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Mickey Z
Cool Observer
the Department of Homeland Security.
Monday, February 28, 2005
Decoding the Support-the-Troops Spin
We grow up watching war movies and playing with guns. We’re surrounded by war memorials and war monuments…and are taught to respect and fear those in uniform. As we get older (and perhaps more skeptical), we witness the demonizing of those who oppose war. Our media is overrun with militaristic fervor. Our tax dollars finance war and pro-war propaganda. Our government passes laws designed to thwart dissent.
Even if you remain immune to wartime spin and propaganda…even if you don’t buy into the story that America has been dragged into conflict after conflict and perpetually left with no choice but to wage a humanitarian war against a savage enemy, you still face the guilt factor of the Support-the-Troops Spin: No matter what we think or how we feel, once the actual fighting begins, all Americans must unite behind our troops to insure their safety through victory.
When George W. Bush proclaims, “You’re either with us or against us,” he is following a long tradition of squashing dissent through the cultivation of patriotic fervor. After all, what kind of American turns his or her back on the brave men and women in uniform…the noble men and women putting their lives at risk so we can enjoy our freedoms…the courageous men and women glorified by countless films and video games and toys?
“To question the cause is to defile the dead,” says journalist Chris Hedges. “Our dead count. Their dead do not. We endow our victims, like our cause, with righteousness. And this righteousness gives us the moral justification to commit murder. It is an old story.”
The Support-the-Troops Spin exploits our guilt by equating blind faith with patriotism: Those who protest against war are betraying their friends, their neighbors, and their country. This blind faith doesn’t come naturally…it’s the product of cunning manipulation.
The corporate media—from the supposedly liberal New York Times to the supposedly fascist Fox News—transmit the support-the-troops drumbeat, allowing Americans to worry less about illegal interventions and occupations and focus more on pop culture distractions.
The United States, in order to enforce its global hegemony, regularly sends men and women into battle. Americans are thus inundated with jingoism to manipulate unconditional support for those troops…and those who do not express such support are ostracized, marginalized, and in some cases, criminalized. All along, the U.S. government and the corporations that own it make no effort to offer a shred of this much-vaunted “support” (before, during, or after their time in the military) for the men and women you and I are compelled to blindly worship.
Genuine support for all things living starts with shrugging off the shackles of propaganda.
(This post is presented in solidarity with the Progressive Blogger Union. For more information, please visit: http://www.pbu.blogspot.com.)
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