shutdown and escape strategies such as depression, substance abuse, and other diversions, which further keep us from acting. This is the vicious cycle of all abuse syndromes.

Do some totalitarians actually want us to hear how we have been screwed because they know that humiliating passivity in the face of obvious oppression will demoralize us even further?

Maybe.

Shortly before the 2000 U.S. presidential election, millions of Americans saw a clip of George W. Bush joking to a wealthy group of people, “What a crowd tonight: the haves and the haves more. Some people call you the elite; I call you my base.” Yet, even with these kind of inflammatory remarks, the tens of millions of U.S. citizens who had come to despise Bush and his arrogance remained passive in the face of the 2000 non-democratic presidential elections.

Perhaps the “political genius” of the Bush-Cheney regime was fully realizing that Americans were so broken that they could get away with damn near anything. And the more people did nothing about the boot slamming on their faces, the weaker people became.

What forces have created a demoralized, passive, disCouraged U.S. population?

The U.S. government-corporate partnership has used its share of guns and terror to break Native Americans, labor union organizers, and other dissidents and activists. But today, most U.S. citizens are broken by financial fears. There is potential legal debt if we speak out against a powerful authority, and all kinds of other debt if we do not comply on the job. Young people are broken by college-loan debts and fear of having no health insurance.

The U.S. population is increasingly broken by the social isolation created by corporate-governmental policies. A 2006 American Sociological Review study (“Social Isolation in America: Changes in Core Discussion Networks over Two Decades”) reported that 25 percent of Americans did not have a single confidant in 2004 (10 percent of Americans lacked a single confidant in 1985). Sociologist Robert Putnam in Bowling Alone (2000) describes how social connectedness is disappearing in virtually every aspect of U.S. life. For example, there has been a significant decrease in face-to-face contact with neighbors and friends due to suburbanization, commuting, electronic entertainment, time and money pressures and other variables created by governmental-corporate policies. And union activities and other formal or informal ways that people give each other the support necessary to resist oppression have also decreased.

We are also broken by a corporate-government partnership that has rendered most of us out of control when it comes to the basic necessities of life, including our food supply. And we, like many other people in the world, are broken by socializing institutions that alienate us from our basic humanity. A few examples:

Schools and Universities: Do most schools teach young people to be action-oriented—or to be passive? Do most schools teach young people that they can affect their surroundings—or not to bother? Do schools provide examples of democratic institutions – or examples of authoritarian ones?

A long list of school critics from Henry David Thoreau to John Dewey, John Holt, Paul Goodman, Jonathan Kozol, Alfie Kohn, Ivan Illich, and John Taylor Gatto have pointed out that a school is nothing less than a miniature society: what young people experience in schools is the chief means of creating our future society. Schools are routinely places where kids -- through fear -- learn to comply to authorities for whom they often have no respect, and to regurgitate material they often find meaningless. These are great ways of breaking someone.
Today, U.S. colleges and universities have increasingly become places where young people are merely acquiring degree credentials -- badges of compliance for corporate employers -- in exchange for learning to accept bureaucratic domination and enslaving debt.

Mental Health Institutions: Aldous Huxley predicted, “And it seems to me perfectly in the cards that there will be within the next generation or so a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude.” Today, increasing numbers of people in the U.S. who do not comply with authority are being diagnosed with mental illnesses and medicated with psychiatric drugs that make them less pained about their boredom, resentments, and other negative emotions, thus rendering them more compliant and manageable.

Oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) is an increasingly popular diagnosis for children and teenagers. The official symptoms of ODD include, “often actively defies or refuses to comply with adult requests or rules," and "often argues with adults.” An even more common reaction to oppressive authorities than the overt defiance of ODD is some type of passive defiance -- for example, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Studies show that virtually all children diagnosed with ADHD will pay attention to activities that they actually enjoy or that they have chosen. In other words, when ADHD-labeled kids are having a good time and in control, the “disease” goes away.

When human beings feel too terrified and broken to actively protest, they may stage a “passive-aggressive revolution” by simply getting depressed, staying drunk, and not doing anything – this is one reason why the Soviet Empire crumbled. However, the diseasing/medicalizing of rebellion and drug “treatments” have weakened the power of even this passive-aggressive revolution.

Television: In his book Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television (1978), Jerry Mander (after reviewing totalitarian critics such as George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, Jacques Ellul, and Ivan Illich) compiled a list of the “Eight Ideal Conditions for the Flowering of Autocracy.”

Television, Mander claimed, helps create all eight conditions for breaking a population. Television: (1) occupies people so that they don't know themselves—and what a human being is; (2) separates people from one another; (3) creates sensory deprivation; (4) occupies the mind and fills the brain with prearranged experience and thought; (5) encourages drug use to dampen dissatisfaction (while TV itself produces a drug-like effect, this was compounded in 1997 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration relaxing the rules of prescription-drug advertising); (6) centralizes knowledge and information; (7) eliminates or "museumize" other cultures to eliminate comparisons; and (8) redefines happiness and the meaning of life.

Commericalism of Damn Near Everything: While spirituality, music, and cinema can be revolutionary forces, the gross commercialization of all of these has deadened their capacity to energize rebellion. So now, damn near everything – not just organized religion -- has become “opiates of the masses.”

The primary societal role of U.S. citizens is no longer that of "citizen" but that of "consumer." While citizens know that buying and selling within community strengthens that community and that this strengthens democracy, consumers care only about the best deal. While citizens understand that dependency on an impersonal creditor is a kind of slavery, consumers get excited with credit cards that offer a temporarily low APR.

Consumerism breaks people by devaluing human connectedness, socializing self-absorption, obliterating self-reliance, alienating people from normal human emotional reactions, and by selling the idea that purchased products -- not themselves and their community -- are their salvation.

Can anything be done to turn this around?

When people get caught up in humiliating abuse syndromes, more truths about their oppressive humiliations don’t set them free. What sets them free is morale.

What gives people morale? Encouragement. Small victories. Models of courageous behaviors. And anything that helps them break out of the vicious cycle of pain, shut down, immobilization, shame over immobilization, more pain, and more shut down.

The last people I would turn to for help in remobilizing a demoralized population are mental health professionals—at least those who have not rebelled against their professional socialization. Much of the craft of relighting the pilot light requires talents that mental health professionals simply are not selected for nor are they trained in. Specifically, the talents required are a fearlessness around image, spontaneity, and definitely anti-authoritarianism. But these are not the traits that medical schools or graduate schools select for or encourage.

Mental health professionals’ focus on symptoms and feelings often create patients who take themselves and their moods far too seriously. In contrast, people talented in the craft of maintaining morale resist this kind of self-absorption. For example, in the Question & Answer session that followed a Noam Chomsky talk (reported in Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky, 2002), a somewhat demoralized man in the audience asked Chomsky if he too ever went through a phase of hopelessness. Chomsky responded, “Yeah, every evening . . .

If you want to feel hopeless, there are a lot of things you could feel hopeless about. If you want to sort of work out objectively what’s the chance that the human species will survive for another century, probably not very high. But I mean, what’s the point? . . . First of all, those predictions don’t mean anything—they’re more just a reflection of your mood or your personality than anything else. And if you act on that assumption, then you’re guaranteeing that’ll happen. If you act on the assumption that things can change, well, maybe they will. Okay, the only rational choice, given those alternatives, is to forget pessimism.”

A major component of the craft of maintaining morale is not taking the advertised reality too seriously. In the early 1960s, when the overwhelming majority in the U.S. supported military intervention in Vietnam, Chomsky was one of the few U.S. citizens actively opposing it. Looking back at this era, Chomsky reflected, “When I got involved in the anti-Vietnam War movement, it seemed to me impossible that we would ever have any effect. . . . So looking back, I think my evaluation of the ‘hope’ was much too pessimistic: it was based on a complete misunderstanding. I was sort of believing what I read.”

An elitist assumption is that people don’t change because they are either ignorant of their problems or ignorant of solutions. Elitist “helpers” think they have done something useful by informing overweight people that they are obese and that they must reduce their caloric intake and increase exercise. An elitist who has never been broken by his or her circumstances does not know that people who have become demoralized do not need analyses and pontifications.  Rather the immobilized need a shot of morale.

Bruce E. Levine is a clinical psychologist and his latest book is Surviving America’s Depression Epidemic: How to Find Morale, Energy, and Community in a World Gone Crazy (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2007). His Web site is www.brucelevine.net

Now Available from CounterPunch Books!

Yellowstone Drift:
Floating the Past
in Real Time
by John Holt
Introduction by Doug Peacock

Click here to Buy!

Born Under a Bad Sky:
Notes from the Dark Side
of the Earth
By Jeffrey St. Clair

2010 Country Mamas of Petrolia
Calendar Now Available!

"Powerful and shocking ..
see this film"
-- Joseph Stiglitz on American Casino

Waiting for Lightning
to Strike:
The Fundamentals
of Black Politics
Kevin Alexander Gray

Click Here to Buy!

Spell Albuquerque:
Memoir of a
"Difficult Student"
By Tennessee Reed

Click Here to Buy!

The Inside Story of the Shannon Five's Smashing Victory Over the
Bush War Machine
By Harry Browne

Buy End Times Now!

Click Here to Buy!

Click Here to Order!

Humanitarian Imperialism
By Jean Bricmont