At home, the enduring legacy of the rhetoric and hubris that led to the longest and most expensive conflict in US history should litter the airwaves and school text books as an edifice. Instead, the role of the media’s complicity in Afghanistan is sidestepped by the same few corporations that remain in control of the media landscape today.

As we appear to be running headlong into armed conflict in the Ukraine — negotiating arms transfers, coordinating economic sanctions, attempting to trap a desperate enemy in a corner — the lack of dissenting voices is quite disconcerting. After all, the Ukrainian conflict isn’t America’s war — yet.

While commercial reporting outlets like Time Magazine can hardly be blamed for profiting from the events of September 11, 2001, many commercial media outlets instantly switched into pro-war propagandists.

Time was among many outlets that not only reported on developments, but also used their power and influence to steer America into the far greater disaster of the War in Afghanistan.

After an entire issue of Time Magazine filled with images of people terrified, rubble littering the streets, and tiny bodies leaping from the upper floors of the Twin Towers, on the very last page, Time published an editorial by Lance Morrow, titled “The Case for Rage and Retribution.”

In his editorial, Morrow argues:

“A day cannot live in infamy without the nourishment of rage. Let’s have rage. What’s needed is a unified, unifying, Pearl Harbor sort of purple American fury — a ruthless indignation that doesn’t leak away in a week or two, wandering off into Prozac-induced forgetfulness or into the next media sensation … Let America explore the rich reciprocal possibilities of the fatwa. A policy of focused brutality does not come easily to a self-conscious, self-indulgent, contradictory, diverse, humane nation with a short attention span. America needs to relearn a lost discipline, self-confident relentlessness — and to relearn why human nature has equipped us all with a weapon … called hatred.”

From Lance Morrow, “The Case for Rage and Retribution,” Time Magazine, September 12, 2001.

With Morrow’s help, the United States certainly got “a ruthless indignation that doesn’t leak away in a week or two.” That indignation, however, required constant re-invigoration: even as Morrow is steering the US into a war that will be fought by Americans for an entire generation, he is almost scornful of the “Prozac-induced forgetfulness” of the “self-indulgent … nation with a short attention span.”

As a result of this contempt and manipulation, over 20 years, nearly 7,000 American service members and contractors died, over 66,000 uniformed Afghans died, nearly 50,000 Afghan civilians died, and over 30,000 maimed, traumatized, and brain-damaged US troops have killed themselves.

The contemptuous hubris blanket the US media landscape like unexploded cluster bombs disguised as food packets: journalists and media outlets ceased to be the lifeblood of democracy, and became deadly wolves in disguise, out for blood. In the war zone they were cheerleaders.

Journalists didn’t talk much about how Afghanistan had more child soldiers than any other conflict region on the planet at the time of our invasion. Journalists didn’t talk about how they had glorified Osama bin Laden and his anti-Soviet militia just a few years earlier. Journalists didn’t talk much about how Osama bin Laden wasn’t actually wanted in connection to 911, but rather, bombings in Africa. Journalists didn’t really talk about how the actual mastermind of 911 — Pakistani named Khalid Sheikh Mohammad — was captured and waterboarded almost 200 times at Guantanamo Bay. To prolong his torture — in violation of the Geneva Conventions and, likely, Nuremberg — interrogators used a special saline solution to prevent fungus from growing in Mohammad’s sinus.

Shortly after the US invasion of Afghanistan — at a time when all we knew of the conflict was “at least one American lies dead in Afghanistan” — Orlando Sentinel columnist Kathleen Parker penned an editorial titled “Terrorists Thrive on Pacifists.”

Directly addressing the pleas of that dead serviceman’s widow — who implored that “I do not want anyone to use my husband’s death to perpetuate violence” — Parker concludes her editorial, reminding us that “America does hear this mother’s pain and mourns her husband’s death. And no one wishes to judge her political beliefs during such an emotional time. But we should be clear: Pacifism in the face of terrorism is strictly an emotional response. Fighting back in this case is an act of purest logic.”

All of which served as a pretext for the invasion of Iraq — which had nothing to do with 911, but which has had a de-stabilizing effect on the region. Russia’s acts of war in Ukraine are couched in the most dire forms of moral condemnation — as if the US had not done the same sorts of things across Iraq. Beyond the shelling of residential areas with depleted uranium munitions, or the use of thermobaric bombs in Tora Bora, or the use of white phosphorous as an incendiary weapon in Fallujah, bodies were found with clear signs of torture — like holes drilled into the head — which hear the hallmark signs of the sorts of atrocities the CIA had pioneered in Latin America with the help of Nazi emigres.

If the US is pulled into a conflict in Europe, we may face a different sort of accountability than we faced in our recent Middle Eastern adventure. Were we held accountable in Iraq and Afghanistan, perhaps Putin would not be so bold now.

The United States is good at creating its own mortal enemies: Saddam Hussein ran a secular regime that recognized Western-style rights for women, and was once supported by the US. The Russian oligarchs now demonized by the US were largely created by former US officials at the World Bank and IMF like Lawrence Summers and Jeffrey Sachs The US once supported the militia it fought in Afghanistan.

Before we blunder into a military conflagration in Europe — where the rules of engagement and the consequences thereof will be different than in the Middle East — we might take stock of the moral failings of our recent foreign policy, lest we repeat our blunders less than a year after the official end of our failure and withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The tagline and the music invoke a series of well-known American agricultural PR advertisements from the early 1990’s, and their slogan: “Beef. It’s What’s for Dinner.”

As President, Trump was known to prefer his steaks well-done with a side of ketchup. Presumably it was on some other basis Trump was able to persuade those with less taste than his own to purchase his over-priced televised home shopping steaks:

The M.O. of the radical right is to appropriate the norms of civil society in order to dismantle it. Given that fascism requires a mass society in order to take root, perhaps it should not be surprising that the radical right should also appropriate the messaging style of the commercial mass media.

Without further adieu, here’s the beef:

It happened with Presidents Clinton and Bush II. It even happened to Reagan, the former movie star with a suave demeanor and witty sense of humor.

Among other things, now that the 2020 campaigns are over, President Trump’s unique hairdo appears poised to grant him the curious distinction of being the first non-assassinated President since color photography to leave office without showing any gray hair.

At the time of this writing, the color of President Trump’s hair indeed appears to have changed somewhat during his presidency, although it is decidedly non-gray.

Trump’s hair is less intensely yellow than than in the recent past, though it appears just now to be picking up some of the autumnal, oranger hues from Trump’s complexion, resulting in a faded-blond-pinkish-whispy-something-or-other attached to a psychotic 74-year-old with dementia.

As the 2020 US Presidential Campaigns fade into the distance, and as the celebrations of Biden supporters in cities subside, this may be a fitting moment to remember the day Trump did go gray.

In late March of 2020, during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, President Trump appeared in his daily press conference suddenly gray-haired, projecting an image of calm, poise, dignity, respect, and seasoned wisdom in the face of an emerging public heath threat.

Strangely, it happened again for a day in July 2020, after the US failed to control the novel coronavirus.

The first report of a gray President comes from Vogue; the second comes from the New York Post, a one-time mouthpiece for long-time Trump associate Roy Cohn, and media property of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation (along with Fox News).

Thus, despite keeping his “natural” hair color throughout the final days of his presidency, Trump may turn out to be the only president to have gone gray twice in office.

Whether his brief tenure with gray hair was an advisor’s suggestion for projecting the image of a wise elder during the COVID pandemic, or whether it was something more like a focus group survey for his intended second term can’t be determined, but if the second possibility has any validity, we may still have an opportunity to find out.

The election results have been available for a week now, and Trump is refusing to concede the election. We don’t know what happens if two men show up to be sworn in as President on January 20, 2021.

Is Trump delusional, or is this reality television for his fans? Do his lawsuits and recounts and allegations of election fraud have any chance of changing the election result? Maybe, but not in the way one might expect at first glance.

The 2020 Presidential campaigns are over, but the States don’t send delegates to the Electoral College until the December 8, 2020 “safe harbor” deadline, and the Electoral College doesn’t vote until December 14. If the Electoral College cannot convene, cannot decide, or if the State Governors disagree with the Delegates nominated by the State Legislatures, the election may be resolved in the House of Representatives by a Contingent Election.

If a Contingent Election in the House determines the next President, the votes will cast by States, not by individual Representatives. And although the Democrats backing Biden have more individual Representatives in the House, the House represents a greater number of Republican States. This is because Republicans control a greater number of less-populous States.

Although Trump has promised to demand a number of recounts in closely-contested states like Georgia and Wisconsin, it seems unlikely his team will be able to invalidate enough ballots to secure the election. Litigating the vote count, however, may not be the ultimate objective of these lawsuits.

Trump has a history of protracted litigation. If the Trump strategy is to angle for a Contingent Election in the House, all the State recounts might really be about dragging out litigation, buying time to propagandize to his base about the “stolen” vote, sowing disagreement between how the State Governors and Legislatures think Electoral College delegates should be picked, and pressuring the Supreme Court to intervene as the “safe harbor” deadline approaches.

After the contested Bush v. Gore election in 2000, the Supreme Court intervened in the Florida recount precisely because the “safe harbor” deadline was imminent. Should Trump face such a scenario at the end of the month, he will have the advantage of having chosen three new Supreme Court nominees on the bench, all three of whom worked for Bush’s legal team in the Bush v. Gore lawsuit.

His actions of late certainly don’t resemble those of a man planning to leave the executive residence: in July 2020, Trump took down the official portraits of Presidents Bush and Clinton, having never unveiled President Obama’s official portrait; in late August, First Lady Melania Trump unveiled a renovated White House Rose Garden; his executive branch is refusing to formally acknowledge the election results and his staff has been instructed not to cooperate with Biden’s transition team.

Another possible endgame we might be witnessing stems not from Trump’s grandiosity, but from his pettiness: if America can’t be his, then nobody gets it. Maybe he knows his days in office are numbered, and he’s just planning to burn everything to the ground on his way out and poison the water.

This could be a clue as to why — after the election — Trump replaced Defense Secretary Mark Esper, who publicly disagreed with Trump on the use of force and the Insurrection Act to subdue the BLM protests breaking out during the summer of 2020.

As Trump has stoked racial tensions while courting white nationalist groups, militia, and violent insurrectionists, he could be planning to go out with more of a bang than a whimper, popular caricatures notwithstanding.

One card featured a young Dick Cheney — then Secretary of Defense — with his menacing grin intact:

The back of the card gives biographical details for the military-industrial complex ringleader:

A relevant feature of the military-industrial complex is its relationship with the rise of the managerial society: note that, as Secretary of Defense, Cheney controlled “budget allocations.”  Since his position was appointed rather than elected, the military resources he controlled were essentially outside the realm of democratic accountability.

In this clip from the 1987 film, “G.I. Joe: The Movie,” America’s elite fighting force is preparing to test the Broadcast Energy Transmitter, a new technology that promises to deliver free, wireless energy to the whole world.

While America is trying to deliver free energy to the world, the terrorist organization Cobra tries to steal the technology, and keep it for itself.

There was, though — once upon a time — a Golden Age, when information came on floppy disks, and file sharing was a key selling point for personal computers.  Back when, corporations encouraged us to copy files freely between ourselves, and it raised nary an eyebrow to hear that “a hobbyist in Michigan starts a local Apple Computer Club, to challenge other members to computer games of skill and to trade programs.”

Through marketing, technology is not externalized, but internalized, and incorporated into the psyche.  As such, it is less obviously an intrusion into the lives of consumers.  Coming from the inside, it is less liable to be viewed in any way as an obstacle, and is thereby rendered a more effective means of manipulation, insofar as its influence is more difficult to discern or resist.

When consumers talk about how they “need” different products, they mean different things by this.  Many people are quite dependent on technology generally: most products most consumers buy are products of industry.  Food is no exception, even if it is served up at a locally-owned restaurant: most food comes from industrial agriculture.

In many cases, however, once a product has “gotten inside” the consumer, the consumer develops a psychological dependence on a product.  Although addiction is a common metaphor used to describe this relationship, familiarity is also comfort.  For most of human history, very little ever changed.  In this era of planned obsolescence and pop culture, the brand — and, identification with branding — offers a source of continuity.

Consumers frequently purchase particular products because some symbolic quality of the product’s marketing provides a sense of comfort.  While a particular smoker may describe himself as “a Marlboro man,” people also identify as “a Coke drinker” or “a Pepsi drinker.”  Coke and Pepsi are both cola drinks, sold in cans and bottles, sold at an identical price point: they compete based on symbolism, not by offering more product at a lower cost.  Consumers internalize the symbolism of marketing, and are conditioned to accept material products as related to these symbols — even if the connection between the symbol and the product is quite tenuous.

To the extent that consumers accept as their own views various messages offered up by marketers, individuals become little more than purchasing patterns: collections of brand preferences and demographic data.  Individuals are branded by marketing, as with a branding iron.  The degree to which this understanding of the individual has become normalized in contemporary society is revealed by the phraseology of politicians in describing the population: politicians talk about consumers with far greater frequency than they talk about citizens.

The phenomenon of brand-identification has social consequences as well: the “Twitter revolution” has seamlessly spread to the American social realm.  That #Occupy Wall Street incorporates into its name a convention specific to a particular commercial service quite easily goes unnoticed, and is therefore accepted without question or objection.  The revolution is an advertisement.

In 1992, when the fictional TV character Murphy Brown encountered a common real-life situation — that of conceiving a child out of wedlock — there was a national uproar.  The vice president of the United States even chimed in, saying that this was an example of the moral deterioration of society.

When Bristol Palin, the real-life daughter of former vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin, conceived a child out of wedlock as a teenager, she was treated as a celebrity, and subsequently earned a spot on the reality TV show “Dancing with the Stars.”  Due to audience voting, Bristol Palin remains in the competition while superior dancers are eliminated.

Source of newspaper clipping: Milwaukee Journal, May 24, 1992.