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August
12, 2002
Psychic and Political Numbing
in Preparations for War
by Fran Shor
While the Bush Administration prepares for war
on Iraq with full-scale weapons production and troop deployments,
more insidious conditioning for the public acceptance of war
continues. In the face of repeated statements by Bush and the
hawkish members of his ruling clique of the need for "regime
change" in Iraq, international opinion has been forthright
in its condemnation of such proposed aggression. However, in
the absence of the mobilized outrage of the American people,
the Washington power elite will be emboldened to carry out their
war plans. Why the American public, so far, has been lackadaisical
in its response to this saber rattling may be reflective of the
increase of psychic and political numbing opportunistically manipulated
by the Bush Administration since 9/11.
Psychic numbing, according to the psychiatrist
Robert Jay Lifton, builds on well-known defense mechanisms, such
as repression, denial, and projection, to create an exclusion
of feeling and disconnectedness. Aided by the surfeit of stimuli
from televisual culture and media-manipulated images, people
may tune out those realities and possibilities that threaten
their own sense of connection to the world. In the case of 9/11,
the Bush Administration quickly exploited the anger of the American
people without allowing a grieving process to mature. Drowning
out the voices of survivors and their families who opposed retaliation,
war on Afghanistan was initiated. Begun as a campaign to seek
and destroy Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network, a network
created by the CIA in the 1980's, the intervention in Afghanistan
quickly became an exercise in imperial politics and the lethal
arrogance of power.
In manufacturing consent for the war
in Afghanistan, the corporate media deliberately initially excluded
scenes of civilian deaths. Now, however, with additional reporting
and investigation by world-wide news agencies and the United
Nations, the American public is being confronted with the extensive
violence visited upon the innocent Afghans. Nonetheless, the
desensitizing of the American public to the deaths of these differently
constituted others (by ethnicity, class, and nationality) is
a form of psychic numbing that may allow for the larger massacre
of civilians in Iraq.
Of course, the American public has been
bombarded with images and stories about the evil policies of
Saddam Hussein. While highlighting his use of chemical weapons
against Iraqi Kurds and Iranians, one rarely finds any mention
of Washington's support for Saddam Hussein during the 1980's
when these events happened. Moreover, while the Bush Administration
has been busy undermining international treaties dealing with
Chemical and Biological weapons, it has hypocritically insisted
on unfettered inspections of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction,
weapons which many experts and former inspectors, such as Scott
Ritter, allege have been severely eroded. Nonetheless, the targeting
of the truly despicable Saddam Hussein is a convenient propaganda
device to exclude consideration of the death and destruction
already suffered by innocent Iraqis. A war on Iraq will only
further harm massive numbers of civilians without guaranteeing
a democratic and stabile post-Saddam regime and region. Since
the Bush Administration is more interested in seeking filial
retribution and oil while sowing the seeds of further war-making
possibilities, it refuses to recognize the catastrophic violent
consequences of its intended intervention.
Part of the political numbing that the
Bush Administration has visited on the American public is intimately
connected to the fear and intimidation launched by the Ashcroft's
jack-booted Department of Justice (sic). With overwhelming Congressional
support, the USA Patriot Act was passed, establishing a wide
variety of legal mechanisms to undermine the Bill of Rights.
Although still used against those swarthy others, legislation
is in place to deter real opposition to the policies of an increasingly
authoritarian government. Added to this is the recent FBI reorganization,
a reorganization that facilitates spying on the public without
any court orders or even evidence of wrong-doing. Moreover, the
Bush Administration has made clear its intent to deny constitutionally-mandated
judicial oversight in its refusal to turn over documents to the
judge overseeing one of the cases of a so-called enemy combatant."
Perhaps it may be time to raise the whole
matter of the "F" word. It certainly seems reasonable
to call this erosion of liberties and rights creeping fascism,
albeit a postmodern fascism that does not need to rely on mass
mobilization for realizing a proto-fascist agenda. In one of
the most brilliant analyses of everyday life in Nazi Germany,
Detlev Peukert devoted a whole chapter to "The Atomization
of Everyday Life" (Inside Nazi Germany, pp. 236-42). Combining
a form of psychic numbing with political numbing, many Germans
just retreated from any public political life and took refuge
in their own isolation. Since there is much evidence to support
the tendency towards atomization and privatization of everyday
life in the United States, it may not require utilizing any reference
to fascism, whether postmodern or not. On the other hand, when
an administrative authority relies on the militarization of everyday
life to pursue a repressive and aggressive agenda, it may be
necessary to raise the specter of fascism.
Promising a war without end and hiding
behind a jingoistic veil of war against terrorism, the Bush Administration
is promoting its own narrow interests in oil and order. War-making
was as essential to Italian and German fascism as it is to this
illegal and illegitimate ruling clique in Washington, DC. If
we are to avoid being dragged into further fascistic adventures,
we need to throw off this psychic and political numbing and to
mobilize at every level to oppose the policies and plans of a
war-mad power elite.
Fran Shor
teaches at Wayne State University in Detroit. He is an anti-war
activist and member of several human rights and peace and justice
organizations. He can be reached at: aa2439@wayne.edu
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