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I'm not quite sure WHAT you are talking about...
"...such a gargantuan orgiastic epic of IDIOCY and utterly mindless confusion, hateful ignorance and wasted lives, material and energy."
Are you talking about an impression you get from corpo-fascist TV 'news'? I think you should ask yourself this--because I think there is a critical distinction to be made between how the corpo-fascist press portrays the American people and what most of our fellow and sister Americans are really like. There is also a very important distinction to be made between our government (that is, perception-of-our-government-from-the-corpo-fascist-media), and the true government, on the one hand, and the American people/country, on the other.
Most Americans are sensible, practical people with good hearts, and strong desires for peace and justice. They are not insane. They are not idiots. They are not hateful. Their lives are not wasted. Mostly their lives are devoted to caring for their families and friends, often include volunteer work for their communities, and often involve hardship. They may suffer some confusion and are beset with disinformation--mostly deliberately induced ignorance, not ignorance by choice nor ignorance by incapacity to learn. What we see on TV, especially 'news'/'politics,' is often insane, idiotic, mindless and confusing. But that is not what and who we are.
I laughed at your OP title because, yeah, that is what we PERCEIVE about our country FROM THE CORPO-FASCIST 'NEWS' MONOPOLIES. It is also often true of government policy (controlled by multinational corporations and war profiteers)--it is often seemingly insane, seemingly idiotic, and quite truly warlike, murderous and anti-democratic. But our inability to control our government does not mean that we, as a people, do not wish to. I think we very much DO wish to have a government of, by and for the people, that supports peace and justice throughout the world. But, we, as a people, are baffled as to why the normal mechanisms of democracy are not producing that result. People vote for change and nothing changes. This is baffling and demoralizing--and disempowering.
So, I would say, beware of perceiving and characterizing the American people, in your own mind, based on propaganda that you would certainly reject if you knew it was propaganda. There are extremely powerful and extremely well-financed forces without our society working feverishly to shape our perceptions. We need to disconnect from those perceptions and just talk to people--and also seek out alternative news sources, and follow somewhat more objective indicators about our society--for instance, looking at a wide range of opinion polls.
Back when the Iraq War was starting, I really, REALLY wanted to know if my fellow and sister Americans had gone off goose-stepping to Bush, or if something else was going on. I researched a range of opinion polls and, to my astonishment, found that nearly 60% of the American people opposed the war on Iraq (Feb '03, all polls). There were other things that amazed me in the polls of that period--for instance, 64% of the American people opposed torture "under any circumstances" (May '04). You COULD NOT have known these two things from how the 'news' about the war and torture was being handled (being manipulated) and how the IMPRESSION of the American people was being conveyed by the corpo-fascist press. And, bear in mind, too, that most opinion polls are from corpo-fascist sources. They are already weighted against majority pro-peace, pro-social justice views. The number of anti-war, anti-torture Americans were probably undercounted. But even the EVIDENT numbers amazed me, given the IMPRESSION--both direct and subliminal--that you got from the 'news' (including political talk shows, print headlines, TV 'news' shows, etc.)
It is in the interest of the multinational corporations and war profiteers who rule over us to make us think ill of ourselves, as a people--to make us seem idiotic, insane, confused, hateful, divided--and to disempower us.
Some of our people are stupid, crazy and hateful. They have always been a minority. We had these types in the 1950s and 1960s. I remember them from my youth. And they are STILL very much a minority--but they are now being given a Big Trumpet to promulgate minority nutsiness. And that is what we must recognize before we make generalizations about our people and our country. Most people are working hard, barely keeping it together, trying hard to care for themselves and their families and communities, and want a good life--a decent life, social justice, fairness--for everyone, and also fervently desire good, fair, decent government--not this cauldron of corruption we see in Washington DC (and often locally as well). You can fault most Americans for being clueless, say, about the 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines, but I really don't think it's accurate to imply that most Americans have gone round the bend, or desire bad government--or the horrendous madness of unjust war, or any of the other insanity that we see, for instance, the lack of action on climate change.
Just think it through, is all my saying. Where are your perceptions of our country coming from?
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