Words and sheeple

Let’s get one thing straight: If you bomb people and shoot them, you are not a peacekeeper. You are a killer. Duh.

Why bother to make this daft observation? Because our friends in the United States have twisted their language around so much that their very thoughts run crooked paths. Every time I see images of “peacekeepers” on the news, they’re toting M-16 rifles.

Language is supposed to be a reflection of thoughts, but thoughts can just as easily be driven by words. Use the right words often enough, and you can shape the thoughts of mobs and societies. You can even convince people that war is peace.

A “peacekeeper” is a trooper on our side. A “terrorist” is a trooper on their side. If our peacekeeper gets snared by the other side, he becomes a “hostage.” If we capture some of their guys, they’re “prisoners.”

When we bomb some country, we are “maintaining stability.” When the other guys bomb something, they’re “committing atrocities.”

Is America so far gone that it believes its own hogwash? Evidently so.

We will, of course, be hearing a lot of static and muss about Kosovo, and how Captain America is going to save the world by killing people he doesn’t like. I could not care less about any of it. If the earth should open up and swallow Kosovo whole, I wouldn’t lose any sleep. I’d be equally ambivalent if the entire eastern seaboard slid off into the Atlantic.

But what is instructive is how far gone the American mind really is. And that’s the real story; it’s the story behind the story. If the boys in the media or in the government say certain magic words, the American sheeple behave in predictable ways. The stuff they put on television shows is called “programming,” a term that takes on a sinister air when you consider that Americans do, indeed, appear to be programmed.

An enemy of the American people is anyone who is defined as an enemy by the media. This fact has rocked our fair rock here, as we’ve watched our garment industry turned into the enemy by the programming buttons of language. “Sweatshop” is an example. Everyone in America– between their doses of Prozac–will agree that sweatshops are a blight, but nobody has defined the term. A sweatshop is whatever “they” say it is. People sweat in workshops all the time. I certainly have. The term “sweatshop” has nothing to do with actual working conditions any more than “peacekeeping” involves keeping the peace.

Ah, the raw power of language. You can shape thoughts with it, move entire societies with it, and start wars with it. It’s perfectly possible to get entire countries to sell themselves into slavery if you say the right things. After all, people want authority more than they want freedom. With the skillful use of language this trait can be uncorked like a genie from a bottle, and the men with the words can have the mobs in their pockets.