Pessimism Is Optimism: Tales From The Cold War Weary

In the dark dystopian world of George Orwell we find doublespeak and its ability to confuse and to obfuscate meaning of simple words and axioms that we have always taken for granted. In Orwell’s 1984, the protagonist lives in an empire where order is maintained with the propaganda slogans “War is Peace,” “Freedom is Slavery” and “Ignorance is Strength.”

Today I have decided to offer an slogan of my own and that is, “Pessimism is Optimism.”

Last night I made a humorous jab at the idea that with all of the turmoil that is brewing, it is awfully hard to accept that radical Islam will change its ways just because Barack Obama wants to reach out to them. It doesn’t matter that he wants to offer young people jobs and program them through the school system to understand what extremism is, and to steer disenfranchised teens away from radicalized apocalyptic cults like ISIS.

Today I was surprised to find a few stories in the news that in my opinion gave me a bit of optimism about the future. I wanted to share them with you because I am truly beginning to understand that more people are waking up to the government’s uncanny knack for breeding hatred with war rhetoric in order to encourage the average person to turn on their morality and values.

In the wake of last week’s attack on a Copenhagen synagogue and growing anti-Semitism across Europe, a group of young Muslims in Norway have organized a Shabbat “Ring of Peace” around an Oslo synagogue to, in the words of its 17-year-old organizer, “extinguish the prejudices people have against Jews and against Muslims.” The leader of Oslo’s Jewish community agreed to the event if 30 people signed up. To date, over 1,500 have signed up. Someone spoke up and said, “We all have to live under the same sky.”

I begin to wonder just how tired we have become of “Warspeak?” It is much like Orwell’s idea of Newspeak, where those who create the narrative find creative words to lessen the blow of war. Warspeak is the opposite, providing colorful terminologies that create fear whenever they are uttered.

Any war is a war on words as well as on people. No one is proud of the effects of war, however proud we might be of the intentions of our fighting forces. Whenever war breaks out, we begin to hear the words “Newspeak,” “doublespeak,” “doublethink.”

In Orwell’s 1984, Newspeak is a political language designed to narrow the range of thinking among the citizenry to the point that they lack the terms to think for themselves. “Freedom” is defined as slavery, and “slavery” as freedom. That should convince everyone to be happy slaves. It is not surprising that those who direct wars would want to narrow the thoughts of the nation behind them to those of acceptance and support.

We might identify the Newspeak of war, in the Orwellian tradition, as “Warspeak.” Every war has its own vocabulary and not all of it is nefarious.

Many of us are old enough to remember words like “mutually-assured destruction,” and the ever-popular “collateral damage.” We can also remember terms like “weapons of mass destruction” or even “9/11” — a set of numbers that sends a buzz over any crowd, leaving them in a hypnotic trance.

The Cold War also had its own lexicon. The language used in the narrative was not as interchangeable as the words “red” and “pink” have lost their power, but “pinko” can still raise the occasional eye-brow there are a few leftovers that we can remember fondly like “Iron Curtain,” “subversives,” “Checkpoint Charlie,” the “Berlin Wall,” the “red menace,” and “Commie rat fink.”

Demonizing the enemy is an important part of any struggle that seeks a willing coalition to back it. Referring to the enemy as “a regime,” part of an “axis,” a “cult,” “radicalized,” “extremist” and even “terrorist” is very effective for the war hawks to convince you that the enemy is less than human.

As I was browsing over the headlines this morning, I was wondering if I had awakened into a time warp. Perhaps I was reading a parody website like the Onion that was trying to fool me.

According to a recent Gallup poll, it appears that the stoking of the fires for World War III using “Warspeak” is having a blowback effect. The attitude of the people of the United States is souring towards war, and they are growing numb to the continued nightmare that we have been thorough with the arrival of ISIS.

Now this isn’t to say that much of the Warspeak is not working, especially when comes to our attitudes about Russia.

Gallup released the result of a poll on February 16th, which asked about Americans’ impression of the nation’s top enemies. Conservative publications showed an increase of hatred for the Russians. There was a 16 percent increase in distrust towards Russia.

This isn’t surprising when you consider the amount of propaganda and news coverage. We are told daily that Putin is the new Hitler, and that he is organizing a new global monetary system that some say is his equivalent to the New World Order. The media narrative asks “How dare he defy NATO?”

This paranoia about Russia, and the rising fear that Communism hasn’t died, is silly, and so it is simply amazing to see that 24 percent of people still have a favorable impression of the country.

Now further in the polls, we find that Americans are not as nervous towards Iraq and Iran as they once were. Notice we didn’t have to turn those areas into glass parking lots to stop being fearful towards Iran.

Years of swearing it was the number one monster, with politicians clamoring for a war with it, and years of sanctions have still not managed to transform Iran into the boogeyman that warmongers want it to be. In 2011, 25 percent of people thought it was the number one threat. Now it is at 9 percent.

Now here is the most intriguing fact that Gallop produced. Syria and ISIS-controlled nations rank a paltry 4 percent on the worry scale. Apparently Americans do does not see ISIS as the gravest threat.

The mainstream narrative can show the beheadings, the burnings and the carnage, spinning these numbers in favor of the war hawks — and they do. But the public doesn’t demonstrate any particular fear of any particular place. ISIS can be in one corner or another, but they too have to weigh the consequences if they are found in a particular area.

The mainstream media really gives them too much credit and too much attention.

Another recent poll, this one by CNN, offers another reason for cautious interventionist optimism. When asked whether the US should support the Palestinian or Israeli side in the conflict, two-thirds said “neither.” Furthermore, 62 percent decided it was wrong for House Speaker John Boehner to invite Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu to speak before Congress without even informing the White House.

The presumption that Israel and the US are on the same side has lessened in recent years, even among Israel supporters. It’s good to know that such a strong majority believes that we should simply stay out of this fight and keep our distance with Israel.

The White House isn’t happy with Netanyahu, and has said that he isn’t being honest in the talks. The conservative right always seems to scream when Israel isn’t treated as the 51st state, or the drop-everything-here-comes-Bibi–state.

It is also surprising that 52 percent of Republicans supported Boehner ignoring Obama on the Netanyahu invitation.

The polls that Gallup conducted also indicate that conservative Americans still oppose interventionist wars. Democrats, however, seem to want their President to lead them into battle and save them from their embarrassment. Gallup says it’s 54-40. The opinion against sending aid to Ukrainian separatists shows a slight edge as well.

Support for intervention against ISIS shot up to 54 percent after the beheadings of the Coptic Christians, according to an NBC poll. When Democrats are asked, the support reaches 60 percent — six percent higher than Republican support.

We have always heard by the left that conservatives and neo-cons are warmongers, but now we are beginning to notice that war hawks like John McCain, Peter King, and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina are trying to play “back-seat driver” with regards to what Barack Obama should do. Sure, these numbers are too close to call, but certainly the idea of going to war again is not as popular in this country as it used to be.

It is also peculiar that most Americans who have been polled believe that a limited troop engagement with ISIS is an option. There seems to be a popular and misguided notion that a small war is something we can get ourselves into without destabilizing the region and possibly creating more chaos than we need or more death and destruction than we want.

I am seeing a trend here.

The trend is this: how the media goes, so too do the polling results. Since Iran and Iraq have not been trending in the media, the population seems to be ambivalent to their danger. A possible intervention against ISIS has gained ground since we were informed of the beheadings of Coptic Christians and the burning of children.

Vladimir Putin is either loved or hated depending on whether or not the groundhog sees his shadow.

Can it all be an indication that the media is responsible for the pessimism in the world? Is it that all of your optimism about the future is decimated when you have to here the nightly war report and the manufactured threats that they claim to be at your back door?

Machiavelli wrote that when we are trying to understand politics and the history of human societies, much can be explained in terms of the eternal conflict between two fundamental desires. One is the desire of the “grandi” — that is, the super-rich and the super-powerful – to protect their wealth and power, and to accumulate more wealth and power. The other is the desire of ordinary citizens — that is, anyone who is not super-rich or super-powerful — to live in peace and freedom without being subjected to the predatory activities of the grandi.

“Peace,” like many theoretical terms, is difficult to define. Its understanding has been studied in a number of traditions for centuries and generally one-line explanations have not fared well.

Machiavelli was right. Many things have changed, but what was true then is still true today. Oligarchic appetites are an enormous threat to liberty and freedom.

If you don’t believe that the New World Order is being established, then perhaps you should ask yourself where the centralized power is today.

The truth is that there are a few entities at this time claiming that they are the rising powers in the New Dawn. One is the European Union, the other is the United Nations. While some may believe that the United States fits the mold, we have now been reduced to a non-central power, but rather a rent-a-cop force for all of the powerful entities that are now ruling the world without the consent of the people that they govern (much less the people they attack and kill).

Every country that rejects the empire is now at a boiling point domestically, which indicates that destabilization is now the tool to tear down governments and rebuild them in the image of world order.

Tom Engelhardt refers to that “boiling point” in his article which asks the question, “What’s the Role of American Empire in the New World Order?”. He writes:

From Ukraine to Syria, South Sudan to Thailand, Libya to Bosnia, Turkey to Venezuela, citizen protest (left and right) is sparking not just disorganization, but what looks like, to coin a word, de-organization at a global level.

The answer to the destabilization is world control, and, as Obama has stated, “addressing a broader set of priorities around the globe.”

Pax Americana has failed in the Middle East and the vision of the Bush/Cheney era is now being seen as criminal. However, there seems to be no attempt at bringing to justice any and all who was complicit in allowing the turmoil to plague us for the thirteen years of the new century.

The reason is quite simple and can be found in the Great Seal of the United States. There are thirteen layers in the pyramid, or thirteen steps in the “working” of the “new order of the ages.” The thirteen years of war has built the pyramid of control and the capstone shall be in place for the new order. The eye above the pyramid signifies the New Dawn of world domination.

That New Dawn is here. The Age of Aquarius will be set in stone as Jupiter ascends and eventually aligns during the Ides of March. The line that Shakespeare wrote for Julius Caesar, “Beware the Ides of March,” also can be interpreted as “Beware the rise of Mars.”

Mars is the bringer of war and hardship. Mars is also represented in the Mazzaroth as the ram or the goat.

We are now beginning our journey through the lunar year. This is what the Chinese call the year of the sheep, goat or ram.

The old world order was characterized by monarchies, countries with independent standing armies, metals and fiat currency. World War I was fought in order to eliminate the power of the monarchies.

It was then that the vision of the New World Order was being spoken of by world leaders from Woodrow Wilson to, later, Adolf Hitler. In the process, failed attempts at a New World Order were seen in the rise of the League of Nations, as well as the movements of Communism, Nazism, and now the encroachment of the European Union in its attempts at world dominion.

As we again flip through the pages of Orwell’s 1984, we understand that when the power of the Party is far greater than the power of the individual, the easiest way to eliminate the rebellious human capital is to cull them through war.

The fictitious Emmanuel Goldstein states that any war — whether it is exists or not — is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous. The essential act of modern warfare is the destruction of the produce of human labor. Goldstein writes:

A hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance. In principle, the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects, and its object is not victory over Eurasia or Eastasia, but to keep the very structure of society intact.

Remember the war is waged by the ruling body against its own people in order to establish and further the cause of the world order.

No matter how popular our leaders tend to make a war look, they will never have to face the tragedy or the loss that members of the public, who pay for and fight the war, will have to endure.

Tonight, Clyde speaks to Angela Keaton, the Director of Operations at Antiwar.com, which provides news and views from an anti-imperialist perspective.

Text – Check out Ground Zero Radio with Clyde Lewis Live Nightly @ http://www.groundzeromedia.org