The Power of Nightmares

I've  previously written about a BBC documentary called "The Power of Nightmares," but I want to mention it again because it repeatedly seems relevant. The following are the opening words the documentary :

In the past, the power of politicians promised to create a better world. They had different ways of achieving this, but their power and authority came from the optimistic visions they offered their people . . . Politicians were seen simply as managers of public life. But now they have discovered a new role that restores their apparent authority. Instead of delivering dreams, politicians now promise to protect us . . . from nightmares.
While reading the following passage from The Happiness Hypothesis (written by Jonathan Haidt), I was reminded of the "The Power of Nightmares":
When the moral history of the 1990s is written, it might be titled desperately seeking Satan. With peace and harmony ascendant, Americans seemed to be searching for substitute villains. We tried drug dealers (but then the crack epidemic waned) and a child abductors (who are usually one of the parents). The cultural right vilified homosexuals; the left vilified racists and homophobes. As I thought about these various villains, including the older villains of Communism and Satan himself, I realized that most of them share three properties: they are invisible (you can’t identify the evil one from appearance alone) their evil spreads by contagion, making it vital to protect impressionable young people from infection (for example from communist ideas, homosexual teachers, were stereotypes on television); and the villains can be defeated only if we all pull together as a team. It became clear to me that people want to believe they are on a mission from God, or that they are fighting for some secular good (animals, fetuses, women’s rights), and you can’t have much of a mission without good allies and a good enemy.

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Sizing up the Occupy movement and the para-military government response

Glenn Greenwald describes the status of the Occupy movement, both the hope for continued vitality and the disturbing para-military response by our government.

The reason the U.S. has para-militarized its police forces is precisely to control this type of domestic unrest, and it’s simply impossible to imagine its not being deployed in full against a growing protest movement aimed at grossly and corruptly unequal resource distribution. As Madeleine Albright said when arguing for U.S. military intervention in the Balkans: “What’s the point of having this superb military you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?” That’s obviously how governors, big-city Mayors and Police Chiefs feel about the stockpiles of assault rifles, SWAT gear, hi-tech helicopters, and the coming-soon drone technology lavished on them in the wake of the post/9-11 Security State explosion, to say nothing of the enormous federal law enforcement apparatus that, more than anything else, resembles a standing army which is increasingly directed inward.
For those who want to help the protesters through the winter, Greenwald suggest that FireDogLake has done an excellent job of raising money to by cold weather clothing and gear for the protesters. If you would like to pitch in, visit FDL.

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America’s failed plan for Iraq

At TruthDig, Tom Englelhart takes a look at America's plan for Iraq and then examines the facts, concluding that it is the American nightmare.

Washington, though visibly diminished, remains an airless and eerily familiar place. No one there could afford to ask, for instance, what a Middle East, being transformed before our eyes, might be like without its American shadow, without the bases and fleets and drones and all the operatives that go with them. As a result, they simply keep on keeping on, especially with Bush’s global war on terror and with the protection in financial tough times of the Pentagon (and so of the militarization of this country).

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The so-called Iranian terrorist plot

About a year ago, I was speaking to man whose son was serving in the U.S. military in Iraq. Without any provocation the man announced to me that we ought to simply drop a nuclear bomb on Iran and "take care of that problem once and for all."   I was not surprised to hear such a blunt call for such widespread sterile violence. I'd heard talk like this before on AM talk radio, and I've heard it since. I'm well-aware that many of our conservative citizens and politicians are wired up in this Manichean/essentialist way, where all people residing in the Middle-East are suspect (or worse) and America is the greatest nation in the history of the entire galaxy, no matter that it refuses to take care of its own while burning $2 billion/week in Afghanistan. I've heard far too many people speak simplistically of burning millions of Iranians in a nuclear fire, all the while racking up such a proposed mass-murder with a shrug after labeling it "collateral damage."   This is what it's now like in the horror-carnival that much of America has become. For those of us who are able to pull our minds out of tribal mode even a bit are witness to hordes of blindered fellow citizens who have been turned intensely incurious by a mass media obsessed with conflict pornography and urged on by psychopathic politicians. [More . . .]

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Peter Singer discusses robots and the future of war

At this TED talk, Peter Singer explains how robots are increasingly replacing soldiers, but they are turning war into entertainment akin to video games, encouraging "war porn" videos, creating "cubicle warriors," and painting us as cold-hearted aggressors to the rest of the world. And it's about to get a lot worse, when armed autonomous systems come online. Singer argues that many ethics issues are lagging far behind the dangers of widely implementing these robot technologies. He also suggests that the problem is not in the machines themselves, but in the fact that we appear to be "wired for war."

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