Media

American jingoism is creeping into every facet of our daily life

By Wayne Madsen
Online Journal Contributing Writer

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May 19, 2005—America has become an ugly place. It is anti-foreign in almost every aspect. There is no time for any religion other than a fundamentalist and uniquely American-created notion of Judeo-Christianity rooted in the belief that a white-bearded European God sent a fair haired and blue-eyed Aryan named Jesus Christ (not a black, curly haired, Aramaic, and probably, Greek-speaking Essene Jew named Yeshua ben Yosef haDavid) to Earth to die for the sins of a chosen few Southern white bigots, rich Republicans, and Christian crusaders wearing American military uniforms and private contractor fatigues.

This religious belief would be comical if it had not already reaped dire consequences of death, despair, and destruction–in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Palestine, in Africa, in Southeast Asia, around the world.

Make no mistake about it, America is a hateful nation bent on world domination in a modern-day religious crusade. Not all nations share our beliefs. The United Nations does not share our beliefs.

Europe has come in for particular abuse from the American religious neo-fascists. The neocon-occupied U.S. Senate accuses politicians in France, Britain, and Russia who do not share American "values" of accepting petrodollar bribes from Saddam Hussein. American firms like Halliburton and its subsidiaries, which reaped millions in profits from trading with Saddam, go unmentioned.

A senior White House staff member recently told a colleague that since the United States dominates the world it can create its own reality. The staffer added that if the Bush regime does not like the reality they've created, in 30 minutes they can change it. What awesome power almost total control of the international media and popular culture can bestow on Imperial America!

It is a hallmark of ideologically-driven dictatorships that their social control mechanisms extend to every facet of people's lives: what they read in the press, what they watch on TV and hear on the radio, what they hear from the pulpit, and what they're told to do at work (wear American flag pins, contribute to the Republican Party, discriminate against gays and women and Latinos and African-Americans and Native Americans and Muslims and atheists).

You say things aren't that bad yet? There probably isn't any activity more innocuous than a crossword puzzle. It's a non-political, uncontroversial pastime, right? Guess again. The Washington Post's crossword puzzle is likely the most widely done by those in political power. Whether one works as a desk officer at the State Department, an FBI agent, a Secret Service guard at the White House, chances are that if they use Washington's mass transit systems, they do the Post's crossword puzzle. And this obviously has not been lost on the opinion manipulators in the White House and the Temple of Doom known as the Republican Party political machine.

In May 16's edition of the Post, the following clue was found for 57 Down: Prefix with dollar or trash. "Euro dollar" is one answer. The other is not only an example of how low the Post has sunk in journalism, becoming a virtual propaganda rag for the Bush White House, but also how hateful opinions of foreigners from the American heartland have now influenced the elites in Washington, DC. The other answer: "Eurotrash."

Although "Eurotrash" has been used to describe European campy pop culture, like all code words it has another, more cutting and hurtful meaning. Various neocons have used this term to describe Europe in general, France, Germany, Scandinavia, Iberia, and other countries that reject American neocon imperialism and global designs. The neocons accentuate the term Eurotrash to include degenerate behavior, avant-garde chic, kitschy nightclubs, homoerotic exhibitionism, post-modernism, egotism, laziness, drug legalization, poor hygiene, social democracy, labor rights, and internationalism.

Eurotrash is anathema to American white trash, who embrace Wal Marts, bowling alleys, Moose and Elks Lodges, SUVs, NASCAR races, mega-churches, Republican Party rallies, Bush/Cheney '04 or just plain "W" bumper stickers, creationism, one-size-fits-all women's wear, African-American lawn jockey statuettes, Toby Keith, chewing tobacco, tailgate parties, Budweiser beer, sexual fascination for barnyard fauna, ball caps, reality TV, Rush Limbaugh, and abhorrence for dental care.

The Post's puzzle answer came one day before British anti-war Member of Parliament George Galloway was due to testify in a Joe McCarthy-like Senate hearing chaired by arch-neocon Norm Coleman of Minnesota. Coleman's kangaroo committee issued a dubious report about several European politicians receiving UN "Oil-for-Food" money from Saddam. The source of the information was Iraq's Oil Ministry, led by congenital liar and con man Ahmad Chalabi, and interviews with former Saddam officials incarcerated in U.S. military prisons.

A November 8, 2003, screed by Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz in The New York Daily News (owned by leading neocon Mort Zuckerman) referred to Europeans who criticize Israel as "Euro Trash." In the run-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, a former Republican congressman from New York named Dan Frisa wrote an article for the neocon NewsMax.com titled "Anti-U.S. Euro Trash-Talk." And the jingoist term "Eurotrash" continues to spring forth from the mouths of America's bigots of the radio airwaves and cable news networks.

Americans continue to be conditioned by the neocon perception managers and spinmeisters. If America doesn't soon wake from its cathartic state and realize who and what have been allowed to take over our nation, it may soon find itself one day being governed by an international transition government made up of Euro "trash," Subcontinent "trash," Near East "trash," Latin American "trash," South Pacific "trash," East Asian "trash," sub-Saharan "trash," Pan-Sahelian "trash," "Afro-Caribbean "trash," and Australian "trash."

Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based journalist and nationally-syndicated columnist.