please see this link<\/strong><\/a>. This is the last edition of the original series. Please watch for one additional installment by Eric this week. Thank you all for your thoughtful comments and letters about this series.]<\/p>\nNATIONALISM, WHICH IS a refined form of tribalism turned into a dangerous drug, is a frightening business, and one which we must grow out of if we are to become a peaceful global entity. Yes, we love our country, and we love our flag — or maybe the vote is out on that … maybe some of us in the US of A are mature enough to see that this nation is not always right, and as much as we love the flag we wince when we see it now, knowing what it represents. Will that get us kicked out of the tribe? Or worse — shot at dawn?<\/p>\n
There is a lie at the base of nationalism that is too often misused by the powerful — that we’re better than everyone else.<\/em> Everyone outside of our big national tent is just a “stranger,” not to be trusted; in a nation formed by an amalgam of immigrants, that’s not been an effortless sell … but the spin on 9\/11 swept us away. We’re us<\/em> — they’re them<\/em>. Where it gets dicey is when there is perceived threat. It is then that we’re called upon to sacrifice [rights, liberties, individualism, treasure, moral judgment, dissent] to the state in order to empower it against that which threatens it. The National Socialists used such mythology to drive their own to blindness, and ultimately, madness. Interestingly, both Germany in the 30’s and America in the last few years have entered into such a situation without an actual, a specific, enemy.<\/p>\nThe mood of mainstream Germany had been ploughed by years of circumstance — a growing decadence that alarmed the straight-laced, the loss of a world war, long periods of economic scarcity — so that a heavy-handed maniac like Hitler could produce an instant harvest when he planted a few lies into that fertile national soil. The Big Lie was easy enough for a defeated and deflated public to buy … we are superior and I will lead you to the greatness you deserve.<\/em><\/p>\nIt should be noted that Hitler and his minions created an emergency, declared one, and swept aside the German constitution in order to deal with it. It happened so quickly that most citizens weren’t aware of the magnitude of it, or the danger. After that … well … history tells that tale. So the Biggest Lie was that there was REASON for the rise of the Fatherland, other than cold, calculated ambition.<\/p>\n
It’s not difficult to find a parallel in the United States to this same lethal nationalism. Leaving out the obvious — that the far Right wants to distance from, if not destroy, everything that does not look and think exactly as do they — in the early 90’s, Newt Gingrich launched a war against the “obscene” [that being whatever he decided it was] and began a great harangue about the declining morals of our country that was echoed by the evangelicals in their uber-moralism. In the same way that Hitler dressed up the pretty young frauleins<\/em> like milkmaid’s and had them volkstanz<\/em> by the thousands to summon memories of homespun “values,” Gingrich and his ilk [i.e., Robertson, Falwell, Dobson] set out to remake us into little prototypes of Norman Rockwell’s America, praying devoutly over our Thanksgiving turkey and guarding the chastity of our children.<\/p>\nOur embarrassing war effort? We took a great drubbing on that Viet Nam affair and averted our eyes in shame, reeling back to the old reliable Cold War to keep our military industrial complex spinning … and when that came to an abrupt halt, we were suddenly without an enemy — how would we show our military superiority without one? How would we float our economic boat? We needed a new enemy … and fast.<\/p>\n
And what about that economy? Well — the Clinton years were flush, but they’d already showed us a dark underbelly of personal debt and desire for instant gratification. Now we know it also gave us loosey-goosey accounting practices and a ruthless streak of get-rich-quick’ism. And let’s never forget that the American consciousness has been sold lies for generations in corporate advertising. When I was a little kid, I remember Lucy lighting up on camera and telling me how much smoother and more delicious a [Pall Mall, Lucky Strike, Camel … who remembers!] was than any other brand — and hey! It was Lucy that said it, beloved redhead and television icon. What? We weren’t going to believe Lucy?<\/p>\n
We’re sold a bill of goods from dawn til dusk in this nation, we’re used<\/em> to being lied to, and now we even accept<\/em> that we’ll be victimized by business. After 9\/11, when those of us who remembered wars of the past expected to be asked to sacrifice for the national good, we were told to shop til we drop. Consume, citizen! Keep the corporate money going, Patriot! Keep the lies and the commerce moving along. We were told that the terrorists would win if we didn’t go on with our daily lives … but the terrorist within had already won; the emergency that was required for amping of militarism and conquest had already been established. It was our job is continue to fund it.<\/p>\nUntil recently, we considered the press a different entity than advertisement, but that’s moot at this point … news is held to a corporate standard, stockholders must be pleased and profit must be made. News is sold to the American public to direct them toward compliance with the most profitable outcome. Since Americans are a decent, if distractable, lot, and make decisions on what we understand to be true, truth is substituted with truthiness<\/em>, the facts kept from us as corporate and political policy — keep ’em shopping, keep ’em producing, keep ’em calm. You know — a kind of Arbeit Macht Frei<\/em>, but with an iPod and without the barbed wire. That’s old news in this nation, actually — what Henry David Thoreau called the quiet desperation of the average man<\/em>; but it’s the improved, upbeat version of drudgery and servitude in our new century.<\/p>\nAnd that hook-up … the quickly-fading hope for a better life than the last century, and the frantic race to achieve it … is like a decades-long heroin drip, delivering us a kind of faux-freedom — it leaves us disconnected from the earth that feeds us, distant from family ties that ground us, and hysterical lest something interfere with the privileges of our selected “lifestyle.” We scramble like rats in a maze to keep the drip coming … and we’d fight to the death if somebody took it away. The Soma of Huxley’s Brave New World<\/em> is our rampant consumerism, and we’re lost in its dreams.<\/p>\nWe were ripe for some sharp little despot to come along and tell us we’re not safe — and we bought it hook, line and sinker, offered up our liberties to keep the rat race protected, the children chaste and the flag waving. We have all the makings of serious fascism going on here, today — nationalism, corporatism, religious fervor, and a kind of public apathy that defies description. It’s hard … almost impossible … to accept that we’ve made these same egregious mistakes that history has warned us of [we should have guessed when we heard the term Homelan<\/em>d] or that this kind of prevarication has found purchase in the American national soul. But we did and it has … and the fault lies in ourselves, not our stars.<\/p>\nThe biggest lies of all are the ones we tell ourselves, the ones our ego’s whisper to us in the night. They’re not like us. We’re morally superior. God is on our side. What we do, we do for the benefit of all. What we do is necessary. The government will keep us safe. Winning is everything. <\/em>And the worst of them … They want to hurt us; we have to kill them.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n <\/em><\/p>\nThe chatter of ages. Big lies. The oldest lies, the one’s that have delivered nations into obscurity for eons … but not without first leveling them for their arrogance and aggression, leaving a legacy of repression and mass murder behind as their “comma” in the history books.<\/p>\n
Freedom isn’t free. It requires constant diligence. It requires us to want it badly enough to fight for it, to guard against it’s erosion — our failed delivery of “democracy” in Iraq should tell us that it can’t be given, it must be earned. The Rightys will tell us the price of freedom is the sacrifice of our liberties in these troubled times, and the acceptance of the loss of our children deployed to kill those who are deemed enemies. But freedom isn’t about killing others to keep it … it’s about policing the mythologies and illusions about who we are as a nation and entering the uncomfortable space of taking responsibility for every policy and action. Freedom isn’t a condition of the body, it’s a state of the soul.<\/p>\n
Hitler’s Germany compromised it’s soul to care for the “rise” of it’s body … and in so doing it stacked the actual bodies of the poor, frightened “enemy” … innocents all, including children and old people … like cord wood for the fire. America has compromised her soul by allowing herself to be led by cowards and liars … how different is Bush’s policy of preemption than Hitler’s Blitzkrieg<\/em>? How different are Hitler’s earliest concentration camps [designed to incarcerate political prisoners … called enemies of the regime … and security risks] than Abu Ghraib and Gitmo and the thousands of nameless, faceless political prisoners [called enemy combatants] they hold? How different is Hitler’s Aryan Brotherhood fantasies than George Bush’s Onward Christian Soldiers jihad? Aren’t the mythologies they sell us — return to a grandeur we never actually embodied and the notion that the end justifies the means — chillingly similar?<\/p>\nLies. Big ones. They ripped the world apart in the last century, within our memory — they’re being used to do it again. I guess the only question left to us is … what’s freedom worth to us? And what are we going to do about it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Freedom isn’t free. It requires constant diligence. It requires us to want it badly enough to fight for it, to guard against it’s erosion — our failed delivery of “democracy” in Iraq should tell us that it can’t be given, it must be earned. The Righty’s will tell us the price of freedom is the sacrifice of our liberties in these troubled times, and the acceptance of the loss of our children deployed to kill those who are deemed enemies. But freedom isn’t about killing others to keep it … it’s about policing the mythologies and illusions about who we are as a nation and entering the uncomfortable space of taking responsibility for every policy and action. Freedom isn’t a condition of the body, it’s a state of the soul.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[357],"tags":[1789,361,373,362,360,117,363],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4010"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4010\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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