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Dumbed Down Americans

by Kurt Nimmo

http://www.kurtnimmo.com/blog/  18 October 2004
www.globalresearch.ca     20 October 2004

The URL of this article is: http://globalresearch.ca/articles/NIM410A.html


Eric Margolis, writing for the Toronto Sun, poses the rhetorical question on many a mind: �Why do so many Americans still support George W. Bush after all those damning revelations about Iraq?� Margolis writes:

Part of the fault lies with the sycophantic national media, which collaborated with the Bush administration in whipping up war fever. The media still are not telling people the truth about Iraq, Afghanistan, or the so-called war on terrorism. � Many Republicans simply don�t see what the rest of the world does. So what if Iraq was no threat? Don�t bother these golf club Rambos with details. They�re delighted to see the U.S. pounding Arabs in revenge for 9/11. � Bush�s core Republican support lies in the suburbs and Bible-belt rural areas, where many people rely on TV sound bites for their world view, and have little understanding of history, geography or foreign affairs. This is the new �dumbed-down Republicans Party,� fertile ground for nationalist hysteria, religious extremism, and anti-foreign xenophobia. ( http://www.uruknet.info/?p=6422&hd=0&size=1&l=x )

Of course, it is not simply Republicans who are �dumbed down,� but Democrats as well, although they are generally less outwardly virulent. John Kerry tells us the Iraq occupation is winnable, that he will kill terrorists wherever he finds them, and preemptively slaughtering civilians is the god-given right of presidents, international law not withstanding. Few Americans seem to have a problem with this. Millions of Americans will vote for Kerry and if he ascends the imperial throne they will get behind his continuation of Bush�s policy in Iraq and elsewhere. Of course, the antiwar Democrats who initially backed Howard Dean are disillusioned, but this is of little consequence or importance. Neoliberalism marches on and the people are here to pay the bill and eventually provide conscripted bullet-stoppers. Bush and Kerry say a return to conscription�slavery in the name of empire�is out of the question. But reality dictates: there are enough bullet-stoppers �on the ground� to invade Iran and Syria or even hold the line�a line that shrinks daily�in Iraq.

Democrats who believe a Kerry administration will leave Iraq are seriously out of touch with reality. Kerry is so enamored with the demented Likudites and the unabashed war criminal Ariel Sharon, he chats with him on the telephone (http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/458362.html ).

 �Sharon told Kerry that the friendship between Israel and the United States transcended political parties,� in other words, the plan for Greater Israel will move forward regardless of who is in the White House. As Oded Yinon wrote in the early 1980s (http://www.geocities.com/alabasters_archive/zionist_plan.html#contents ), the motivating force behind Greater Israel is not only the expulsion or �transfer� (ethnic cleansing) of the Palestinians, but the �idea that all the Arab states should be broken down, by Israel, into small units,� as Israel Shahak summarizes Yinon (emphasis in the original). Israel, of course, is too small to break down more than 300 million Arabs, and that is why Ariel Sharon, the mass murderer of Sabra and Shatila, rings up John Kerry. If Bush loses the election, no doubt the Straussian neocons will exit stage (far) right, but AIPAC and the Republican fawners of everything Zionist in the U.S. Congress will remain.

Americans are clueless about all of this. As Margolis points out, the corporate media, essentially the Bush Ministry of Truth, has done an admirable job of brainwashing the masses, tricking them almost effortlessly into believing Saddam Hussein is responsible for 9/11 and, more recently, into believing the �problems� in Iraq (viz. the homegrown resistance) can be attributed to unrepentant Ba�athists and �foreigners,� in other words al-Qaeda and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (the latter who supposedly pledged fealty to Osama and the Afghan cave dwellers). Now we are told Syria sold Saddam �portable air defense systems, Kornet antitank guided missiles, rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), heavy machine guns, and 20 million machinegun rounds for delivery to Iraq� a month before the invasion, according to Fox News (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,135489,00.html ). Naturally, Syria is one of the next targets, along with a �nuclear� Iran, on the Zionist mafia hit list.

People �abroad� may find all of this quizzical�but they are not inundated with the pro-war culture thriving like a virus in the United States. Even for a person who does not sit passively before the telescreen and suck up Two Minute Hate sessions (such as myself), the depth and severity of the brainwashing in this country is obvious when you venture out into public: SUVs with yellow ribbon stickers affixed ("support our troops,� or support the murder of Iraqi civilians) and garish tributes to soldiers in gas stations and banks (for instance, my credit union has dedicated a wall to photos of soldiers). As for comparable antiwar displays, these are practically nonexistent, except for the occasional bumper sticker. Considering how deep �support� for what Bush and the Likudites are doing to Arabs�even if it is �dumbed down� support�chances are slim to none sanity will return to America in the near future, if ever.


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