When a minority of skeptical, more independently intelligent politicians, authors or artists questioned the Cold War assertions they were peremptorily ostracized as Reds, traitors or indeed assassinated by the military-industrial complex, as David Talbot convincingly argues in the case of President John F Kennedy.
This perverse distortion and waste of US economic resources -- a $600 billion military budget year after year overshadowing all other social needs -- is engineered precisely through fear. American military might must be supreme and sacrosanct in order to defend or protect US vital interests and those of its allies from existential threats. Russia, and to a lesser extent China, continues to be designated in the role of global threat.
To this end, Americans have been subjected to a relentless psychological program -- euphemistically referred to as news -- for the past seven decades. Europeans too. Perhaps in the whole of Europe the British media is the most toxic and reactionary when it comes to demonizing Russia.
The manipulation of the Western public mind is flagrant. The claims against Russia are preposterous, but astoundingly the manipulation, to a degree, succeeds.
However, the domination through fear is not as omnipotent as it once was. During the former Cold War, the Western public were far more susceptible to the depiction of evil Soviet menace.
This is no longer the case. Western media have long been discredited over fabricating lies, such as the pretext for the Bush-Blair war on Iraq and other criminal US-led regime-change operations, including Libya, Syria and Ukraine. Today, Western citizens have more access to alternative information sources, including Russian mass media and critical internet news outlets within their own countries. The Big Lie technique, while still potent, is not quite as effective as it was in former times.
This new historical development in public awareness is reflected in the growing, popular discontent across Europe towards governments that are seen to be slavishly toeing Washington's policy of aggression against Russia. Citizens are angrily questioning why they are made to accept economic austerity while US-led sanctions against Russia are hitting their jobs, businesses and export revenues. Citizens are rightly furious that they are told there are no financial resources for public services and infrastructure, while billions of dollars are pumped into NATO forces to recklessly provoke tensions with Russia.
Of course, the anomalies in Western government priorities with regard to meeting public needs are ludicrous, unjustifiable and unsustainable. And the only way that Western rulers can get away with such absurd denial of democratic realities is to play the fear factor. Nowhere has the fear factor been played more than in the US -- ironically, the nation which proclaims from the rooftops to be exceptional, free and democratic.
George Clooney would do better to stick to the silver screen where his heroics and valor shine larger than life -- in fiction. The American people are not afraid of anything, he claimed in real life. George, with respect, your people are the most scared on the planet; and the brainwashing system is so good, that you and they don't even know that. Indeed, haven't even an inkling of the gross manipulation.
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