If one studies many of Alfred Hitchcock‘s
films, there is a consistent observation by the director about the
public in general. Whether it be in Foreign Correspondent (1940),
Saboteur (1942), Shadow of a Doubt (1943), The Man Who Knew Too Much
(1956) or North by North west (1959) to name but a few,
Hitchcock’s
essential characters to the plot moved amidst a general public that
seemed oblivious to what was going on. In reality, the majority of the
public was engulfed in their own thing to be too aware of anything else
around them. One scene that really resonates on this is a moment in the
film Saboteur. The main two characters, played by Robert Cummings and
Priscilla Lane, are on the run from a Nazi spy and sabotage ring working
in the United States in 1941.
By that
time, and this is pertinent to things, the American public already knew
of the threat from the Nazis. War with Germany seemed imminent as Europe
was already besieged by the German blitzkrieg. In this scene from
Saboteur Cummings and Lane are in a New York mansion owned by this Nazi
front group while a fundraising party is ongoing.
Cummings
is trying desperately to alert partygoers as to what is transpiring. He
approaches a couple who are enjoying the swing music and really ‘into
it’. He very seriously tells the man that “We’re right in the middle of
the biggest bunch of Fifth Columnists.” The guy looks at him while
snapping his fingers to the beat of the music and says “Are you kidding,
what’s the gag?” The woman with the guy, also deep into the swing music
says “Ah, he’s throwing ya a curve!”
As it was in films like Hitchcock’s, it seems that our general public has always been, to a great extent, oblivious to our Military Industrial Empire. The only time the majority of our fellow Americans seems to wake up from their self imposed slumber is when they feel threatened… personally threatened.
As Goebbels did so masterfully from the 1930s-early 40s in Germany, propaganda can and will coerce the
masses to march along with the empire into battle. This has always been
the case throughout history, as our US ‘foreign entanglements’ can
surely attest to. The cement that keeps this the public in place is
their oblivious nature to facts and outright truth. A con
man can only be successful if his pigeons are not focused enough. When
the overwhelming majority of the mainstream media falls in line with the
empire, well, the lemmings follow.
The Soviet Union sacrificed 25+ million of
its people to defeat the German onslaught and turn the tide of WW2,
only to become our enemy in the Cold War not more than a year or two
later. Think of how many of our citizens followed the drumbeat of this
empire’s minions and believed ‘Better Dead than Red’. And it goes on and
on through the Korean and Vietnam debacles that they called wars, right
into Iraq Wars 1 and 2 and this Goebbels-like War on Terror….
This empire spends over half or
your and my federal taxes on military spending, for close to two
decades. How many out there care? Just shoot them up with the ‘legal
narcotics’ of 24/7 sports, electronic gadgets and excessive consumerism,
daily ‘breaking news’ on sex scandals, Republican vs. Democrat ‘food
fights’, and the natives won’t get too restless. Meanwhile, the empire’s
corporate sponsors suck out the very air from the lungs of we working
stiffs…
https://www.globalresearch.ca/oblivious-to-our-military-industrial-empire/5656296
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