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The mood in New York, and other cities throughout the DisUnited States
(DUS) in the early 1950s, was a concoction—among many others—of
feelings of post-Second World War victory (Victory at Sea), the surge of a
dynamic economy, the sense of social conformity, the availability of more
leisure time, a return to religion, Rock 'n Roll, the Beat Generation and the
DUS's presence on the global scene as the leader of the “free world,” all
tempered by glitches such as the Korean War, McCarthyism, the Rosenberg
executions, The John Birch Society, God and men at Yale, James
Burnham's The Managerial Revolution, Ayn Rand, the Roman Catholic
church, a host of conservative economists and philosophers bent on putting
money into religious and spiritual terminology, and a limpwristed response
to racial discrimination—all signs, symptoms, of the coming decline of the
United States of America, and the forthcoming tragic assassinations of
President John F Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Robert F Kennedy, and
the devastating effects of the ill-conceived Vietnam “War.”
Probably the most horribly doltish thing the American government, this
baby nation, ever did was to bomb, with atomic weaponry, both Hiroshima
and Nagasaki (6 and 9 August 1945). The killing of innocent children,
women, and Japanese elderly set the tone in the Pentagon that would vie
for further massacres in North Korea and Vietnam—once they had got the
hang of it. General William C Westmoreland (1914-2005), Vietnam
commanding general from 1964 to 1968 who thought he was in Europe and
not Asia, and his high-ranking staff members, Jesuit-educated colonels and
generals in the Pentagon, would have liked to have deployed atomic
weapons during their Vietnam putsch to gain Wall Street's consensus.
(Generals were beginning to think like politicians; chief executive offcers
were beginning to think like generals.) No one, apparently, thought that
exasperating Asia's sensibilities was not sagacious.
Yet, it was the Vietnam “War” that would turn out to do the most harm to
the psyches of the American people; and, this trauma is still embedded in
countless numbers of soldiers and their relatives who were psychologically
devastated as a result of the madness of the Southeast Asian incursion. For
it was the Vietnam “War” that realized, most fnely, the amalgamation of
the military and industrial complexes that President Dwight D Eisenhower
(1890-1969) had so vociferously warned against. Welding the military to
business was a very cagey move that would ramp up R&D activities,
produce more sophisticated weapons of mass destruction, and tighten the
knot between the military and the industrial's love affair on Wall Street.
The DUS would become the best at making war. And American “cannon
fodder” would remain holding the Ponzi scheme bag—much to their
disgust.
It was not exceptionally important whether the DUS would win or lose the
Vietnam “War,” but it was crucial to see whether or not the Department of
Defense could logistically carry on a commercial-military confict thousands
of miles from home—transporting millions of troops back and forth,
feeding them, arming them, entertaining them, supplying them with beer,
paying them, sending chaplains to pray for them and rip Playboy
centerfolds off their barracks' walls, and experimenting on them with new,
untried weapons and medicines. The Vietnam “War” was a logistical
miracle. It also was one that would rip apart the very “soul” of the
American people, and signal to the world that the American Dream was
actually an American Nightmare. In Vietnam it was inscribed, on latrine
walls, that “America lost its virginity in Vietnam.”
The “tooling” of the American soldier in Vietnam usually began with the
in-country orientation that required troops to read the Geneva Convention,
and afterwards study the native customs of, for instance, the Montagnard
villagers in the Army's Central Highlands' AO (Area of Operations). All
were obliged to sign both documents attesting to the fact that they had
digested the rules, regulations, and thoughts contained in them. Afterwards
the military personnel, mostly uneducated nineteen-year-old kids, would be
let loose to practice their personal interpretation of ethical upstandingness.
It was not infrequent that offcers of a high rank would order the troops to
defy the rules and regulations, and perhaps the My Lai massacre became so
notable only precisely because it was so monstrously enormous—just could
not be made inconspicuous. Grunts who had joined the Army because they
could not fnd a job back home, were ordered to go against the grain of not
only the Geneva Convention, but also their Sunday school sermons. They
were caught “between the Devil and the deep blue sea,” and did not know
whether they should turn right or left—morally speaking. (Bateson,
Jackson, Haley and Weakland in their article, “Toward a Theory of
Schizophrenia,” Behavioural Science (1956), discuss this condition and term
it the “double-bind” pattern. According to the authors, the likelihood of
such a confguration exists when these six elements are present: two or
more persons; repeated experience of the state of affairs; a primary negative
injunction: “Do not do this. I will punish you if you do;” a secondary
injunction conficting with the frst at a more abstract level, and like the
frst, enforced by punishment or signals which threaten survival: a negative
gesture, a tone of voice, a posture, etc; a tertiary negative injunction
prohibiting the victim from escaping from the feld: false promises of
devotion, affection or love; and, the absence of these constituents when the
victim learns that his or her universe is composed of, essentially, double-
bind patterns.) When schizoid Vietnam veterans returned home, not only
were they presented with another formidable “double-bind” pattern—many
Americans called them “baby killers;” others said they had not killed
enough of the enemy—a horrible confusion, “double-bind,” gripped them
and led many veterans to seek release in drugs and alcohol, and even to
enact heinous crimes perpetrated against their fellow citizens.
Double-bind patterns have been used by the DUS government as far back
as its frst ventures designed to invade nations in its own territorial
backyards had become real. President Theodore Roosevelt coined the
“offer a carrot, but carry a big stick” slogan meant to imply that “we want to
be nice to you, so you better be nice to us, or we will beat you over the head
with a stick! OK?” Television offered the opportunity to transmit American
TV series and movies subtitled or dubbed by actors and actresses in native
languages in order to propagandize the American image of itself, its way of
life, with all the purity, good will, and Judeo-Christian, mostly Christian,
mindset. Peoples throughout the world were dumbstruck watching “Ozzie
and Harriet” TV programs in their own nomenclatures seriously wondering
if “Ozzie and Harriet” and “Leave It to Beaver” were actually members of
the human race and not some species from outer space. Naturally, the cops
and robbers episodes' forever demonstrated that the bad guys would be
caught by the good guys—the American guys—police, military, and/or spy
guys. Here was a united effort to play with the minds of non-Americans,
cultivate in them a sympathy towards the DUS, and get them to participate
in the gloriousness of the American modus vivendi eating McDonald's and
Burger King hamburgers, devouring fnger-licking Kentucky Fried
Chicken, watching an NBA playoff holding on to a bottle of Coca-Cola,
keeping in touch with their boyfriends and girlfriends via their Apple
iPhones, and wearing, for all to see, NEW YORK, LA LAKERS,
BROOKLYN, HARVARD UNIVERSITY, YALE, and YANKEES t-shirts.
Electronic games, too! (One aspect of global branding that forever slips
through the slats, is the notion that French perfumes, Big Macs and
Whoppers, NBA t-shirts, Apple iphones, Land Rovers, Starbucks, Lindt,
Kentucky Fried Chicken, Ford, Coca-Cola, ad infnitum, are commercial
forces that merge, for the good, the mass of humanity that inhabits our
Earth. If one lives in a “developing” sovereign state, this “universal
fraternity” takes on a poignant characteristic. Peoples, even who have been
exploited throughout their histories, will be snooty to exhibit some
attachment to some well-known marque if only to say “we, too, have
McDonald's, Burger King—like everyone else in this cosmos.” Poor souls!
Naturally, they edify the egos of the CEOs who often are in cahoots with
the soft power diplomacy established, for instance, by the DUS's
Department of State. [Don't George Clooney's Nescafe commercials make
you sick to your stomach?]) The entire world is latched onto a piece of
Americania or other national branding, while American and other
businessmen and women pilfer through the unassuming ones' wallets.
Greed and corruption has become as commonplace as stupidity! Oh! If only
the hundreds of millions of destitute people in this world could only afford
a fshing pole! They all could share the American Dream and become
billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos!
The cult of the American privileged class huffs and puffs and chugs away
without stopping. It does not possess a stop button. Not even a “Slow down
you're going too fast” switch. It goes and goes and goes. If you get in its
way, it will push you aside. It has no scruples, and nothing might be
considered powerful enough to hold its onrushing to who knows where. It
is inhuman. It will stop for nothing. It lives beyond its very self—cold-
hearted and desensitized. It lurks and jerks as it pleases. This Imaginary
Creature is like a comet—amazingly scintillating and startling speedy—on a
course to eventually extinguish itself.
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