By Averroes Jr

Having had American teachers from pre school all the way up to 12th grade, my whole life I was led to believe that the United States of America is the number one country in the world; militarily the strongest, morally the most righteous, technologically way advanced, and above all socially the most progressive! I was fed almost on a daily basis with slogans such as; ”The Land of Opportunities”, “One Nation Under God with Liberty and Justice”, ”The Land of the Free”, “All men are created equal”, oh yeah and of course how could I forget, “The American Dream”! I must admit, Americans are great entertainers more than anything else, they have mastered how to keep themselves shining on the World Stage by adopting controversial positions whenever they get the chance, exposing their spectacular scandals at the national or international level, and good old fashioned psychological warfare or “Psy-ops” as the Pentagon calls it! For example, they have transformed their Film Industry (which is supposed to be a non-political institution tackling the SOCIAL issues of the nation or maybe even the world but hey, that’s as far as it should go) into a political tool aimed at “Americanizing” the world. Hollywood block busters have somehow never failed to have a well scripted political message at the heart of every successful plot designed to boost America’s PR campaign at the international level and/or reinforce the exportation of their propaganda (either by subliminal means or explicit)! Take Rocky Balboua 4 (i think it was), released right at the peak of the Cold War, and cosider the political connotation of having an Italian American underdog who embodies or personifies “The American Dream” -(that would be Rocky of course)- heroically defeat a ruthless ”Russian Machine” that knows no mercy (whatever the f**k his name was) in a close to call boxing match of rather epic proportions! See, I was just a little kid when I watched that film and only now I realize the desired effect of what the viewer was supposed to feel coming out from that movie……. “Those evil Russian son’s of bitches”, I thought to myself……”Communists are bad, they turn their people into robotic slaves. Long live the Free World, and Democracy, and ’Uncle Sam’ my homeboy”, Right? Hell, I spent most of my teenage years with that preconception of Russians just by watching Rocky Balboua 4, so just imagine the extent of media manipulation that those poor gullible souls in America were being exposed to every minute of the day, with regards to the “Existential Communist threat” that the former Soviet Union posed on the freeworld! Sound familiar? Hold your horses, we’re getting there. Americans were being programmed left, right, and center by all kinds of self righteous propaganda machines which they have been systematically trained to trust as 100% factual, accept as undeniably credible, and warned of how unpatriotic it was to question the media or government in time of conflict! At the time, (and arguably still today) Americans weren’t bothered by that “shut your mouth” policy or that “us and them” mentality because everything was lumped under the umbrella “Free world v.s Tyranny” or ”Free Media v.s Communist State Media”, so who could possibly go against Freedom without suffering from a social stigma or possibly even charged for Treason, see what I mean? But it sure as F**K doesn’t stop here, you see, there’s much much more for you to see! You see, they can fool some people sometimes and hell, they may even fool tons of people ALL the time. But you know what’s impossible? They can’t fool ALL us people ALL the time! So I hope you’re from the latter group. I hope it’s not too late for you to join those who can not be fooled, you see!

http://averroism.wordpress.com/2008/02/11/the-america-i-thought-i-knew/