10-04-2010, 01:42 AM
Ed Jewett Wrote:By Michael Hasty
What perplexes me most is probably the same question that plagues most paranoiacs: why don’t other people see these connections?
Oh, sure, there may be millions of us, lurking at websites like Online Journal, From the Wilderness, Center for Cooperative Research, and the Center for Research on Globalization, checking out right-wing conspiracists and the galaxy of 9/11 sites, and reading columnists like Chris Floyd at the Moscow Times, and Maureen Farrell at Buzzflash. But we know we are only a furtive minority, the human remnant among the pod people in the live-action, 21st-century version of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.”
And being paranoid, we have to figure out, with an answer that fits into our system, why more people don’t see the connections we do. Fortunately, there are a number of possible explanations.
First on the list would have to be what Marshal McLuhan called the “cave art of the electronic age:” advertising. Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s Karl Rove, gave credit for most of his ideas on how to manipulate mass opinion to American commercial advertising, and to the then-new science of “public relations.” But the public relations universe available to the corporate empire that rules the world today makes the Goebbels operation look primitive. The precision of communications technology and graphics; the century of research on human psychology and emotion; and the uniquely centralized control of triumphant post-Cold War monopoly capitalism, have combined to the point where “the manufacture of consent” can be set on automatic pilot.
A second major reason people won’t make the paranoid shift is that they are too fundamentally decent. They can’t believe that the elected leaders of our country, the people they’ve been taught through 12 years of public school to admire and trust, are capable of sending young American soldiers to their deaths and slaughtering tens of thousands of innocent civilians, just to satisfy their greed -- especially when they’re so rich in the first place. Besides, America is good, and the media are liberal and overly critical.
Third, people don’t want to look like fools. Being a “conspiracy theorist” is like being a creationist. The educated opinion of eminent experts on every TV and radio network is that any discussion of “oil” being a motivation for the US invasion of Iraq is just out of bounds, and anyone who thinks otherwise is a “conspiracy theorist.” We can trust the integrity of our ‘no-bid” contracting in Iraq, and anyone who thinks otherwise is a “conspiracy theorist.” Of course, people sometimes make mistakes, but our military and intelligence community did the best they could on and before September 11, and anybody who thinks otherwise is a “conspiracy theorist.”
I don't know who Michael Hasty is either Ed, but its quite an excellent piece made more remarkable by the fact it was written over six years ago. Thanks for posting it Ed.
The paranoid shift is a journey essential to understanding the scope and nature of the Zionist power configuration which ended JFK's life and ruthlessly controlled US foreign policy ever since.
Owning the western world's media was and still is the key to their success, imo.