August 12, 2002
Psychic and Political Numbing in Preparations for War by Fran Shor
While the Bush Administration prepares for war on Iraq with full-scale
weapons production and troop deployments, more insidious conditioning for
the public acceptance of war continues. In the face of repeated statements
by Bush and the hawkish members of his ruling clique of the need for "regime
change" in Iraq, international opinion has been forthright in its
condemnation of such proposed aggression.
However, in the absence of the mobilized outrage of the American people, the
Washington power elite will be emboldened to carry out their war plans. Why
the American public, so far, has been lackadaisical in its response to this
saber rattling may be reflective of the increase of psychic and political
numbing opportunistically manipulated by the Bush Administration since 9/11.
Psychic numbing, according to the psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, builds on
well-known defense mechanisms, such as repression, denial, and projection,
to create an exclusion of feeling and disconnectedness. Aided by the surfeit
of stimuli from televisual culture and media-manipulated images, people may
tune out those realities and possibilities that threaten their own sense of
connection to the world. In the case of 9/11, the Bush Administration
quickly exploited the anger of the American people without allowing a
grieving process to mature.
Drowning out the voices of survivors and their families who opposed
retaliation, war on Afghanistan was initiated. Begun as a campaign to seek
and destroy Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network, a network created by
the CIA in the 1980's, the intervention in Afghanistan quickly became an
exercise in imperial politics and the lethal arrogance of power.
In manufacturing consent for the war in Afghanistan, the corporate media
deliberately initially excluded scenes of civilian deaths. Now, however,
with additional reporting and investigation by world-wide news agencies and
the United Nations, the American public is being confronted with the
extensive violence visited upon the innocent Afghans. Nonetheless, the
desensitizing of the American public to the deaths of these differently
constituted others (by ethnicity, class, and nationality) is a form of
psychic numbing that may allow for the larger massacre of civilians in Iraq.
Of course, the American public has been bombarded with images and stories
about the evil policies of Saddam Hussein. While highlighting his use of
chemical weapons against Iraqi Kurds and Iranians, one rarely finds any
mention of Washington's support for Saddam Hussein during the 1980's when
these events happened. Moreover, while the Bush Administration has been busy
undermining international treaties dealing with Chemical and Biological
weapons, it has hypocritically insisted on unfettered inspections of Iraq's
weapons of mass destruction, weapons which many experts and former
inspectors, such as Scott Ritter, allege have been severely eroded.
Nonetheless, the targeting of the truly despicable Saddam Hussein is a
convenient propaganda device to exclude consideration of the death and
destruction already suffered by innocent Iraqis. A war on Iraq will only
further harm massive numbers of civilians without guaranteeing a democratic
and stabile post-Saddam regime and region. Since the Bush Administration is
m ore interested in seeking filial retribution and oil while sowing the
seeds of further war-making possibilities, it refuses to recognize the
catastrophic violent consequences of its intended intervention.
Part of the political numbing that the Bush Administration has visited on
the American public is intimately connected to the fear and intimidation
launched by the Ashcroft's jack-booted Department of Justice (sic). With
overwhelming Congressional support, the USA Patriot Act was passed,
establishing a wide variety of legal mechanisms to undermine the Bill of
Rights. Although still used against those swarthy others, legislation is in
place to deter real opposition to the policies of an increasingly
authoritarian government.
Added to this is the recent FBI reorganization, a reorganization that
facilitates spying on the public without any court orders or even evidence
of wrong-doing. Moreover, the Bush Administration has made clear its intent
to deny constitutionally-mandated judicial oversight in its refusal to turn
over documents to the judge overseeing one of the cases of a so-called enemy
combatant."
Perhaps it may be time to raise the whole matter of the "F" word. It
certainly seems reasonable to call this erosion of liberties and rights
creeping fascism, albeit a postmodern fascism that does not need to rely on
mass mobilization for realizing a proto-fascist agenda. In one of the most
brilliant analyses of everyday life in Nazi Germany, Detlev Peukert devoted
a whole chapter to "The Atomization of Everyday Life" (Inside Nazi Germany,
pp. 236-42). Combining a form of psychic numbing with political numbing,
many Germans just retreated from any public political life and took refuge
in their own isolation.
Since there is much evidence to support the tendency towards atomization and
privatization of everyday life in the United States, it may not require
utilizing any reference to fascism, whether postmodern or not. On the other
hand, when an administrative authority relies on the militarization of
everyday life to pursue a repressive and aggressive agenda, it may be
necessary to raise the specter of fasci sm.
Promising a war without end and hiding behind a jingoistic veil of war
against terrorism, the Bush Administration is promoting its own narrow
interests in oil and order. War-making was as essential to Italian and
German fascism as it is to this illegal and illegitimate ruling clique in
Washington, DC. If we are to avoid being dragged into further fascistic
adventures, we need to throw off this psychic and political numbing and to
mobilize at every level to oppose the policies and plans of a war-mad power
elite.
Fran Shor teaches at Wayne State University in Detroit. He is an anti-war
activist and member of several human rights and peace and justice
organizations. He can be reached at: aa2439@wayne.edu
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