“Has ‘oderint dum metuant’ [Let them hate so long
as they fear] really become our motto?”
After the attacks of September 11, 2001, it became
immediately evident American government had
its jackpot ticket for war in perpetuity — the only
necessary condition being wool sufficiently ambiguous to cover the public’s eyes in fear.
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Since that time, under the guise of national security,
Big Brother-like domestic surveillance has become
so thoroughly entrenched in our lives as to be virtually ignored by the general populace. As a necessary
and insidious outgrowth of massive spying, the government attempts to cultivate fearful citizen-spies, by
employing the not-at-all ominous If You See Something, Say Something catchphrase-titled program. Of
course, the government arm responsible for this and
other programs — the overarching Department of
Homeland Security — seems ripped directly from
the pages of 1984.
“Political language is designed to make lies sound
truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind,” Orwell noted in his
1946 essay, “Politics and the English Language.” This
observation aptly summarizes U.S. war propaganda
in its entirety — with a constant government-backed
corporate media blitz surrounding the war on terror
shaping public perception of what constitutes terrorism, and who, a terrorist.
Betting on Americans’ cognitive dissonance, historical amnesia, and tacit acceptance of spoon-fed,
baseless patriotism, the government doesn’t often
find barriers to inculcating a blanket support for
obtuse military missions. War so saturates every aspect of life, when the Pentagon announced last week
forces had already been on the ground in Yemen for
two weeks, the public instead trained its focus to the
latest installation of Captain America.
And never mind the detail that ground support
of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in
Yemen would be allocated for fighting al-Qaeda —
a different faction of the same group the U.S.
currently employs as somehow less dangerous
terrorists to assist deposing Syrian president Bashar
al-Assad. Moderate rebels is thus the Newspeak
term for terrorists the American empire finds
usable — making terrorist and terrorism utterly
conditional terms. Of course, the government
failed to explain how a war on the concept of
terrorism should play out if that terrorism depends
on circumstance — or, more accurately, whim —
but once instituted, paranoia surrounding the word
opened the floodgates for battling terrorism inside
the United States.
Exactly as Orwell cautioned in 1984 — and precisely
as Kiesling’s foreboding resignation letter predicted
it would.
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
How does a government persuade its citizens their
enslavement would be desirable and beneficial?
Frame it as necessary protection against any threat to
their fundamental security — and implement more
contentious aspects of said servitude in palatable
microsteps. Fear of terrorism — or, more directly,
xenophobia — constitutes sufficient reason for many
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