mental illness and the American public... 3/9/2017 0 Comments   we believe what the propaganda machine instructs us to believe... and that's the truth !!! by E.L. Christianson Jr. They have instructed us to be fearful, scared to death of whatever. 'Paranoid Nation' would be a good name for this country.  We are afraid of everything.  There are in fact many things to fear.  Climate change and nuclear exchanges are to be feared, greatly.  But those things are not at the top of the list for Americans.   Terrorism is number one on the list of American fears.  Of course, we couldn't give up on communism.  While communism and terrorism are coming at us from outside, we've got plenty of fears of ourselves here at home as well. John W. Whitehead states it well, "​Turn on the TV or flip open the newspaper on any given day, and you will find yourself accosted by reports of government corruption, corporate malfeasance, militarized police and marauding SWAT teams. America is entering a new phase, one in which children are arrested in schools, military veterans are forcibly detained by government agents because of the content of their Facebook posts, and law-abiding Americans are being subjected to the latest in government spy technology. These threats to our freedoms are not to be underestimated. Yet even more dangerous than these violations of our basic rights is the language they are couched in — the language of fear. It is a language spoken effectively by politicians on both sides of the aisle, shouted by media pundits from their cable TV pulpits, marketed by corporations, and codified into bureaucratic laws that do little to make our lives safer or more secure. The American public can easily be persuaded of almost anything by the politicians and the media.  The elite have mastered the ability to manipulate perceptions in a manner that results in the population believing whatever it is that the elite want to be believed.  Currently, the 'news' is the leading propaganda tool for the oligarchy's educational programing.   And who knows what 'fake news' is when all that is presented is fake in one manner or another. In keeping with the deception that this is a 'democracy', the 'news' presents 'both' sides of the various issues by presenting interviews with 'leading experts' along with opinions of both Republicans and Democrats.  This charade is presented along with statements alluding to 'democracy requiring informed citizens'... Information and facts are totally outside of the requirements for believing what is to be believed.  They will let everyone know what to think. Typically the facts are available and are known.  One can refer to many sources of information to gain an understanding of history and circumstances that drove that history.  But, few of us ever bother to 'look it up'. Even definitions of words could be understood if one choose to look up the words in the dictionary.  The word 'democracy', for example, means control by the majority whether through representation or directly or other-wise.  And yet, while most Americans are overwhelmingly in favor of improving health care (as only one example of nearly universal agreement on many issues in this country) the people have no control and no ability to make changes... not directly, not through representation and not other-wise.  And improvements in health care will not be forth coming because we do not have a 'democracy'. We say we are a democracy because we have been told to say that we are a democracy.    Our arch-enemy 'Communism' is also not known and not compared factually to our own system.  It is difficult to humanely criticize a social organization in which all property is owned by everyone and each person works and is paid according to their abilities and needs. But, we are told to say that capitalism is the best system that civilization can imagine. To be so easily misled on such a long list of subjects must indicate something about the mental circumstances of the American public.  That we are susceptible to so wide a range of misinformation when the facts actually point in a different direction seems to point to some lacking in the mentality, in the faculty of Americans... and that's the truth !!! ​Phantom Terrorism and the Paranoid American Public from OpEdNews By Tom Huckin An opinion piece that draws on respected opinion polls, events in past and present US history, and propaganda studies to argue that In a recent Pew Research poll, 76% of 1,502 adult respondents said the nation's highest priority should be to "defend the country from terrorism." That concern polled higher even than obvious realneeds such as "strengthening the economy," "improving the educational system," "improving the job situation," and "reducing healthcare costs." How does "defending the country from terrorism" stack up against reality? Well, actual terrorism from abroad has a near-negligible existence here in the United States. In the 15+ years since 9-11, only some 14 Americans have been killed by foreign-born terrorists in the US. That works out to less than 1 American fatality per year. It is a phantom threat. When people fear being the target of a virtually non-existent danger, they can be described as paranoid.  In this case, our entire country merits that label. You are less likely to be killed by a foreign-engineered terrorist attack here in the United States than you are to be killed by lightning, a dog bite, or fireworks. Where does this paranoia come from? Although it may start with an actual event, it's fed by both the mainstream news media and government politicians. The terrorist attacks of 9-11 and loss of 2,996 lives shocked the American public like never before. Now more than 15 years later, the haunting memories of that day are still kept alive by a news industry insatiable for attention and profits and by two political parties ever hungry for power. Recently a Muslim terrorist was captured outside the Louvre in Paris. Although armed with two machetes he did not kill anyone. Muslim terrorism is a real menace in France and even an uneventful incident like this one deserves coverage -- there. But why here in the US? The US is separated from France by a vast ocean and a very different history. Yet this incident was turned into a headline story on the CBS national news and even in my local paper here in Salt Lake City, 5000 miles away from Paris. This is fearmongering, pure and simple. It's a venerable form of propaganda going back to the First World War and the Hearst newspapers' alarms about Germany ("the Hun is coming!!"). It was used extensively during the Cold War, with US soldiers being shown training films depicting a planet being inundated by the Red Menace. As a schoolchild in the 1950s I remember air-raid drills where we practiced getting under our desks in case of a nuclear attack by the Soviets. In the Reagan era Americans were told that Nicaragua (!) posed a dire threat to our security. In 2002-03, the Bush administration whipped up support for its invasion of Iraq by fabricating stories about "Iraqi weapons of mass destruction" and "mushroom clouds." Now Donald Trump falls in line by claiming that "Radical Islamic terrorists are determined to strike our homeland, as they did on 9/11." For no apparent reason other than fulfilling a jingoistic pledge he made on the campaign trail, he orders a ban on all visitors from six Muslim countries -- despite the fact that no one from any of these countries has ever perpetrated a single terrorist killing in the United States. He claims it's a "national security emergency." Although every federal judge who has heard the case and virtually every foreign policy expert disagree with Trump, polls show that close to half of the American people support such a ban. Fearmongering is a powerful force in society for several reasons. It plays on people's natural insecurities, insecurities that are magnified by incessant coverage of terrorism, war, crime, natural disasters, terrible accidents, etc. in the national and local news media and by zombie flicks, alien invader movies, crime shows, hospital dramas, and so on. Because fearmongering draws attention, it is exploited by the news media for increased profits. And it is used by government leaders and political parties to create a nervous citizenry willing to depend on those same leaders and parties for "protection" and thus easily controlled. For all these reasons, fearmongering has become S.O.P. in this country. Donald Trump clearly understands this and took full advantage of it during the election campaign. His signature vow was to wall off our entire southern border to prevent "criminals and rapists" from flooding the country. At the Republican National Convention he said, "The first task for our new administration will be to liberate our citizens from the crime and terrorism and lawlessness that threatens our communities." More recently he claimed, contrary to fact, that crime in America is "at an all-time high." How long will Trump's wild claims about an invasion of radical Muslim terrorists continue to have traction? What new bogeymen will he and his Svengali, Steve Bannon, come up with next? Anything seems possible -- and they're guaranteed to have a receptive audience in this paranoid, easily-manipulated nation of ours. ​ Tom Huckin is a professor emeritus of English and Writing at the University of Utah, specializing in the study of modern propaganda. He has co-authored five books and more than 90 scholarly papers. He is currently a keyboard warrior and citizen-activist living in Salt Lake City. ​ Also read his poem about Hillary Clinton's defeat in the 2016 election A Requiem for Hillary