A More Powerful Vocabulary
Even if you, like Eric Alterman, can ignore the "Chomskyite rhetoric," there's still a great deal of silliness in this essay by Kane Pryor. The idea is that the diabolical geniuses behind the Bush "propaganda machine," through a deliberate, brilliant campaign of targeted meme-dropping, perceptual engineering, and media manipulation, have reprogrammed the brains of the television-doped American public, planting the perception in our "societal omni-consciousness" that Iraqis planned and perpetrated the 9/11 attacks and convincing us that "Saddam and the no-longer-mentioned Osama are the same person." (Does Bush really drive such an all-powerful propaganda machine? Pretty good-- for a moron, that is.)
The springboard to this vaguely academic-sounding sermon (the rhetoric is rough going, if it doesn't quite sink to the level of Chomsky-ite sludge-- the author is clearly a Noam admirer, however) is a single question from a poll conducted by the Princeton Survey Research Associates for Knight-Ridder: "to the best of your knowledge, how many of the September 11 hijackers were Iraqi citizens?" 17% knew the answer to be "none," while 33% had no idea; the remainder selected options indicating that most, some, or one of the hijackers had been Iraqi citizens. To me, the question itself sounds like a case of entrapment. But in any case, it's a pretty slim basis for the three pages worth of elaborate, convoluted Language- and conspiracy-theorizing that follow, documenting the "use of language to sanctify a colossal reactionary surge." Here's an example, alluding to the Axis of Evil speech:
"Evil" had been clearly inducted into the understanding of the terrorist attacks, and the description of Iraq in those terms immediately annexed it to 9/11.
I don't find it too surprising that many Americans may not be all that clear on the citizenship or birthplaces of the 9/11 hijackers. Mass brainwashing and incarceration in some state-run Prison of Language, the "morphing" of Osama into Saddam, isn't the only, nor the most likely, culprit. Part of the fault does indeed lie with the Bush administration, which has, for dark reasons of its own, failed to emphasize the Saudi connection. But more generally, I think a more plausible explanation lies in Americans' well-documented, sad, but altogether benignly-generated, ignorance of the world outside. My British wife is constantly astonished by people over here, even the well-off and seemingly well-educated, who don't seem to have any idea where England is. "England. That's in Paris, isn't it?" is a typical question.
Here's another example. Last weekend, I was at the airport while the news of the space shuttle disaster was breaking. I hadn't heard of it till I saw it on Fox News, which was playing on one of the TV kiosks at the gate. I asked the lady next to me how many had been killed.
"Seven," she said. "And they're saying that one of them was from, oh, one of those countries out where, you know, one of those countries where we're going to war. Ireland? I think it was Ireland. Are we going to war with Ireland?"
I started suggesting more plausible alternatives. Iraq? Iran? She wasn't sure. Finally, Fox News showed some footage of Ariel Sharon. Eureka! "Israel," she said. "He was an Israeli. That's what I meant. We're not going to war with them, but they're out there." True enough.
Maybe the Bush machine (part moron, part Foucault, part Philip K. Dick) has been trying forcibly to imbed "Iraq" in this poor woman's "hippocampal memory." But if so, only the first letter managed to make it in.
The more interesting question: is it really the case, as the author of the article assumes without question, that wide-spread geographical ignorance necessarily renders support for a war or other policy initiative invalid or illegitimate, whether or not this ignorance is deliberately engineered by some sinister plot? I don't think it does, as a matter of fact. I have no data on it, but I'd guess it has been the case with most military conflicts, past and present. Was there anyone in America in 1945 who wondered, like my wife's contemporary acquaintances, whether England was "in Paris?" Even if so, it surely wouldn't have made Hitler any less of a menace. I knew enough about the situation in Kosovo to support its liberation, but I would have been hard-pressed to draw a map of it. I imagine many of those who called for intervention in Rwanda lacked detailed knowledge of the region's ethno-geography. That doesn't mean they were wrong.
Everyone knows who and what (if not necessarily precisely where) Saddam and his regime are. And in a sense, how is failing to take on board the datum about the citizenship of the 9/11 hijackers any worse than the stubborn determination to regard the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iraq with perfect equanimity? Who has been brainwashed here?
Anyway, I'm guessing we won't be invading Ireland any time soon. That would be a terrible mistake.
Posted by Dr. Frank at February 7, 2003 07:57 AM | TrackBack