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Fear as a Money Machine
A country programmatically gripped by fear -- yes, that's us for more than eight years now. Fear of terrorism to be exact, even as truly terrible things happened in this land and elsewhere, from hurricane Katrina in 2005 to last week's devastating Haitian earthquake, which should have put our fears into perspective. But no such luck.
Since 9/11, the thought of "terrorism" has seized the U.S. by the throat. People who are terrified of flying for fear of a terrorist attack are perfectly willing to drive a car to the nearest mall without a passing worry, even though traffic fatalities indicate that this is a relatively dangerous act. There were a staggering 34,000 fatal crashes in the U.S. in 2008, 12.25 fatalities for every 100,000 Americans, and carmakers are now intent on featuring ever more immersive Internet-linked "infotainment systems" on dashboards. These are sure to up the distraction level and lead to more deaths on the highway, and yet the country is barely focused on this fact. And mind you, despite all the attention, not one American died in a terrorist attack on an airplane last year. In fact, Nate Silver of the website FiveThirtyEight.com recently crunched a few numbers and came up with the following: "the odds of being on [a] given [airplane] departure which is the subject of a terrorist incident have been 1 in 10,408,947 over the past decade."
But keep in mind that fear, wherever directed, is a remarkably profitable emotion to exploit. Just think of those controversial full-body-scan machines now being installed in airports at a cost of up to $170,000 each. One promoter of them is former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Michael Chertoff, "who now heads the Chertoff Group, which represents one of the leading manufacturers of whole-body-imaging machines, Rapiscan Systems." He's part of a growing "full-body-scanner lobby" of ex-Washington politicos just made for our moment.
Every jolt of terror, in other words, is a jolt of profit for some company or set of companies. After a while, those jolts of fear become repetitive adrenaline rushes for a whole set of interests which, in the American system, soon hire lobbyists, corner senators and congressional representatives, retain law and publicity firms, and live well as long as people remain terrified.
If these last years tell us anything,
it's that money follows fear. By 2006, for instance, the Department of
Homeland Security, that second Defense Department, a huge, unwieldy bureaucracy
created from the terror of terror, already had a
mini-homeland-security-
At the comical (but also profitable) end of this spectrum of fear were all those places like Old MacDonald's Petting Zoo, the Amish Country Popcorn factory, and the Mule Day Parade that were put into the DHS's National Asset Database as "potential terror targets," opening up the possibility that they might receive DHS money to protect them. "The database," reported the New York Times, "is used by the Homeland Security Department to help divvy up the hundreds of millions of dollars in antiterrorism grants each year." Consider just the Weeki Wachee mermaids at Weeki Wachee Springs in Hernando, Florida. In 2005, the St. Petersburg Times reported that the Weeki Wachee staff was "teaming up with the Hernando County Sheriff's Office to ‘harden the target'" -- as they attempted to access DHS anti-terrorism funds "allocated to the Tampa Bay region." ("'I can't imagine (Osama) bin Laden trying to blow up the mermaids,' [marketing and promotion manager John] Athanason said. ‘But with terrorists, who knows what they're thinking. I don't want to think like a terrorist, but what if the terrorists try to poison the water at Weeki Wachee Springs?'")
All of this might be dismissed as a joke, if American life weren't filled with phantasmagoric terrors that are also money machines. Everywhere that fear rules, people exploit it, making money off it; and it's in the nature of the beast for them to want the gift-that-never-stops-giving to go on forever.
Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. His latest book, co-authored with Nick Turse, is Terminator Planet: The First History of Drone Warfare, 2001-2050. His other most recent book is The United States of Fear (Haymarket Books). Previous books include: The End of Victory Culture: a History of the Cold War and Beyond, The American Way of War: How Bush's Wars Became Obama's, as well as of a novel, The Last Days of Publishing. To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com here.
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22 Comments so far
Show AllFirst read, "1984" by Orwell and then watch "The Prisoner" starring McKean. These two represent a study manual and traning film that are being used by our administration.
I'd throw in Huxley's "Brave New World," which might be closer to what is actually happening: Using technology to keep us distracted with a surfeit of trivialities that helps us collectively swallow the propaganda of American Exceptionalism.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Who will guard the guardians, watch the watchers, etc?)
Hello Curtis,
You should add the original "The Prisoner" starring Patrick McGoohan. It will fill out the training film side.
"I am not a number! I am a free man!"
Our representatives and ex-politicos are so far divorced from what it means to be an "average American citizen" that they can't possibly represent us, let alone keep us safe!
However, they've made a multi-million dollar industry out of "terrorism fear" which will never be dissolved. Our country is doomed by a "mindset" (fear of terrorism) that lives and thrives within our country, courtesy of those who are supposed to keep us safe from it.
A prime example of the idiocy and stupidity of this country's national security regarding America's perpetual war on terror is a story that was in this past Sunday's Oregonian. The article described how Michael Hicks was constantly frisked and searched by airport security whenever he and his family went through an airport in the United States. This is because Homeland Security [a name which could have come right out of 1930s Nazi Germany] said that Michael Hicks supposedly shared a similar name with someone else whose name was on a security list. Michael Hicks also happens to be eight years old. This harassment of Michael Hicks has also been going on since he was two years old when he was patted down at the airport known, without any apparent irony, as Newark Liberty International Airport.
As Tom Englehardt correctly notes, fear is an effective way of ruling a country. When the government implements draconian measures by harassing and intimidating two year old and eight year old Americans then, as Ben Franklin observed, one ends up with neither freedom nor security. And the people and especially the leaders of this country, for the most part, meekly go along with this charade.
"When old enemies disappear, mellow, or turn into allies, as frequently happens in international relations, new enemies must be found and new threats must be discovered. The failure to replenish the supply of enemies is the supreme threat facing any national security bureaucracy."-Richard Barnet [1929-2004], American scholar and activist
>>Indeed, the tinkering has already started. Some of it is being undertaken by people for whom the Constitution is merely a scrap of paper, a set of judicial decisions, and a repository of rhetoric and precedents to be used by their high-paid lawyers and public relations people. Some of it is being perpetrated by presidents and others who have taken formal oaths to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." Sometimes knowingly, often unwittingly, both types of people will spare no pains in preserving those parts of the written or unwritten constitution that protect the rights of "corporate persons" while undermining, attacking, or perverting those parts of the Constitution that promote the welfare and liberties of the great majority of all other persons.<<
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If this slow process of subverting constitutional freedoms should engender protest, the Men in Black may well respond with judicial jiujitsu. The administrative reform and reorganization of the judicial system, for example, is needed to overcome backlogs of cases and provide speedier trials. It would require the consolidation of the judicial system, the development of merit systems for judicial employees, the raising of judicial salaries, and stricter standards for outlawing "objectionable" lawyers, all of which poses ample opportunity for undermining legal protection in the name of reform or efficiency.
Judicial approval of new functions for grand juries serves as another example. Historically, federal grand juries were created as a bulwark against the misuse of executive authority. The Fifth Amendment states that a person should not be tried for a serious crime without first being indicted by a grand jury. Thus, a prosecuting attorney's charges would not be sufficient-at least not until upheld by a specially selected jury operating in secret sessions. Historically, grand juries have been widely used to investigate charges of corruption in local government. More recently, they have been set up to investigate political cases under federal criminal laws dealing with subversion and the draft. There have been times when at least twelve federal grand juries were operating simultaneously and using their subpoena power vigorously. Collectively, these may be regarded 8S "trial runs" which a Supreme Court on the road to friendly fascism would perfect with decisions upholding the wide use of subpoena power by the grand juries and the denial of transcripts to witnesses.
The strong point of a friendly fascist grand jury system is the "Star Chamber" secrecy that could be made operational throughout the fifty states. But this should not obscure the contrapuntal value of a few highly publicized trials. A grand jury indictment can do more than merely set the stage for a showcase trial. It can sort out conflicting evidence in such a way as to induce a self-defeating defense. This can be much more effective than the elaborately contrived "confessions" developed by the Russian secret police in the many purges of Old Bolsheviks. Shrewd and technically expert legal strategies could crucify opponents without allowing them-dead or alive-to be converted into martyrs.
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If friendly fascism arrives in America, the faceless oligarchy would have little or nothing to gain from a single-party system. Neither an elitist party along Bolshevik lines nor a larger mass party like the Nazis would be necessary. With certain adjustments the existing "two party plus" system could be adapted to perform the necessary functions.
The first function would be to legitimate the new system. With all increases in domestic repression, no matter how slow or indirect, reassurance would be needed for both middle classes and masses. Even in the past, national elections have provided what Murray Edelman has described as "symbolic reassurance." According to Edelman, elections serve to "quiet resentments and doubts about particular political acts, reaffirm belief in the fundamental rationality and democratic character of the system, and thus fix conforming habits of future behavior."
Second, political-party competition would serve as a buffer protecting faceless oligarchs from direct attack This would not merely be a matter of politics-as when the slogan of "ballots not bullets" is used to encourage the alienated to take part in electoral processes. It would be a question of objectives. The more that people are encouraged to "throw the rascals out," the more their attention is diverted from other rascals that are not up for election: the leaders of macrobusiness, the ultra-rich, and the industrial-military-police-communications-health-welfare complex. Protests channeled completely into electoral processes tend to be narrowed down, filtered, sterilized, and simplified so that they challenge either empire nor oligarchy.
In their march to power in Germany, Italy, and Japan, the classic fascists were not stupid enough to concentrate on subverting democratic machinery alone. They aimed their main attack, rather, against the nongovernment organizations most active in using and improving that machinery; namely, the labor movement and the political parties rooted in it. In Germany, where these organizations seemed immensely powerful, many German leaders thought that even with Adolf Hitler as chancellor, fascism could make little headway. They underestimated the Nazis and their Big Business backers. "All at once," observed Karl Polanyi, the historian, "the tremendous industrial and political organizations of labor and other devoted upholders of constitutional freedom would melt away, and minute fascist forces would brush aside what seemed until then the overwhelming strength of democratic governments, parties and trade unions."
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The heat for the meltdown is applied on four major fronts. First, the union-busters operate on the principle of containing labor organization to those places where unions already exist. This requires strenuous efforts to preserve a "union-free environment" in the South, in small towns, and among white-collar, technical, and migratory workers. When efforts are made to extend unionism into one of these areas, the union-busters come in to help the managers conduct psychological warfare. Often, the core of such a campaign is "the mobilization of supervisors as an anti-union organizing committee." Each supervisor may be asked to report back to a consultant, often daily, about the reactions of employees. There may be as many as twenty to twenty-five meetings with each employee during a union campaign. In one successful campaign at Saint Elizabeth's hospital outside of Boston, according to Debra Hauser, the methods used included the discriminatory suspension or firing of five union activists; surveillance, isolation, interrogation and harassment of other pro-union employees; and misrepresentation of the collective bargaining process by top management. "This resulted in the creation of an atmosphere of hysteria in the hospital."
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... a first principle of any replacement coup in the First World is that the replacers operate in the name of "law and order" and appear as the defenders of the Constitution against others eager to use force against it. Something along these lines happened in Japan back in 1936 when a section of the army staged a short-lived revolt against the "old ruling cliques." The defeat of this "fascism from below," as Japanese historian Masao Maruyama points out, facilitated "fascism from above," respectable fascism on the part of the old ruling cliques. In modern America, much more than in Japan of the 1930s, the cloak of respectability is indispensable. Thus a "feint" coup by Know Nothing rightists or a wild outburst of violence by left-wing extremists could be effectively countered by the military establishment itself, which, in defending the Constitution, could take the White House itself under protective custody.
More at: http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Fascism/Friendly_Fascism_BGross.html
It's striking, how Gross nailed it so many years ago. I recall his statement about when fascism comes to America don't expect to see brown shirts marching along Fifth Avenue; they will be guys in suits carrying brief cases.
It seems to me that every single 'incident' since and including 9/11 looks like a put-up inside job. Even the most recent one; I wouldn't trust Michael Chertoff across the street with a quarter.
Among the many many horrendous mistakes of the Bush administration was their reaction to the terrorist attacks of September, 2001. Instead of the multi-billion dollar bribery program to prohibit the victims of the terror attacks access to the civil courts to recoup their losses due to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, what if instead Bush had chosen to allow the court system to function as it was intended.
First of all both United and American airlines would have been forced into bankruptcy in the weeks following 9/11. Also the corporations handling security at the airports the terrorists departed from would have faced bankruptcy. Boeing, for designing airplanes with faulty cockpit access doors, would have lost millions of dollars.
The victims of 9/11 would have gained access to the air traffic records of 9/11. The victims of 9/11 would have gained access to the financial records of the 9/11 terrorists. The victims of 9/11 would have had the legal standing to investigate indications of foreknowledge of the terror attacks of 9/11.
The downside of this would have been losses to the stockholders of United and American airlines stock would have seen their investments become worthless and Boeing stockholders would have seen the value of their stock decline.
The upside of this is that every corporation in the United States would have seen security lapses as a grave problem that could result in the bankruptcy of the corporation. Corporations would have been forced to examine their security and the potential costs that could be incurred from lapses in security and then they would have been forced to address these threats to the well being of the corporation as a matter of due diligence. .
Instead, due to the reaction of the Bush administration, the financial burden of lapses in security was transferred away from the corporations and onto the Federal government and the taxpayers. Corporations, instead of addressing their security risks, went on with business as usual knowing that any catastrophic lapse in security that resulted in millions of dollars of liability would be the burden of Uncle Sam instead of the burden of the corporation. Instead of each corporation examining their risks and addressing how best to address those risks the Federal government created another bureaucracy second in size on to the defense department to oversee the threat of terrorism to the United States.
At this point one would be inclined to look at the motivations of the Bush administration that lead to this reaction, but what’s the point since political liability is something that is no longer important in the United States unless it involves sex.
Bush, Cheney, and Rove embraced fear mongering as the GOP neocons' partisan tool of choice in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Eight years of focused propaganda campaigning - anthrax hysteria, shoe bombs, color coded alert levels, Iraqi WMD about to be slipped to Osama bin Laden or some other faceless Al Qaeda evil doers, the rise and fall of the arch fiend Zarkawi, Abu Ghraib-style torture successfully thwarting a dozen post-9/11 terrorist attacks and saving thousands of innocent American lives - it is the deliberate inserting of constant fear of terrorism (real, hyped or wholly imaginary) into the mainstream media domestic political dynamic which is the true enduring legacy of the Bush/Cheney era.
Be afraid. Be very, very afraid.
Trust our heroic soldiers and our vigilant spooks to keep the kiddies safe from all those swarthy boogeymen. Kill them over there, before we have to fight them over here. Bring it on.
Here we are, less than a year after the Obama inauguration celebration, and our new, Nobel laureate President stands flanked on the White House lawn by the two men hand picked to put the public face upon America's humanitarian relief effort in earthquake-devastated Haiti: Bubba Clinton to Barack's right, and grinning away on the Commander in Chief's left, none other than George W. Bush.
How appalling. How disgusting. How shameless. The fraud of a man who many consider an international war criminal, the man who gave us preemptive war, torture, the debacle of Katrina and New Orleans levees, plus the ouster of Aristide from Port au Prince into exile in South Africa stands there grandiosely and graciously rehabilitated.
How politically tone deaf can one politician possibly be?
Bill from Saginaw
"The only thing to fear is fear itself - especially in other people."
Watch the Power of Nightmares. It's quite enlightening.
You can see it on YT.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vt-FyuuWlWQ
A country programmatically gripped by fear -- yes, that's us for more than eight years now. Fear of terrorism to be exact . . .
I fear he United States government on a daily basis more than I do terrorists.
Fear is a conservative thing
Their stock in trade so to speak. Fear of the new, of change, of others unlike oneself. Fear is page one of the reprobate playbook.
Gary
There are interesting questions that full body scanners may NOT be medically benign particularly for frequent traveller. Concerns are raised about pregnant women. NONE OF THESE MACHINES ARE REQUIRED TO BE FDA-CERTIFIED though they are aiming their very high frequencies directly at the groin.
You know, to catch the next underwear bomber.
The one thing that hasn't been picked up on is this. Why does Chertoff run a company that just happens to make this type of machine? This seems very suspicious to me. Did he know something like this would be needed in the future? Or is this another conspiracy theory?
Isn't it sad that we question every single aspect of our government and wonder if they have our interests at heart or is it just another money making scheem to them.
I am so tired of the rich getting so much richer than us while I am making it paycheck to paycheck. Not even that. Without the help of my parents I would really be hurting.
Something is malignantly wrong with this world what with power and money being the driving force.
Anyone listen to Democracy Now today? MLK's war speech was being played. I think if he was still alive today he would have some very harsh words for the US. JFK, Eisenhower, hell even JC, if any of them were alive today they would be heartbroken. As for JC, I think the Christian Right would probably crucify him again. No pre existing conditions, coming down on the bankers and all the adultry that the Repubs do. Think about it
a this point in time , i believe, any woman in the child bearing age group is subject to a pregnancy test prior to an xray, to protect the fetus. for this same reason, i hope the machines being considered for whole body scanning provide substantially less radiatio than an xray. also consider that xray exposure risk is lifetime cumulative, thereby frequent flyers will be exposed to substantially greater radiation. just something else to help the aviation industry.
Fear programming targets the reptilian brain, where fear and anger lurk and logic has trouble entering. That way the death of a very few can be magnified over the death of a very many. We killed, or caused to die, half a million Iraqi's in the last 7 years, but almost none of them was seen by us here in the U.S. That would cause a dissonance in the reptilian brain, which is supposed to feel fear of Muslims, and pity for our own losses, rather than the other way around. The more logical mammaliam brain may hear the half-a-million statistic, but with no images to correlate it to, it remains just a statistic, not something with a visceral connection. Definitely not something to keep one up awake at night. But, with repeated coverage by the media, the 9-11 terror attacks can be kept alive in the reptilian brain of most Americans. This gives them an instant point of reference once a REAL terror attack occurs, even a failed one like the underwear bomber. Thus the potential deaths of a single airliners passengers can be made to carry more weight than a half-a-million REAL deaths, by our decision to invade, including tens of thousands of children.
>>That would cause a dissonance in the reptilian brain, which is supposed to feel fear of Muslims, and pity for our own losses,<< Pity? The R-Complex feels pity? I dinna think so.
Good points otherwise however.
Logic and rational reasoning stands little chance against irrational fears for most of us. All of us in some instances I fear. (pun intentional)
Gary
Fear, Desire and Duty - the Three Temptations of the Buddah.
Man is Free at Last only after his EGO dies.