The Addicted Nation

United States is the largest and the most prosperous market variety of narcotics, and legally prescribed drugs. A consumer nation that is accustomed to buying on credit, and working hard in order to be able to buy more of the things that are mostly unused. As many entertaining gadgets are invented in this country, so are new kinds of drugs. Statistics are jaw dropping: “The most recent census on drug addiction shows that at least 24 million Americans (9.4%) have used illicit drugs in the preceding month. Of these, approximately 19.6 million have, or have had, a substance abuse disorder in the preceding year.  This means that nearly one in every ten Americans has a drug abuse problem – a statistic that would surprise many.” This is merely an illicit drug problem. The most common drug addiction is through the use of prescribed drugs. These days, you can buy any prescription drug you desire online. 

In a capitalist system, the most successful company is the one who can increase the bottom line (the phrase “who” is intentionally used to refer to companies as people, according to the Supreme Court!). Such company may be a hospital who needs to increase number of patients, a morgue that needs to increase number of deceased, or a pharmaceutical company that increases its profit by selling more drugs. The best way and the best use and the best recipients of advertisement and propaganda exists in the US, which will be discussed later. Growth of pharmaceutical companies has been worldwide, according to the following table: 

	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015
Spain	3%	-1%	-12%	1%	2%	16%
Brazil	18%	17%	-6%	16%	13%	14%
Italy	3%	2%	-8%	3%	3%	13%
United States	3%	3%	-1%	4%	12%	12%
Great Britain	4%	2%	0	17%	8%	10%
China	22%	16%	22%	14%	11%	7%
Canada	3%	-2%	-2%	0	4%	6%
Japan	0	5%	0	3%	1%	6%
Germany	3%	2%	-6%	5%	7%	6%
France	1%	1%	-8%	-2%	2%	0

Kate Upton was a miss teen USA candidate from South Carolina in 2007. In order to measure her mastery in speech and education, she was asked this interesting question: “Recent poll shows that a fifth of Americans cannot locate the US on a world map. Why do you think this is?” And this was her answer: “I personally believe that US Americans are unable to do so because some people out there in our nation don’t have maps and I believe that our education like such as in South Africa and the Iraq everywhere like such as and I believe that they should our education over here should help the US or should help South Africa and should help the Iraq and the Asian country so we will be able to build up our future for our children.” Her stupidity made her famous, and right after that she was ridiculed in every media and people talked about her. Finally, she reached the point everyone in this country is dying to reach: FAME. As a result of this fame, she became a successful model. Smart phones and laptops have somehow replaced the time spent on TV in recent years, but the quality of what people watch has not changed. Therefore, the important thing is for your picture to be displayed on the TV or on cyberspace.

Appearing on screen has been the wish of many Americans. People do not care whether they would become famous or infamous, as long as they appear on the tube. Some didn’t mind spending the rest of their lives behind bars as long as their pictures appeared on TV. Nowadays, one can post his or her picture on the cyberspace. The more outrageous the video, the more number of viewers one would receive. Of course for women showing some skin helps much more. This phenomenon has expanded beyond US borders. Hollywood and the media are the tools promoting such sensation. With the support of the government through gun lobbyists, guns have become main product of the country to US consumers, and other nations internationally. At the same time, using guns is on the rapid increase, and Hollywood movies encouraging violence, hand in hand with the relaxed legislation, acquiring guns have become as easy as buying drugs. There is not a day in American cities that a person is not killed. According to statistics by BBC, over thirteen thousand people were killed and close to twenty eight thousand people were injured by guns in 2015, and this does not include suicide. Chain killing is rampant, thanks to weapon manufacturers making gadgets enabling mass killing. The culture of drugs and alienation pays off in destroying innocent people. A thirst for fame, along with carrying a concealed weapon while walking in the streets of America is a dangerous combination.

Capitalism needs consumers. When a government is supporting capitalism, it promotes consumerism in order to create market for the capital. At the same time, it suppresses labor in order to make the product cheaper and more competitive, and conquers other nations where raw materials can be extracted cheaper, and at the same time market is expanded. That is what is promoted as globalism. However, the largest market for American products is American populace. There are many methods whereby US population can be converted into consumers. After the event of September eleven, George W. announced to the nation that it was safe for them to go out and shop. He could have said that it was safe for people to enjoy their lives and have fun in a park or travel, or at least go the movies or watch TV. But in American psychic, shopping equates fun. This way of thinking is not genetic and it did not become a way of life for Americans over night. It has decades of research by the most prolific thinkers to plant into common people’s mind that shopping is fun and going to a mall in the weekends is enjoyable. One can spend the whole day in a mall with all members of the family. In a shopping mall you can find stores selling products for all ages and all styles. You can have your breakfast, lunch and dinner in a mall. There are places for kids to play. Some malls even have nurseries for infants and toddlers. Creation of a shopping mall, the latest market devised by capitalism, has progressively been evolved. There are ads that say “those who think shopping is not fun don’t know where to shop”. However, the most important advent of capitalism is individualism; to produce a nation with apathy. Americans are the least participants in the policies of their government among all industrialized nations.

Edward Bernays was born in Vienna, raised in the US, and he was educated in Cornell University. He is called the father of public relations, as he used psychology and social sciences to persuade public to buy his marketing ideas. After graduating, he took a trip to Vienna to visit his famous psychologist uncle, Sigmund Freud. What he learned from his uncle was that human mind could be manipulated into any direction that one desires, if the method is properly constructed. In 1923, He detailed his learning in a book titled “Crystallizing Public Opinion”. Five years later he wrote another book about propaganda under the same title. He established a public relations agency in order to sell his ideas to private industries. The next book that he wrote in 1947, “The Engineering of Consent”, was further described and analyzed from an opposite view point in a book by Noam Chomsky in 1988, titled “Manufacturing Consent”. Bernays called people irrational and controllable in any way one desired, and subject to herd instinct. In 1929, when smoking was a manly recreation, he was hired to promote cigarette smoking among women. Calling it “torches of freedom”, he successfully influenced women to pick up smoking, by drilling deep through their feminist and even sexual desires. His cooperation with the US government started in the First World War, when US government decided to enter the war and needed his help in shaping people’s consent to the war. He was the architect behind the campaign of the “United Fruit Company” in a coup against the popular government of Guatemala, with the help of CIA, in 1954. His ideas helped the government of the United States to create a consumer and subservient nation. He helped Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover in their presidential campaigns. He worked as a top official of the government during WWII. If one still believes that India is the most democratic country, it helps to know that this idea was created by Bernays and was promoted successfully. UFO sighting enthusiasts and followers should also know that the story was created by the government, to distract those who witnessed shining contrivances travelling through space. In fact those contraptions were government’s missiles being tested. Whether UFO sightings was contrived by Bernays or his successors, is not clear. Interestingly, Bernays also worked for many non-profit organizations, NAACP among them. His famous quotation is “men are rarely aware of the real reasons which motivate their actions.” He was the first person to scientifically shape the minds of people submissive to the wills of the government. In addition, he helped the idea among Americans to believe in their superiority and their exceptionalism, in addition to their consent to the wishes of capitalism.

There were other factors explaining why majority of Americans are indifferent and un-knowledgeable about the world, self-centered, brutal, and ignorant? US government has spent millions of dollars and has picked brains of some of the most sophisticated thinkers in order to create a nation of sheep, obedient, and religious. A nation that believes in their superiority in intelligence, and convinced that their way of life is unique and other nations should follow suit. Of course, it is unfair to assume that all Americans suffering from such symptoms. Considering comfort of life created in this nation, through plundering other nations, it absorbs the best and the greatest minds. As it was said earlier, some of these great thinkers are attracted by the system, and some disclose the system. But the internet and smart devises which could be utilized to increase one’s knowledge and efforts towards , are filled with cheap and mindless materials. In the previous generation, the TV was turned on in every American home from early in morning with morning shows, until late night with another set of shows, with Hollywood style films showing glamour and comedy in between. Then, happy hour was created. A time to spend in bars and drink mind altering liquids in order to be happy for a couple of hours, as if the rest of the day is not happy, which in fact it is not happy for common people. Any opposition to such way of life is suppressed by drugs or in jail, as in the sixties with LSD and recently by the aid of local police. Smart phones have recently replaced TV to a certain point, and it has gone further by making an addiction to use the device while commuting, or at work, or in the classrooms. If one person could provide for the whole family in the fifties and sixties and up to seventies, now both parents have to work to pay for their children’s schools, which was free in the past, for their medical care, which was cheaper when there was no middle man between the patient and the doctor, and for their privatized utilities and even roads. Final trick of the system has been direct control of the media via a few rich families, who are a part of the system.

According to Independent newspaper of England in an investigation of education among 76 countries of the world, US ranking was 29, way below a country that was totally demolished by US bombs, Vietnam that ranks 12 on the chart. Why does the richest and militarily the most powerful country is so weak in education. In fact the former attribute is the reason. A government that is built on other nation’s destruction has to keep its populace uneducated in order to keep them ignorant of its policies. There has been many articles and TV shows interviewing people in the street who did not have any knowledge of geography outside of (and sometimes inside) the US. Their knowledge of history has even been worse, which is obvious from the history American kids learn in schools, glorifying the empire through false history.

As capitalism is reaching another phase of bust, considering the widening disparity of wealth, creating another war becomes a necessity. However, with other nuclear powers in the world, such as China and Russia, the most powerful nation in the world and in the history of humankind would bring about a doomsday if such action is undertaken. An addicted nation can get addicted to anything that the government promotes. Any kind of addiction can make a person compliant to the wishes of the ones controlling the person.  According to the same source mentioned at the beginning of this article: “There are addictions that run rampant as well, beyond those that are considered substance abuse issues by the DSM-IV.

• Nicotine addiction, which can cause a physical dependence similar to other abused substances, has taken 55.1 million Americans.
• Up to thirty percent of Americans might regularly drink more than six cups of coffee a day.  Eleven percent of America is addicted to sex, two percent is addicted to food, and two percent is addicted to gambling.

Of all those suffering from drug addiction, only eleven percent seek treatment. This doesn’t mean that substance abusers don’t want help – the high cost of treatment is a deterrent to many addicts who are unable to support themselves enough to pay for a treatment plan.”