calm
Banned
- Joined
- Jul 2, 2013
- Messages
- 631
- Reaction score
- 123
- Location
- Toronto, Canada
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Socialist
America claims that if they don't police the world, then nobody will.
I really don't think that America can show any real success at being the policeman when there are the only 11 countries in the world that are actually free from conflict.
Vision of Humanity
It is always the same narrative.
The first thing the media does when stirring up a war is to find some damsel in distress.
Remember The Great Incubator Scam of 1990? The testimony of a 15-year-old Kuwaiti, known only by her first name of Nayirah. The Human Rights Caucus said her last name was being kept hidden due to fears of Iraqi reprisals against her family. Sobbing, she claimed that she witnessed first-hand the Iraqi soldiers yanking babies out of incubators at the al-Adden hospital.
The incubator story was part of a pro-Kuwait campaign handled by Hill & Knowlton (H&K), then the largest PR firm in the world. H&K had close inside connections to the highest levels of government, both Republican and Democrat. Its Washington office was run by Craig Fuller, a close friend and political advisor of President Bush. Robert Gray, chairman of H&K/USA, was a leading figure in Ronald Reagan's two presidential campaigns. Lauri Fitz-Pegado, the head of H&K's Kuwait campaign, had worked for Ron Brown, who became the Secretary of Commerce in the Clinton administration. H&K senior vice president Thomas Ross was a Pentagon spokesman during the Carter
And today they found some homeless women on a Mountain Top in Iraq.
It is the American Way Of War.
The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America
By Onnesha Roychoudhuri
November 03, 2007
[SNIP]
....
SUSAN FALUDI: What also struck me was that the ending was a reprise of The Searchers. That started me wondering about why we were returning to the Western. At the same time, there was all this media commentary that kept referring to how the war on terror was a return to our Indian wars, back to taming the frontier. John Wayne kept coming up. That led me to our frontier mythology and captivity narratives. Our frontier mythology drops about the first 200 years. This frontier mythology that we live by, that we replay over and over again, is in direct contradiction to the actual experience of our original frontier trauma of Northeastern colonies. We sort of covered that all up with the triumphal Great Plains tale that is 75 percent concoction.
....
SUSAN FALUDI: For the first century and a half, all our bestsellers with the exception of Pilgrim's Progress, were captivity narratives. They by and large were told from the woman's point of view and were stories of how women taken captive grappled with it, not by being rescued by a man, but by rescuing themselves through a greater awareness of God, human weakness and dependency on God. It was a worldview shared by men and women and while women predominated in these early captivity narratives, these narratives were read avidly by both men and women. The Mary Rowlandsons were held up as an archetype for both men and women to emulate.
But ultimately, with the passing of Puritanism and with the repeated inability of male leaders and male husbands, to protect families in frontier towns, and with the society falling into a crisis over their inability to enact real security and protection, we begin to see the rewriting of these narratives into a fantasy narrative. In this narrative, the male hero comes to the rescue of the helpless and grateful maiden. The story is rewritten so that women taken captive are in danger of that most female of jeopardy's -rape--and the white man comes to the rescue. This is in the face of the reality that most Northeastern Native American tribes rarely raped captives. Though you couldn't say the same for the white settlers who raped Native American women.
....
SUSAN FALUDI: Over and over again in periods where we feel threatened, or penetrated on home soil, we reflexively reenact this drama. So, for example, after the civil war, the ceded South in its humiliation over not being able to protect its home soil from Yankee incursions, puts on this rescue drama in which the Klan restores its honor by fighting a mythical epidemic of rape of virginal southern white women by black freed men.
....
SUSAN FALUDI: What we're seeing is a consumer culture that devours itself institution by institution. Educating an arm a citizenry with real knowledge, information and analysis was once a counter to cultural myth is now just another arm of commercial culture. Its role is basically to entertain and sedate us and not ask any questions. We don't really have much in the way of journalism; we have media. Media is a medium, the terms itself is content-free. It's suggesting a delivery system, not a rigorous eye on the world.
....
SUSAN FALUDI: I hope against hope, knowing how our culture is and knowing how difficult it is to spark a meaningful discussion in this era, that it will be one of many contributions to launching an honest examination and confrontation of this myth system we live by to our own detriment and peril. I would hope that we begin to grapple honestly with the set of cards we have in our hands instead of painting them over with 10-gallon hat heroes and cringing bonneted girls on the prairie.
....
SUSAN FALUDI: There were plenty of men and women rushing to the site to see how they could help. There were plenty of female first responders. There weren't a lot of female firefighters, but that's because the New York Fire Department is perhaps the most misogynist fire department of any urban fire department in America. Women fought a very bitter lawsuit in the late 70s to get the fire department to even begin to consider admitting. Then, women were treated in ways that just make your jaw drop. Their safety equipment being purposefully damaged, sexual assault, fellow firefighters urinating in their boots. So there's a reason why the NY fire department had .3 percent female profile.
....
SUSAN FALUDI: But the Bush handlers are more skilled in intuitively understanding the cultural script and they understood that at the heart of American mythology is not only a brawny and rescuing cowboy, but a woman in need of rescue. The story doesn't work without that female weakness to set off male strength.
The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America | Alternet
The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America: Susan Faludi: 9780805086928: Amazon.com: Books
Calm
I really don't think that America can show any real success at being the policeman when there are the only 11 countries in the world that are actually free from conflict.
Vision of Humanity
It is always the same narrative.
The first thing the media does when stirring up a war is to find some damsel in distress.
Remember The Great Incubator Scam of 1990? The testimony of a 15-year-old Kuwaiti, known only by her first name of Nayirah. The Human Rights Caucus said her last name was being kept hidden due to fears of Iraqi reprisals against her family. Sobbing, she claimed that she witnessed first-hand the Iraqi soldiers yanking babies out of incubators at the al-Adden hospital.
The incubator story was part of a pro-Kuwait campaign handled by Hill & Knowlton (H&K), then the largest PR firm in the world. H&K had close inside connections to the highest levels of government, both Republican and Democrat. Its Washington office was run by Craig Fuller, a close friend and political advisor of President Bush. Robert Gray, chairman of H&K/USA, was a leading figure in Ronald Reagan's two presidential campaigns. Lauri Fitz-Pegado, the head of H&K's Kuwait campaign, had worked for Ron Brown, who became the Secretary of Commerce in the Clinton administration. H&K senior vice president Thomas Ross was a Pentagon spokesman during the Carter
And today they found some homeless women on a Mountain Top in Iraq.
It is the American Way Of War.
The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America
By Onnesha Roychoudhuri
November 03, 2007
[SNIP]
....
SUSAN FALUDI: What also struck me was that the ending was a reprise of The Searchers. That started me wondering about why we were returning to the Western. At the same time, there was all this media commentary that kept referring to how the war on terror was a return to our Indian wars, back to taming the frontier. John Wayne kept coming up. That led me to our frontier mythology and captivity narratives. Our frontier mythology drops about the first 200 years. This frontier mythology that we live by, that we replay over and over again, is in direct contradiction to the actual experience of our original frontier trauma of Northeastern colonies. We sort of covered that all up with the triumphal Great Plains tale that is 75 percent concoction.
....
SUSAN FALUDI: For the first century and a half, all our bestsellers with the exception of Pilgrim's Progress, were captivity narratives. They by and large were told from the woman's point of view and were stories of how women taken captive grappled with it, not by being rescued by a man, but by rescuing themselves through a greater awareness of God, human weakness and dependency on God. It was a worldview shared by men and women and while women predominated in these early captivity narratives, these narratives were read avidly by both men and women. The Mary Rowlandsons were held up as an archetype for both men and women to emulate.
But ultimately, with the passing of Puritanism and with the repeated inability of male leaders and male husbands, to protect families in frontier towns, and with the society falling into a crisis over their inability to enact real security and protection, we begin to see the rewriting of these narratives into a fantasy narrative. In this narrative, the male hero comes to the rescue of the helpless and grateful maiden. The story is rewritten so that women taken captive are in danger of that most female of jeopardy's -rape--and the white man comes to the rescue. This is in the face of the reality that most Northeastern Native American tribes rarely raped captives. Though you couldn't say the same for the white settlers who raped Native American women.
....
SUSAN FALUDI: Over and over again in periods where we feel threatened, or penetrated on home soil, we reflexively reenact this drama. So, for example, after the civil war, the ceded South in its humiliation over not being able to protect its home soil from Yankee incursions, puts on this rescue drama in which the Klan restores its honor by fighting a mythical epidemic of rape of virginal southern white women by black freed men.
....
SUSAN FALUDI: What we're seeing is a consumer culture that devours itself institution by institution. Educating an arm a citizenry with real knowledge, information and analysis was once a counter to cultural myth is now just another arm of commercial culture. Its role is basically to entertain and sedate us and not ask any questions. We don't really have much in the way of journalism; we have media. Media is a medium, the terms itself is content-free. It's suggesting a delivery system, not a rigorous eye on the world.
....
SUSAN FALUDI: I hope against hope, knowing how our culture is and knowing how difficult it is to spark a meaningful discussion in this era, that it will be one of many contributions to launching an honest examination and confrontation of this myth system we live by to our own detriment and peril. I would hope that we begin to grapple honestly with the set of cards we have in our hands instead of painting them over with 10-gallon hat heroes and cringing bonneted girls on the prairie.
....
SUSAN FALUDI: There were plenty of men and women rushing to the site to see how they could help. There were plenty of female first responders. There weren't a lot of female firefighters, but that's because the New York Fire Department is perhaps the most misogynist fire department of any urban fire department in America. Women fought a very bitter lawsuit in the late 70s to get the fire department to even begin to consider admitting. Then, women were treated in ways that just make your jaw drop. Their safety equipment being purposefully damaged, sexual assault, fellow firefighters urinating in their boots. So there's a reason why the NY fire department had .3 percent female profile.
....
SUSAN FALUDI: But the Bush handlers are more skilled in intuitively understanding the cultural script and they understood that at the heart of American mythology is not only a brawny and rescuing cowboy, but a woman in need of rescue. The story doesn't work without that female weakness to set off male strength.
The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America | Alternet
The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America: Susan Faludi: 9780805086928: Amazon.com: Books
Calm
