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http://kulturcritic.wordpress.com/posts/m3-reflections-on-the-massachusetts-marathon-massacre/

Reflections on the Massachusetts Marathon Massacre

God do we Americans love spectacle… we just eat it up. Whether it’s a North Korean standoff, Mexican drug lords, or two young Chechen disaffected intellectuals roaming the streets of Cambridge ready to die rather than be tortured at Guantanamo, we just love spectacle and melodrama. Hollywood can’t keep up with reality! Actually, it can. It does. It creates our reality. You remember ARGO, right? Art is life. Well, most of our daily melodrama is produced and brought to you in large measure by Hollywood, the same ownership, the same investments, the same power players controlling the news, the press, the movies and the music. But, it still eludes the American public — you know, ‘Joe the plumber’ — how the political-military-security-entertainment complex all works in synchronized unison; how they constantly are setting us up for their imperial shenanigans and executing them nearly flawlessly – costumes, props, and all.

Anyone remember Dubya’s Axis of Evil or John McCain’s sudden love of the Beach Boys with his “bomb, bomb, bomb… bomb, bomb Iran?” Or what about those WMDs in Iraq and mushroom clouds hovering over New York, Washington and (O’s favorite resting place) Hawaii? And who will ever forget Osama the Saudi-Wonder-Boy, our erstwhile ally against that ever-looming Red Threat, a.k.a., Ivan-the-Terrible in Afghanistan? Or how about the Libyan Madman? Of course, the crazy Colonel had to be taken out with much drama and spectacle because he dared to suggest trading African oil for a newly minted African gold dinar rather than greenbacks? It was rather convenient to show other pretenders to the international monetary throne not to mess with Uncle Sam. And who can forget the televised manhunt with State and local police, ATF and FBI all tricked-out in their militarized riot-gear for a purported lone pre-pubescent shooter in the Connecticut woods? All spectacle, my friends. And brought to you live 24/7 courtesy of the same folks who profit from the very spectacles they produce. And, I do not distinguish here between producing the event and producing the spectacular media coverage of the event, the two become indistinguishable.

And now we have M3, the Massachusetts Marathon Massacre, allegedly perpetrated by two disaffected immigrant college students, Chechen no less… dangerous terrorist threats in their own right merely by ethnic association? So lets bring to bear all the various tools and weapons of the militarized security State at our imperial disposal. We will show the American public just how dangerous the homeland can be; and how good we are at finding the bad guys and taking them out… Geronimo! Why, the Boston police even brought in their own armored vehicles – tanks – to harass the wounded teenager into surrendering.

False flags and much chatter continues unabated to keep pressure on the American public while continuing to build up the internal security apparatus. And now all of a sudden there are terrorist plots popping up elsewhere, a planned train derailment in Canada with nothing less than an Iranian Al-Queda connection. Hmm, now isn’t that a rather convenient disclosure. Everyone, the overriding agenda has been set, and the players then do their parts as charged – TSA, ATF, FBI, state and local authorities, and of course, the media, to keep the pressure on. Now, I am not suggesting that Boston or 9/11 or anything else is a conspiracy perpetrated by our stately officials and their well-armed thugs. But still, there are questions that need be asked, and propaganda that is routinely delivered… by the pols, the snoops, the police, and the military, as well as by O’s secret army of homeland security forces… filtered, of course, through the press, a press corps itself owned by and beholding to the same cast of psychopaths.

But we further recognize, through this most recent and unfortunate bloodbath, that within the city walls all activity is and must remain well-monitored, not least by the ever-rolling cameras mounted on each and every street corner and warrantless wiretapping on cell and email. We must stay forever vigilant — ‘always be prepared’! Indeed, the monitoring and preparedness itself become self-justifying in light of such incidents; and perhaps that is the point. Whether or not some part of the hegemony had a hand in orchestrating this madness, it surely behooves them to play it up to the hilt, to make it spectacular! All the while, the increased security, surveillance and militarization of our ‘homeland’ retreats into a shadowy background as we remain enthralled and enraptured by the drama before us, forever vigilant of the the spectacles unfolding one after another in rapid succession. The expenditures on military and security, and the apparatchiks who control it all, can never be too extravagant when at any moment terror can strike at the heart of empire, and chaos loosed upon the land — the sacred homeland. The necessity of militarization, and the evaporation of “civil” rights, is granted without question or calculation of the costs.

No matter, we have got to stop the Reds, the Terrorists, the Islamists, the Chinese, the Mexican Druggies, the Al Qaeda, the Taliban, the North Koreans, the Iranian Theocrats, the Pakistani Pashtun, the Waco Wackos, the lunatic fringe, and any other regime, lone wolf, or self-described savior that threatens our “New American Century” and its sacred life-style. The owners of the means of production (of arms, entertainment, and consumables) will make certain of it. But who will stop the empire? What will stop this impervious machine, drone-ing on and on into the dark night of our planet and giving life to an emerging darkness in our own souls?

The answer, I think, is to be found in repetitive cycles of of nature, of return and renewal. Like the mythological Uruboros eating its own tale, Empire will consume itself in attempting to satisfy its diverse and ravenous appetites — for more oil, more resources, more consumers, more wage-slave laborers, more growth, more imperial expansion more control; the greed and hubris will consume itself. In this act of self-consumption, something new will emerge; but as in all natural cycles, the new will be an instantiation of the old. Nature will rectify the imbalance created by such artifice and seek to return itself to a balanced – homeostatic – condition.

Wait for it. Watch as it unleashes its own spectacle. Watch the earthquakes, the droughts, the vanishing of wildlife, the spoiling of the seas, the fouling of the air, the depletion of the soils, the melting of the ice caps, the storms, the floods, the vanishing coastlines. Watch the death, destruction, and disease as the spectacle unfolds and engulfs our cherished citadels of civilization. Watch the New American Century as it consumes itself in its ravenous acts of consumption; watch as the end approaches. Watch! And continue to tend your garden.