…or Democracy as American franchise.
The Voice of America has always been a ploy to coerce the people into believing that state corporatism is the only legitimate voice to be listened to. The American people have been captive to Corporate Capitalism’s branding of language by means of linguistic chicanery for many decades. As capitalism has no charter, it’s modus operandi merely entails expediency.
American power elites have a penchant for myths that reinforce the belief that they are blessed by God and especially chosen to lead the people into a kind of promised kingdom on earth situated under the dome of a utopian digital-tech-bubble of splendiferous design protected by a nuclear arsenal (not dissimilar to the one their favourite ally in the Middle East envisages for itself) that justifies an extremely aggressive foreign policy that attacks any vulnerable target with impunity…especially those who dare exhibit non-compliance with the voice projecting American interests.
By using the power of righteous declaration, unctuous language, together with a mighty industrial base, the system of branding everything in accordance to rules of the capitalist system came into existence to justify America’s way of manipulating the truth. Over time, a bizarre military one-upmanship casting its’ shadow across the world, reaping inordinate profits from the exportation of military hardware came into being. The indoctrinated classes meanwhile, continued to believe that the purpose of the military-industrial-complex was to march up to anybody’s border and threaten them with annihilation if they so much as dared promote anything that contradicted the values of American Corporate Capitalism.
The public, drip-fed on terrorist threats, went along for the ride, using fealty to patriotism as a means of assuaging what might be feelings of guilt, in the face of so much evidence that revealed the extent to which carnage was inflicted by the American military upon the Muslim world. To make matters worse, the media in support of the status quo, adopted tactics that used inference to degrade the ‘other’ as deserving of punishment because they were backward and uncivilised members of a lesser race resisting American linguistic chicanery. The omission of real reportage corrupted whatever charter the MSM might once have possessed in relation to truth.
It is noteworthy that linguists in America for the past 50 years and more have at times branded each other as calibre deficient academics, belittling opponents so to secure positions that might enable them to be part of the status quo. Some form of hierarchical ‘sport’ that aligns itself with the American belief that their system exists to set the business agenda right, seems to be the name of the game. But within the belly of the Corporate beast that demands allegiance to the status quo, there is a relentless push by privileged classes to exclude ordinary Americans from receiving a fair share of the national wealth, and no amount of word-play can disguise the foul-play and foul-deeds behind that façade of misinformation.
Sadly though, it took someone as devious as Trump…a mountain climber of sorts…to expose the separation wall existing between words and deeds in contemporary America…and as Americans always need to hear that America is great in ways that propagate this ‘fact’, it is the co-opting of language itself that perpetrates the American Dream while simultaneously destroying it.
Linguists, seemingly in possession of skills designed to situate language in science, appear inept when it comes to profiling the role of the actors operating as mediators in matters political. The so-called American Dream has become a node in a narrative controlled by oligarchs and replete with predatory sub-texts. They machinate the course of Zionist $’s in ways that perpetrate colonial duplicity through selective means, using methods that disguise the presence of religious bigotry.
What goes on beneath the bedsheets of the deep state is the collective activity of Corporate power working ceaselessly to impose a false ‘Voice-of-America’ on the people of the U.S. The language and the deals made beneath the bed sheets are strictly hush-hush and are designed to limit any real social progress. Above the bedsheets there is the language that dictates the legitimacy of all criteria pertaining to what is considers lawful…Corporate America has always owned all franchises, so everybody needs to stay tuned to their edicts to know their place in an oligarchic system that speaks in tongues.
The latest move from the Trump administration amounts to yet another backdoor tactic to curtail American’s basic rights and freedoms:
The Washington Post, which was the first to break the following story, reported;
“Policy analysists at the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta were told of the list of forbidden words at a meeting with senior CDC officials late 2017 who oversee the budget, according to the analyst who took part in the 90-minute briefing. The forbidden words are “vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “diversity,” “transgender,” “fetus,” “evidence-based,” and “science-based.”
In some instances, the analysists were given alternative phrases. Instead of “science-based or “evidence-based,” the suggested phrase is “CDC bases its’ recommendations on science in which community standards and wishes,” the person said. In other cases, no replacement words were immediately offered.
Michael Halpern, an expert on political interference in science and the deputy director at the union of Concerned Scientists, also expresses alarm over the Post’s reporting. Especially troubling to Halpern was that top officials had suggested that instead of putting primary emphasis on science, staff should write that “the CDC bases its’ recommendations on science in consideration with community standards and wishes.”
Wishes?
“Its’ quite obvious that good public health policy is not based on wishes,” was Halpern’s response.
Over time, the voice of America as Trojan Horse, had become ever more ubiquitously virulent as the power of money pursued its’ febrile mania for dominance. Since the 1960’s in America, expediency has replaced the virility that once identified the charter of most institutional charters. America’s propaganda persona, initially the ‘Voice of America’, proudly announced its’ charter under the Eisenhower administration in 1959.
VOA Director, Henry Loomis commissioned a formal statement of principles to protect the integrity of VOA programming defining the organizations mission. It was issued by Director George V. Allen as a directive in 1960 and was endorsed in 1962 by USIA director Edward R. Murrow. On July 12, 1976, the principles were signed into law on July 12, 1976 by President Gerald Ford. It reads:
“The long-range interests of the United States are served by communicating directly with the people of the world by radio. To be effective, the Voice of America must win the attention and respect of listeners. These principles will therefore govern Voice of America (VOA) broadcasts. 1, VOA will serve as a consistently reliable and authoritative source of news. VOA news will be accurate, objective, and comprehensive. 2, VOA will represent America, not any single segment of American society, and will therefore present a balanced and comprehensive projection of significant thought and institutions. 3,
VOA will present the policies of the United States clearly and effectively, and will present responsible discussions and opinion on these policies.”
Within this linguistic foreplay we can spot a lot of ‘papal bull’…things one might say to one’s parrot for instance…things that really identify the meaning of the trickle-down society as being a process that treats the deplorables condescendingly because they are not propertied. The charter, like the constitution, tends to be something unequally significant in real social time, leaving the mass of people to respond vis-à-vis their pocket-books or gut. That “VOA will represent America, not any single segment of America” is pure ‘papal bull’ the masses are expected to consume uncritically, because that’s the way it’s always been…high pulpit, low pews!
But in the mid-century years in America, many other things were happening that would ultimately crush whatever respect existed for America beyond its’ borders. It was ultimately its’ vicious military interference in so many defenceless countries, assassinations, covert terrorism pursued with ruthless determination combined with a national ‘voice’ projecting language that insistently proclaimed America’s God-given right to do so, that galled. The capitalist franchise called America could produce everything, except anything that required heart or social justice.
When the American military engaged in acid-attacks from the air on Vietnamese peasants, it was the My Lai massacre perpetrated on the 16 March 1968 that became an image that transferred itself…tattoo-like…onto global consciousness and exposed America’s fake democracy for all the world to see. The apparition of a young naked Vietnamese girl burnt by acid…agent orange…was as compelling as Edvard munch’s (1893) painting, The Scream…showing a distraught young girl, hands clasping head, running across a bridge, evidently fleeing a conflagration… one that was either physical or psychological, or both…whose meaning conveyed a silent screech of raw pain, attesting to the needless suffering caused by man’s inhumanity to man. That the massacre of between 347 and 504 unarmed Vietnamese civilians resisting American aggression ultimately ran into the millions in Vietnam alone, was horrendous. It is incumbent to mention Cambodia, Laos, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and numerous other countries too, where the figures ran into the millions.
As time went by, civilians in a whole swathe of Middle Eastern countries fell foul to the vagaries of U.S. imperialism, where the responses in the West were predictably of the morbid digitally-existential kind. Weary of facts that kept disturbing the insouciance of a status quo that was founded on exploitation and racism, the media thought fit to ignore or downplay the carnage.
At which point, the words of Gandhi spring once more into life:
“What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?”
Which takes us back to the beginning, the Voice of America is deadpan propaganda that keeps the citizens misinformed per omission. They are forever told that the world outside the U.S. is crawling with villains, but fail to understand villainy and the plots that underpin the need for vast numbers of surveillance agencies. They are rendered fearful of the ‘other’ because they don’t see the extent to which Corporate Capitalism provokes much of the world. Like babes in the wood, they can’t see the forest for the trees. They go to the movies and come away with the impression that Hollywood and the Pentagon ‘cover’ their backs, all-the-while believing safety and security exists in blindly trusting one’s life to an institution.
But Hollywood, The Pentagon and the Secret Services are all part of a Deep State embroiled in cunning linguistics designed to set them a code apart from democracy. They are the clearest example of the divide between words and actions.
One random example: the public might belatedly discover (through the freedom of information act) what the codename Operation Ranch Hand signified to the power elites making decisions vis-à-vis covert lexicology that used cloak-and-dagger gibberish during the war on the Vietnamese People, wherein a lethal campaign of genocide was pursued in great secrecy to achieve victory over a peasant movement seeking national freedom from colonialism… all of which was done, allegedly in the interest of ‘the American people’. The result:
‘Operation Ranch Hand’, codename for U.S. military activities in Vietnam sprayed more than 20 million gallons of various herbicides over Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos from 1961-1971. Agent Orange which contained the deadly chemical dioxin, was the most commonly used herbicide. It was later proven to cause serious health issues-including cancer, birth defects, rashes and severe psychological and neurological problems-among the Vietnamese People as well as among returning U.S. servicemen and their families.
But the English language is a trader’s language and expediency being the measure by which utility is contextualised.
If we were to move from Vietnam to Iraq and elsewhere, we would find many parallels that illustrate the existence of similar instances of America’s military impunity. Depleted uranium comes to mind and so does the idea…and evidence…that we can disregard the implication of the word impunity, because it merely implies concern for non-white people.
When ‘terrorist’ attacks (no aerial might there) occur at street level in Boston, London or Birmingham, our sense of outrage seems quixotic and quick to abjure the violence inflicted on our sugar-coated status quo. Why us, we might wonder? But if we reflect a moment, we may find that the answer we come up with might very well connect us to the winds that blow the contaminated dust of My Lai and the depleted uranium particles that were showered on the defenceless citizens of Basra, back to the coalition of willing dupes who pushed the cause of immemorial-predation into the Muslim lands in the first place, and in so bloody a way… should we expect retribution?
So, if the list of forbidden words issued to the CDC by the present administration reveals anything, it must surely be that the Trojan Horse, in the hands of deal-maker Trump and his administration, has every intention of taking the country to a place where primary science doesn’t get in the way of the ‘democratic franchise’ that keeps on giving to the 1% …it will be business as usual…turning waffle into wine…while the people of America, too dispassionate to create an anti-war movement, sit on their arses and eat popcorn, unaware that actions speak louder than words.
Denis A. Conroy,
Freelance Writer,
Australia.