by Denis A. Conroy
If “the medium is the message” — a phrase coined by Marshall McLuhan — existentialism could be the means of delivering grist to the psychic mill in order to contextualise sovereign identity. To embed or implant acceptance of myths that have the power to embed and implant compliance is where it all starts. The Founding Fathers of the American constitution struggled mightily with the gremlins in the system, but some of their warnings ‘foretold’ might have to be revisited — observe how the Fat Cats of Wall Street and the Military Industrial Complex have grown ever more obese on a diet of propaganda and deception, while the 99% existentially wilt.
As an octogenarian I can attest to the fact of having lived through a time when warfare became the defining zeitgeist of an epoch. Dissimulation has often been the mask of choice for established media and for bureaucracies, whose purpose it was to propagate the recognisability of the status quo in terms of myth, race, culture and historic inevitability to the masses. Between what we could do, or allowed to do, were matters usually controlled by church or state. The methods used to shape narratives that sought to control public discourse were of a predictable type; developed ever newer techniques to entice believers (consumers) into accepting the proselytising unction of the architects of social order.
For instance, observe how the ubiquity of aggression is evidenced in our experience of reality. After decades of aggression involving the USA and Israel in regime change throughout the Middle East, we were surprised and caught off guard when blow-back occurred. The new threat is from the resistance fighter and he might not even wear a uniform. Muslims in general, their countries and sovereignty in particular, were held in contempt, in spite of the fact that aggression was something we, The West, took to them. Permanent war became the new normal in response to permanent resistance by the inhabitants of these countries; emotionally driven cri de coeur served up as Homeland Security pap now envelopes us all in surveillance at the behest of the propaganda mandarins, revving up the propaganda-machine ever more for the purpose of vilifying the ethnicity of the OTHER.