God do we Americans love spectacle… we just eat it up. Whether it’s a North Korean standoff, Mexican drug lords, or two young Chechen disaffected intellectuals roaming the streets of Cambridge ready to die rather than be tortured at Guantanamo, we just love spectacle and melodrama. Hollywood can’t keep up with reality! Actually, it can. It does. It creates our reality. You remember ARGO, right? Art is life. Well, most of our daily melodrama is produced and brought to you in large measure by Hollywood, the same ownership, the same investments, the same power players controlling the news, the press, the movies and the music. But, it still eludes the American public — you know, ‘Joe the plumber’ — how the political-military-security-entertainment complex all works in synchronized unison; how they constantly are setting us up for their imperial shenanigans and executing them nearly flawlessly – costumes, props, and all.
Anyone remember Dubya’s Axis of Evil or John McCain’s sudden love of the Beach Boys with his “bomb, bomb, bomb… bomb, bomb Iran?” Or what about those WMDs in Iraq and mushroom clouds hovering over New York, Washington and (O’s favorite resting place) Hawaii? And who will ever forget Osama the Saudi-Wonder-Boy, our erstwhile ally against that ever-looming Red Threat, a.k.a., Ivan-the-Terrible in Afghanistan? Or how about the Libyan Madman? Of course, the crazy Colonel had to be taken out with much drama and spectacle because he dared to suggest trading African oil for a newly minted African gold dinar rather than greenbacks? It was rather convenient to show other pretenders to the international monetary throne not to mess with Uncle Sam. And who can forget the televised manhunt with State and local police, ATF and FBI all tricked-out in their militarized riot-gear for a purported lone pre-pubescent shooter in the Connecticut woods? All spectacle, my friends. And brought to you live 24/7 courtesy of the same folks who profit from the very spectacles they produce. And, I do not distinguish here between producing the event and producing the spectacular media coverage of the event, the two become indistinguishable.
And now we have M3, the Massachusetts Marathon Massacre, allegedly perpetrated by two disaffected immigrant college students, Chechen no less… dangerous terrorist threats in their own right merely by ethnic association? So lets bring to bear all the various tools and weapons of the militarized security State at our imperial disposal. We will show the American public just how dangerous the homeland can be; and how good we are at finding the bad guys and taking them out… Geronimo! Why, the Boston police even brought in their own armored vehicles – tanks – to harass the wounded teenager into surrendering.
False flags and much chatter continues unabated to keep pressure on the American public while continuing to build up the internal security apparatus. And now all of a sudden there are terrorist plots popping up elsewhere, a planned train derailment in Canada with nothing less than an Iranian Al-Queda connection. Hmm, now isn’t that a rather convenient disclosure. Everyone, the overriding agenda has been set, and the players then do their parts as charged – TSA, ATF, FBI, state and local authorities, and of course, the media, to keep the pressure on. Now, I am not suggesting that Boston or 9/11 or anything else is a conspiracy perpetrated by our stately officials and their well-armed thugs. But still, there are questions that need be asked, and propaganda that is routinely delivered… by the pols, the snoops, the police, and the military, as well as by O’s secret army of homeland security forces… filtered, of course, through the press, a press corps itself owned by and beholding to the same cast of psychopaths.
But we further recognize, through this most recent and unfortunate bloodbath, that within the city walls all activity is and must remain well-monitored, not least by the ever-rolling cameras mounted on each and every street corner and warrantless wiretapping on cell and email. We must stay forever vigilant — ‘always be prepared’! Indeed, the monitoring and preparedness itself become self-justifying in light of such incidents; and perhaps that is the point. Whether or not some part of the hegemony had a hand in orchestrating this madness, it surely behooves them to play it up to the hilt, to make it spectacular! All the while, the increased security, surveillance and militarization of our ‘homeland’ retreats into a shadowy background as we remain enthralled and enraptured by the drama before us, forever vigilant of the the spectacles unfolding one after another in rapid succession. The expenditures on military and security, and the apparatchiks who control it all, can never be too extravagant when at any moment terror can strike at the heart of empire, and chaos loosed upon the land — the sacred homeland. The necessity of militarization, and the evaporation of “civil” rights, is granted without question or calculation of the costs.
No matter, we have got to stop the Reds, the Terrorists, the Islamists, the Chinese, the Mexican Druggies, the Al Qaeda, the Taliban, the North Koreans, the Iranian Theocrats, the Pakistani Pashtun, the Waco Wackos, the lunatic fringe, and any other regime, lone wolf, or self-described savior that threatens our “New American Century” and its sacred life-style. The owners of the means of production (of arms, entertainment, and consumables) will make certain of it. But who will stop the empire? What will stop this impervious machine, drone-ing on and on into the dark night of our planet and giving life to an emerging darkness in our own souls?
The answer, I think, is to be found in the repetitive cycles of nature, of return and renewal. Like the mythological Uruboros eating its own tale, Empire will consume itself in attempting to satisfy its diverse and ravenous appetites — for more oil, more resources, more consumers, more wage-slave laborers, more growth, more imperial expansion more control; the greed and hubris will consume itself. In this act of self-consumption, something new will emerge; but as in all natural cycles, the new will be an instantiation of the old. Nature will rectify the imbalance created by such artifice and seek to return itself to a balanced – homeostatic – condition.
Wait for it. Watch as it unleashes its own spectacle. Watch the earthquakes, the droughts, the vanishing of wildlife, the spoiling of the seas, the fouling of the air, the depletion of the soils, the melting of the ice caps, the storms, the floods, the vanishing coastlines. Watch the death, destruction, and disease as the spectacle unfolds and engulfs our cherished citadels of civilization. Watch the New American Century as it consumes itself in its ravenous acts of consumption; watch as the end approaches. Watch! And continue to tend your garden.
kulturCritic 
Too damn many humans having too damn many additional humans are the ultimate cause of all of spaceship Earth’s ills which, despite their much vaunted highest intellectual capabilities, conceitedly, known (by them) to exist in the entire Universe they are intellectually incapable of recognizing the destruction they do to the Earth and her flora and fauna, justifying excess after excess as absolutely required to maintain “our” way of life and fuck all of the other life. Last time I checked homo sapiens are included within the Earth’s fauna.
As one in the winter of his existence I may not exist long enough to witness the “end times” frivolities living here in a rural setting in NYs’ North Country; however, me thinks it will not be that all much fun to experience. The likelihood that any folks will be able to simply ride out the storm working the land by hand, per Kunstler, would appear to be vanishingly small.
Too damn many humans having too damn many additional humans are the ultimate cause of all of spaceship Earth’s ills which, despite their much vaunted highest intellectual capabilities, conceitedly, known (by them) to exist in the entire Universe they are intellectually incapable of recognizing the destruction they do to the Earth and her flora and fauna, justifying excess after excess as absolutely required to maintain “our” way of life and fuck all of the other life. Last time I checked homo sapiens are included within the Earth’s fauna.
Damn! You nailed it all right ‘chere! Kudos! It ain’t really all that hard to understand, is it?
Ken Hall you have nailed it. Too damn many humans indeed. This all has become some kind of Orwellian nightmare. Tanks for Christ sake. I even heard some commentator thinking predator drones should have been used. Ah the spectacle of it all,, and so much for posse comitatus.
Spot on!
“Watch the New American Century as it consumes itself in its ravenous acts of consumption; watch as the end approaches.”
we can but hope. hopefully some will survive, some first peoples up in the boreal forests perhaps.
people who are already living at a subsistence level lacking the technological refinements will have such an advantage, depending of course on how much land remains unspoiled. great post, i give it an A. 🙂
Nope. Hate to spoil it for you, but there will be no advantage. That will be the final “shit” of it all. But that’s how it always is. Fucked on the way up, fucked on the way down again. It SUCKS to be poor! That’s just the way it goes. Make your peace with it and let go is as good as it gets.
Good post! I’m guessing you’ve read up on the arctic methane problem. Scary shit ahead. Oh well I will be growing my seedlings soon and NOT planting to early this year!
Take care
Dean
Understood
Spectacle, indeed, and we were a nation transfixed, watching manpower and equipment roll out in ways we’ve seen only in foreign lands. Impressivo! We forget that other places endure such violence and much greater on a recurring basis, and lives continue and move on.
And to accomplish all you outline, the powers are willing to suspend Miranda rights, interview a sedated teen, move quickly to federal charges with the threat of execution, showing, mostly certainly that our justice is based on a vengeful god. Never do we look at the violence and destruction the almighty nation has cultivated worldwide for decades, and consider that the sword we live by has another side.
Wow!! JC!! What a wonderful rant. And Tom Dispatch is talking your language this week. See the link. Sandy
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175691/tomgram%3A_engelhardt%2C_field_of_nightmares/?utm_source=TomDispatch&utm_campaign=3eb6e93748-TD_Engelhardt4_23_2013&utm_medium=email#more
After being locked out of Boston on Friday, my son was there on Saturday. He thought the tank was really cool. What stuck with me is the image of the young man, with the paramedics working on him. What I saw was the same skinny body as my 17-year-old.
What assurance do we have of learning any truth? Will the ‘terrorist’ simply give the easiest story possible? Who filters the record? Of the course the wife of the brother will cooperate. The family expresses regret. Self-preservation.
As a nation, we simply still don’t get it. And while I understand the celebrations Friday night, the chants of “USA, USA” leave me nauseated by our stupidity.
Guess I continued the rant. 😉 Thanks for the link!
I am reserving judgment on the brothers, although they appear to be the guilty parties. However, we as a nation refuse to look beneath the spectacle and understand our national complicity in such incidents through our unrelenting and belligerent global behavior, and the presumption of a Pax Americana to be shoved down the throat of the rest of the world. Everyone should read my link from Tom Dispatch!
this is practically a companion article to the one you linked.
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175614/alfred_mccoy_super_weapons_and_global_domination
“When the U.S. entered World War I in 1917, the “father of U.S. military intelligence” Colonel Ralph Van Deman drew upon security methods he had developed years before in the Philippines to found the Army’s Military Intelligence Division. He recruited a staff that quickly grew from one (himself) to 1,700, deployed some 300,000 citizen-operatives to compile more than a million pages of surveillance reports on American citizens, and laid the foundations for a permanent domestic surveillance apparatus.”
both excellent articles, puts some flesh on the skeletons rattling around in the closet.
Sure does, doesn’t it.
Guilty parties? I guess, but who can really tell? This could all be totally fabricated, or more likely, facilitated/fabricated, for all we know. My new reserve judgment is false flag total bullshit until proven otherwise. I think whatever/whomever it is that governs the US right now has earned that right. And yes, I’ve read all of the recent Tom Dispatches. One might say, religiously!
And, of course, we also willingly ignore the militarization of our homeland; It is as if the terrorists and our leaders are marching lockstep with one another… or is that goose-step…?
jawohl
Jabberwocky!
You know at some point, somebody at the Minitrue is going to notice this blog. Let’s all hope it isn’t too soon.
The answer, I think, is to be found in the repetitive cycles of nature, of return and renewal. Like the mythological Uruboros eating its own tale, Empire will consume itself in attempting to satisfy its diverse and ravenous appetites — for more oil, more resources, more consumers, more wage-slave laborers, more growth, more imperial expansion more control; the greed and hubris will consume itself. In this act of self-consumption, something new will emerge; but as in all natural cycles, the new will be an instantiation of the old. Nature will rectify the imbalance created by such artifice and seek to return itself to a balanced – homeostatic – condition.
Wait for it. Watch as it unleashes its own spectacle. Watch the earthquakes, the droughts, the vanishing of wildlife, the spoiling of the seas, the fouling of the air, the depletion of the soils, the melting of the ice caps, the storms, the floods, the vanishing coastlines. Watch the death, destruction, and disease as the spectacle unfolds and engulfs our cherished citadels of civilization. Watch the New American Century as it consumes itself in its ravenous acts of consumption; watch as the end approaches. Watch! And continue to tend your garden.
Sandy,
Like those last two paragraphs in particular. Not that I’m wholly in agreement with your conclusion (And continue to tend your garden). But I think it sums up our current predicament quite well, and thus our current conflict as to “a way out.” And thar’s the rub of course, there really IS no way out.
And thar in once again, what do you really SAY about a society of which you are a blood carrying member of, that is so obviously going hell bent for leather over the proverbial existential cliff at exponentially increasing speed, and which you have virtually no control of whatsoever, whether you acknowledge it and go with the flow, or resist it with every fiber of your being and be drug over the cliff anonymously and/or ignominiously with all the rest?
I myself am utterly conflicted, and thus am always torn when I hear the prototypical “doomer” phrase, “tend to your garden.” On the one hand it’s a typical “back to the earth”, folksy kind of admonition that we all understand on a basic level (and which the artsy-fartsy types I occasionally share time with embrace!), but on the other hand it TOTALLY flies in the face of what we are actually talking about here, absent some sort of “New Earth God” religious miracle to reclaim the soil from several hundred years of ongoing industrial agricultural despoliation, which no doubt will simply HAVE to continue if the current population and it’s current projected gains are to be supported.
In short, and I hate to heap doom on doom, not only is the spectacle itself gonna be pretty magnificent/miserable (although spread over whole lifetimes, I imagine that most humans will cope somewhat “OK”, just as they do now) on the way down, but I seriously doubt that most will gather comfort from our early 21st century admonitions to “tend their gardens” in a natural environment that will no doubt resist even their technologically assisted efforts at every turn.
Whatever,
I REMAIN
DA
Mark Snow’s haunting music for contemplating the mythological Uroboros.
Or, one could bang one’s head against the wall to the tunes of a legendary head banger, who asks the musical question, WHO CAN WE GET ON THE CASE?:
I have to LOL at any of Ozzie’s videos when I watch them, as he always has that “scared shitless out of his mind” look that I think is only appropriate with ANY self-respecting drug- addict/junky/rock-star. I think it’s always admirable when one respects one’s chosen craft – no matter what it might be – and pays respect by honoring the time worn totems thus required. That it says something about late 20th century American culture is almost beside the point. But not quite, of course.
On the flip side, and to give Ozzie some much overdue credit, I always wonder which “you” he’s referring to in this song, which is also one of my favorites:
False flag INDEED all the way! No offense to the dead and the injured, but I was actually quite amused at the theater of it all as it unfolded. I said that same thing to a co-worker who insisted in sticking her head in the door with regular updates, and she gave me a horrified look of unbelief.
When I heard they put the whole damn city into lockdown the next day I knew for sure that this was all a false flag shock doctrine event. Not even subtle anymore, are they?
the most striking image coming out of this whole incident was a picture, and i wish i had saved it, where someone was taking a picture out of their window and down on the street was a cop? national guardsman? in a hatch on top of a humvee taking a bead on the citizen. good thing he didn’t “mistake” a camera for a gun as in the famous apache incident.
this is what it has come to, the authorities consider every member of the public a potential suspect. doesn’t matter, blue state, red state, it is an authoritarian mindset.
pure test lab, bugs under the microscope.
what gets me is that the ruling class knows full well what to expect when the population gets stressed like this, they have behavioral experts; so, either they don’t care, or they are conducting an experiment, or both. seriously, it’s not hard to figure ot that there will be blowback, they’re not that stupid.
my mind is occupied with philosophical questions, does any of this really matter? when the sun goes red giant we will be enveloped in fire anyway, but i won’t be around. so, i would be tending my little bucket garden, if it would just stop freezing at night.
Red,
Don’t put too much stock in anything you see from the media either way. After the second day, I wrote it ALL off as hyperbole. Pure smokescreen.
Philosophy vs. survival? Philosophy deals with what does it all mean. You choose. Survival deals with what do you do to survive. You DO what you DO to survive. Don’t confuse the two. PERIOD!
Marrying the two in your mind? Now THERE’s the rub!
DA
A funny take on the way American media respond to ‘ethnics’: http://www.ericgarland.co/2013/04/22/if-media-covered-american-culture-the-way-we-cover-foreign-cultures/
We Americans are pretty funny that way, aren’t we? Hey, what do you expect from such an isolated, insular, bunch of idiot/retards who “somehow” found themselves in charge of world affairs by self-asserted default? Although, we’re really just cheap Euro trash by proxy for the most part, so there’s no need to drag the Orientals into this argument at least.
But granted, American media, and Americans in general, ain’t all that “attuned” to anything beyond their own proverbial backyard fence now, are they?
I wrote these comments earlier this morning for another place but I think they apply here as well:
“I think what the coverage of the latest terror canard the Boston event has shown us is that the long trend of sleepwalking into the graveyard of empire continues unabated, and that the denizens of this country either will not wake up or, if express dissent, simply will be ignored amidst ‘the din’ of clanging and clamor for bogeymen to blame, self-congratulations for the authority, and enough entitlement to go around for all, all reality to the wind.
Reply ·
I think what the USA has sort of achieved is to combine the worst aspects of each system of governance/control in use over the past century, from fascism to communism to Randyanism (not libertarianism) to dictatorship to inverted totalitarian bureaucratic state etc., and strip the positive aspects like social cohesion and historical continuity, resulting in a dazed and lost populace left to the whims and fancies of their ‘officials’ rather than servants, the media conveying their orders.”
I think what the USA has sort of achieved is to combine the worst aspects of each system of governance/control in use over the past century, from fascism to communism to Randyanism (not libertarianism) to dictatorship to inverted totalitarian bureaucratic state etc., and strip the positive aspects like social cohesion and historical continuity, resulting in a dazed and lost populace left to the whims and fancies of their ‘officials’ rather than servants, the media conveying their orders.”
And I think you’ve hit the nail square on the head there my friend!
And just how have they accomplished this miraculous feat, is the key question to be answered I think. And the answer is, by providing JUST enough prosperity, or at least the hope for future prosperity to the masses that they’ll continue to fall in line. All based on continued cheap energy supplies which fuel the whole merry-go-round based on first world corporate/capitalist domination of available supplies, As well they should, since such hope is literally the only game in town. In short: we’ve populated based on our expectations, and now our populations demand that we continue to expect more of the same. We’re locked into a self-reinforcing destructive cycle. Like all such cycles, it won’t end well.
Just more annoying evidence of American deception and corruption:
Who would a thunk just 15 short years ago, just before the advent of the Bush bunch and in the fading glow of the Clinton “prosperity” years (of course, we now know all that was smoke and mirrors as well) that all this shit would come to pass? I think time’s actually accelerating!
You reflexes are getting slower…makes it seem like time speeds up
Pefect. And yet, what will come of this revelation? Pockets of outrage, perhaps, but what change? I’m afraid that after the first wave of critique recedes, we all just move on and the hypocrisy and deceit continue. Thanks for sharing.
Obviously, nobody is really watching. and Americans do not care how far they bend over when getting fkd
If you don’t even know it’s happening, you can’t even enjoy it. Thanks for not pulling punches! 😉
😉
In defense of Americans (who’d a thunk you’d ever hear that comment coming from me!?!), the aristocracy/hyper-rich are in on the fix, the extremely rich down to the merely comfortably wealthy are fat and happy, and thus, effectively bought and paid for, the aspiring wealthy (the upper management class) are still holding out hope of moving up, the merely professional class (me included) are acutely aware of both what they’ve managed to accrue so far AND the depths of the abyss they could SO EASILY fall into if they slip up just once, and the great mass of working class KNOW FULLY how fucked they are, and are taking refuge anywhere they can find it; drugs, alcohol, sex/porn/dysfunctional relationships, religion/cults, debt-based mindless consumerism, etc. Alas, the “American Dream” has finally become JUST THAT for most of us – A FUCKING DREAM. In the case of the working class and the lower reaches of the professional class (most of whom are SEVERAL levels above their capability level), to expect these people to be capable of or willing to exercise critical thinking in matters beyond their own personal life (if that!) – especially considering their complete addiction to the mass media hall of mirrors in all of its insidious forms – to any great extent whatsoever, is simply ludicrous. In short, our society as it’s currently organized is a FUCKING RECIPE for dictatorial tyranny, and SURPRISE, SURPRISE, that’s pretty much what we’ve got. Build it and they will come INDEED!
Love the clarity DA! LOL