36 online
 
Most Popular Choices
Share on Facebook 13 Printer Friendly Page More Sharing
OpEdNews Op Eds   

Collaborators of Catastrophe: Inside the Ministry of Truth

By       (Page 2 of 3 pages) Become a premium member to see this article and all articles as one long page.   No comments
The repackaging of the debacle in Mesopotamia, which will be done by spinning and manipulating its realities and truths in such a way as to maintain dormant the awakened mind of the citizenry, thus preventing the lower classes from ever rising to challenge power, will of course be implemented with the Establishment's weapons of mass deception and manipulation, namely, the Corporate media, both on camera and in print. In order to freeze a rapidly boiling pot of anger at the war itself and thereby assuring, at least for a few decades more, the domination of the many by the few through the hypnotizing catatonia of the masses, the Establishment will bombard the airwaves and the printed opinion pieces with the propaganda of a perceived victory in Iraq, of an honorable handover of power, of competence defined and honor triumphant. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth.

The Iraqi government will be made the incompetent, the warmongers, the corrupt, the institution that cannot establish security or peace, even though it never stood a chance at governance, being born with two arms fused behind its back, inheriting a debacle of historic proportions that even history's best leaders could not salvage. The new Iraqi government will be blamed for civil strife, sectarian violence and the continuing decline in security and standard of living, even though it was the Americans who sowed what the Iraqi government must now reap.

The American media, being the always reliable stenographers of the state and the Establishment, will concoct the fiction blaming the continuing catastrophe on the fledgling government, for in the American narrative, where the Dream must stick to its Hollywood script, the American government, as always saturated and controlled by the elite themselves, perpetually filled to the rafters with Establishment figures and minions, will in the end triumph over evil, fighting virtuous and honorably for a victory that although difficult, is nonetheless real. In the continuing narrative, the Establishment will be made the heroes of the epic, competently battling those alien barbarians from Arab lands, gallantly protecting our security and ways of life, yet struggling to reign in the few bad apples within its ranks that made the Iraq war more difficult than it should have been.

For the Iraq War will never be seen as illegal, immoral or as the catastrophe it has become; it will never be seen as a failure created by the Establishment itself, which of course it is. Erased from American reality will be the role the elite and its media whores had in cooking up and serving on a hot plate a war of choice that was always fated to end in disaster. The decision made by America's Establishment will never be given the aura of predestined failure, which it was, but instead will be marketed as a triumphant struggle made all the more difficult by the arrogance and incompetence of a few bad apples that deviated away from the steadfast leadership of the elite. It will be said that the war became what is has turned into not for failure to learn or apply history's lessons but because it was badly managed by who else but by a few bad and seemingly notorious apples who failed to listen to the sage advice of who else but the Establishment. As with any Hollywood production, fall guys and patsies must be and will be sacrificed, and this narrative will offer no divergent plots from any previous incarnation.

The Iraqi resistance, or mujahadeen, will never be given the credit objective history will invariably give them, nor the respect earned on the field of battle. They will never receive commendation for outthinking, out-planning, outsmarting and outmaneuvering the occupying forces and its leadership. The American people will never know Iraqi freedom fighters outstrategized the occupying military, though America's future military leaders certainly will, for they will be made to study the tactics, thought processes and strategies of the resistance, only clandestinely acknowledging respect to the mujahadeen by absorbing the lessons it taught America in Iraq. Inside the Ministry of Truth, hard at work implementing the American narrative, Iraq's freedom fighters will have their triumph erased from American memory, their success never given light, its curtain of reality never lifted for the masses to see.

Instead, peasants, sons and fathers, the meat of the Iraqi resistance, at one time average people like you and me, most fighting for their nation, their resources, their honor and their way of life, dong what millions of Americans would do if it was invaded and occupied, will always be known inside America as Al-Qaeda, as the terrorists we had to fight over there so we would not have to fight them over here. Of course to the rest of the world the truth will always be known, the resistance will always be acknowledged, its victory will always be real. In America, however, resistance and freedom fighters will have never existed in the cities and towns of Iraq, for to the American narrative, good always triumphs over evil and, since America has the exclusive monopoly over good, then certainly Iraqi resistance must be labeled as evil, though international law and opinion would beg to differ.

In the American Dream, since America is always victorious and good always triumphs over evil, it naturally follows that America is never evil and always good, which consequently implies that it never suffers defeat at the hands of evil. Logically, therefore, its invasion and brutal occupation, its torture, rape, dehumanization and mass genocide, its disappearances and false imprisonments, its pillaging of resources and its looting of Iraq's finances, its decimation of Iraqi society, the displacement of 1.6 million Iraqis, the chaos and anarchy and civil war are all deemed products of good, for America is the catalyst and oftentimes the enabler of all that has afflicted Iraq and its people. The forces fighting against this supposed evil, trying to rid their land and cities and neighborhoods of the American pestilence, must therefore be considered evil, and by consequence defeated by America's military.

In the black and white script of the American narrative - since those are the only colors we are allowed to dream in - the battle of good versus evil is thus determined by the constructs of an America that cannot do bad against a force that cannot possibly be considered good, no matter what the rest of the world thinks. The easiest way for the Ministry of Truth to erase the valid guerilla war waged by the Iraqi resistance against the American occupiers, and erase any thoughts of the people considering the resistance in positive language, therefore, is to label freedom fighters as member of Al-Qaeda, the always reliable bogeyman and barbarian whose usefulness to the Establishment does not seem to diminish with time.

If every resistance movement on Earth can be labeled as belonging to a terrorist organization, imputed to the dreaded image of Al-Qaeda by the simple act of resisting the wrongs of governance, the devastating exploitations of the ruling class or the crimes of a nation's elite, then naturally the interests of the ruling class can better be protected. Conditioning the masses to detest and fear those movements battling the crimes and corruptions of the world's ruling classes - particularly those affiliated with or belonging to the American Establishment - with those movements oftentimes fighting for the interests of the masses themselves, succeeds in eliminating a massive group of potential sympathizers and erodes any potential for fraternity and solidarity between freedom fighters and the masses.

The fear and insecurity spawned by the term Al-Qaeda instantly rewires all circuits in the American mind that connect to logic, reason and critical thinking, allowing the state and the ruling class to better control the people. Any valid grievances or causes freedom fighters in Iraq or any other nation might have that would excuse their resistance are thus ignored, becoming a lost echo in the dark chambers of the American mind. By marketing Iraq's freedom fighters as Al-Qaeda terrorists, when American intelligence has found that only 5 percent of fighters are from outside Iraq, with only a small fraction of that fraction sympathetic to Al-Qaeda, the American people, already conditioned like Pavlovian dogs to tremble in fear at the mere mention of the name, will instantly develop barricades inside their minds, disallowing any deviance beyond what they have been brainwashed to believe.

Thus, a freedom fighter waging guerilla war to expel a brutal occupier will never be seen as a valid movement. A people forced to expel an occupying power intent on stealing its resources, dehumanizing its citizens and destroying its society, oftentimes by no other choice but by killing and maiming American soldiers, will never be seen in the American narrative as anything other than terrorists and barbarians and sub-human, dark-skinned Arabs. The conditioning into black and white, good versus evil thinking has been as methodical as it has been perpetual. The job assigned to the Ministry of Truth is therefore made much easier.


All Hail the Ministry of Truth


The elite's interests will of course be protected and defended by the Ministry of Truth and its hordes of presstitutes, for the Corporate media is and always has been the tool of the Establishment, over the years having become its undying weapon against the masses, its always reliable firewall of brainwashing and conditioning. As has always been the case since the inception of television, he who controls the media controls the masses, and he who controls television controls American reality. Since it controls the perceptions of America's reality, and since the Establishment is the master of the Ministry of Truth, then naturally everything aired, voiced or imaged through the monitor will inevitably have as goal the protection and expansion of the ruling class' interests.

The Ministry of Truth is the reason why the American people have only members of the ruling class to elect into higher office. It is the reason government has for decades furthered the interests of the Establishment at the expense of the People. It is the reason the masses vote, without fail, against their own interests, every election given a choice of the lesser of two evils belonging to the same two-headed hydra, both almost mirror images of the other, both designed to protect and expand the power of the elite and the corporate world. The differences between the two parties are today slim and marginal, with one mutating towards fascist ideologies and tendencies while the other, once progressive and liberal, caring for the interests of the people, has since 9/11 shifted center right, becoming what the Republican party used to be, a conservative amalgam of ruling class incompetents.

Because the Establishment is itself best served through conservative-based ideology, thriving off the structures of predatory capitalism, through greed, selfishness and the mechanisms of corporatism, finding sustenance through the exploitation of the working and middle class, creating control through organized religion based on primitive thought, and increasing its grip over America through the perpetual dumbing down of its people, it follows that the corporate media, the Ministry of Truth, must itself be molded from conservative ideology. It must enable the dumbing down of America to continue, afflicting each and every new generation of citizens, each made more ignorant than the previous generation. As such, the fictions that the Ministry of Truth disseminates and that invariably become America's reality are conservative-based, right-wing in nature and corporatist in belief.

The appearance must be made, and the manipulation of ideas must be engendered, as to make the People's visions and goals the same vision and goals sought by the Establishment. The people must be made to believe that by pursuing and expanding the Establishment's interests their own lives will be made better. This, of course, is but a farce, for the interests of one group are incompatible and mutually exclusive of the other. This explains in part the dominance of conservative thought by a majority of Americans, and of America itself, which includes centrist dogma and much left-of-center ideology, most of which is considered center-right in the more progressive, and by consequence enlightened, nations of the world. In fact, most progressive, liberal ideology in America today does not even begin to touch or compare with the mainstream, progressive, liberal belief system of many western European nations. Those views would be and are in fact considered radical and extreme in America, yet they are the evolving ideologies of the world's most progressive societies.

Next Page  1  |  2  |  3

(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).

Rate It | View Ratings

Manuel Valenzuela Social Media Pages: Facebook page url on login Profile not filled in       Twitter page url on login Profile not filled in       Linkedin page url on login Profile not filled in       Instagram page url on login Profile not filled in

Manuel Valenzuela is a social critic and commentator, international affairs analyst and Internet essayist. His articles as well as his archive can be found at his blog, http://www.valenzuelasveritas.blogspot.com as well as at other alternative (more...)
 
Go To Commenting
The views expressed herein are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.
Writers Guidelines

 
Contact AuthorContact Author Contact EditorContact Editor Author PageView Authors' Articles
Support OpEdNews

OpEdNews depends upon can't survive without your help.

If you value this article and the work of OpEdNews, please either Donate or Purchase a premium membership.

STAY IN THE KNOW
If you've enjoyed this, sign up for our daily or weekly newsletter to get lots of great progressive content.
Daily Weekly     OpEd News Newsletter
Name
Email
   (Opens new browser window)
 

Most Popular Articles by this Author:     (View All Most Popular Articles by this Author)

Cabal of Criminality

The Dumbing Down of America

The Killing Fields

Of Crazies, Neocons and the Enemy Within

Unmasking of the Authoritarians

A Nation in Silent Anger

To View Comments or Join the Conversation:

Tell A Friend