When General Eisenhower was leaving the White House in January 17, 1961, in his farewell speech, he warned American people of the Military Industrial Complex. Why didn’t he do anything about this danger when he was in the office? The answer is clear. Presidents of the United States can make decisions about any issue that does not endanger the benefit of big businesses. The real control is in the hands of a few industrialists whose power exceeds beyond economics, and expands into all aspects of American societies. These are the people who made the United States the greatest nation in the world, after the Second World War, which has continued through the first decade of the 21st century.
In a capitalist economy, money buys everything, including wisdom. As a result, one of the most intelligent Americans of the early twentieth century, Edward Bernays, who also happened to be a nephew of Sigmund Freud, created a new controlling mechanism, which we can call “Media Industrial Complex”. He believed the public irrational and subject to herd instinct, who could be manipulated by various instruments. His famous achievement was popularizing cigarette smoking among women, by calling it “torch of freedom”. He was also in politics, by assisting American Secret Services in manipulation and dirty work, such as aiding CIA to overthrow a democratically elected president in Guatemala.
Currently, Media Industrial Complex is controlled by the United States government, and it is so effective and strong that when the government decides to misinform or indoctrinate people, it can easily obtain acceptance of majority of Americans. Going back to Military Industrial Complex, in spite of the warnings of Eisenhower, Americans have accepted that there are governments, especially in the Middle East where raw material is plentiful, whose main task is to defeat or sabotage American government. During the time that socialism was gaining popularity, Roosevelt had to include some social ideas, such as welfare and social security and unemployment, into American economy, in spite of business objections. Of course little by little private sector has been able to reduce such benefits, by calling those receiving them as “lazy” and a “non-willing to work” group. The media industrial complex helps to get Americans acquiescence.
There was an open racism in this country during the period of slavery, and some years after that. Today, racism still exits among the offspring of slave owners, while it is presented in a different style. For instance, it is easily popularized that the reason a great majority of Black people are in jail is that they are cultural thieves and drug dealers. The system of course pushes them to those areas, as it drives Hispanics to minimal jobs. A public high school teacher told me once that her black students did not like to go to school, and they were among those at the bottom of the education strata, as they knew that when they got their high school diploma they could not afford to go to any colleges, and what was waiting for them in the job market was paid by minimum wage. The Media Industrial Complex is so powerful that those black people who have some achievements, think the same about those less accomplished ones! Who are these increasing populated homeless people? Are they homeless because the wealth of the society is distributed unequally? No, they are poor and homeless because of their own lack of initiatives. This is the mentality of majority of Americans, as it is carefully, and successfully, fed to people by the government.
After September Eleven attack by some young adventurists, the reason of which is so protected by Saudi and U.S. governments which no one really understands as of today for what reason a group of wealthy and educated people would do such a crime, U.S. government attacked Iraq, although the attackers were from a friendly government! Everybody had to install a U.S. flag on his or her house, and attach one to his or her car, or be unpatriotic. It suddenly became a symbol of solidarity. As a result, attacking and destroying some foreign countries, in the absence of Soviet Union, such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Libya, and Syria was not opposed by the great majority of American people.
The popular American belief is that “rich people are rich because they are smart”. Presidents have all been Christians, and they are lead to the White House by a priest. To make any testimony in court or other places, you put your hands on a bible. In a nation, where the great majority believe in god and some religion, mostly Christianity, no one is asking why some people are not born smart, like those with wealth and power. Again, the media is so successful in formulating people’s opinions that no one even ponders about such basic questions. Media is controlled by a handful of people and news section in any broadcasting system or journal is exactly the same; the viewpoint of American government.
In the past couple of weeks, you could not listen or watch any news, without condemning Russians attacking Ukraine. One of the progressive internet newspapers is called “Information Clearing House”. There are some statistics on the top of this internet media. The numbers of course change as time goes by, but these are the numbers at the time of this writing: total cost of U.S. wars since 2001: $7,567,964,746,466, and number of Iraqis slaughtered in U.S. war: 1,455,590. This is of course only one of the U.S. wars in this century, some others have already been mentioned here. And, these are aggressive wars conducted by the government directly against other sovereign countries. Regime changes have always been a preoccupation of CIA from the time this country was established. One of the latest one was the change of the regime in Ukraine.
We know that United States has military basis in many parts of the world. Having one right on Russia’s borders would of course make the Russians intimidated, considering the history of the U.S. foreign policy. Therefore, when Ukraine’s U.S. installed Fascist government decides to become a member of NATO, a military alliance between 28 European and 2 North American countries, Russians would react. A military aggression is not a solution to any problem, of course. No one knows what would be the outcome of this Russian military advancement, but it is extremely dangerous considering the sensitive times. We know from history that great powers never stay powerful for ever, and at some point they go down. We can go back in history and check Roman, Greek, and Persian empires, to the more recent Spanish, Dutch, German, and British empires, and study their rise and fall. One thing that all these empires shared before collapsing was their military opposition. None of them lost power with grace and peace. They all sank after a long period of war.
United States has been the greatest power, militarily, economically, technologically, educationally, and artistically for many decades. The great Soviet Union became Russia, which is much smaller, but still powerful. Another rising power is China. These two new emerging powers threaten U.S. hegemony, and as we witness from many factors including industry, United States government is declining rapidly. Having the greatest military in the world, this important power is not going to go away peacefully. Ukraine looks, in fact, as a trap for Russia by the United States, in order to contest those with the desire to replace its power. We are living in a very dangerous times, considering nuclear brandishing as part of their military might. This war can easily be stopped if United States orders Ukraine government to change its plan, and does not assist it to becoming a member of NATO. At any rate, Russia should end this war as soon as possible, or the outcome would threaten the world. If a global war begins, which would easily turn into a nuclear war, as the United States is the only country that has already used it, and has so much more in its arsenal and it seems because of its control on the media may get Americans supportive of it, the humanity will end. Dinosaurs were not as advanced as we humans are, but they had lasted much longer than we have, and they were destroyed not by themselves, but by nature.
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