An Excerpt from John McMurtry's book, Value Wars: The Global Market Versus the Life Economy (Pluto Press, 2002), pp. 25-26.
"The key to keeping the audience on side in the total morality play is the disconnection of act from consequence—the master meta-theme of this era which defines its fanatic character. This disconnection is necessary because, as the Vietnam War showed, the citizens of the smaller and weaker country whose heavens and earth are rained with fire for weeks on end from above must not be seen in the agony connected to the bombing if demonstration of the universal forces is to work. The underlying life-ground of humanity will not tolerate it in the end. The unspeakable programme of distruction of a different economic order can only proceed if the terror and the destruction of peoples' lives is blinkered out from home view. Since Vietnam, therefore, war on the poor has been packaged like a one-way video game. One trumph of power after another by 'our boys kept out of harm's way', blanket control of all news-gathering and reports in the name of 'security', and selection of all media facts and reporters of acts, sustain the toal illusion down the omnipresent TV screen.
Since the home majority never sees the terror and the ruin of poor people's lives by image control around the clock, only those who make it their business to find out—the heroes of the global civil commons—learn the truth."
I recommend viewing the documentary Militainment, Inc.: Militarism & Pop Culture as a supplement to the quote.
For news updates regarding geopolitics I would recommend visiting the website http://stratrisks.com/.
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