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COMMENTARY
Press the
patriotism button, baby
By Sreeram Chaulia
 In George W Bush's America, it is the season
for political dolls to again become big hits with
shoppers, reminding toy market analysts of the Saddam
Hussein "action figures" that stole the Christmas sales
in the winter of 1990-91. A small firm in the state of
Connecticut, Herobuilders Inc, is raking in fabulous
profits generated by unique 12-inch talking world
figures that utter politically correct dialogues when
the button on their heads is pressed.
Iraqi
leader Saddam Hussein comes wrapped in a pocket-sized
sado-masochistic outfit, holding nukes and germs in
either hand, threatening to blow up the "free world".
Herobuilders' figure of the US president, spouting 17
tough-talking Bushisms, sold out its inventory of 50,000
dolls in less than a week in early December 2002. Among
the doll's aphorisms are Bush's landmark declaration
made at Ground Zero in New York after the twin World
Trade Center towers were destroyed, "The people who
knocked down these buildings will hear all of us soon."
This dialogue is followed by raucous background cheering
of construction workers and rescuers: "USA! USA! USA!"
The piece de resistance of Herobuilders'
repertoire is the talking doll of Osama bin Laden,
costing US$36. Press down on his white turban and he
squeaks in a rather Yankee-doodle style, "I suck! Would
you stop bombing me? You're killing me. I suck! My
turban is too tight, I made a big mistake, all jihad go
home. I was just kidding. I suck. Oohoohoohoohoo!"
Toyshops claim that this doll has beaten all previous
action figure sales records and that makers are planning
a second version programmed with even more funny quotes
from the sheikh.
Toys of British Prime Minister
Tony Blair and former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani
are struggling to compete with this all-star lineup, but
they, too, have interesting comments to make. Blair
convinces buyers that it is in the "interests of world
peace that Saddam is disarmed". Giuliani praises the
"spirit of New York which can never be cowed down by mad
terrorists".
What is to be made of all this? One
way of looking at the phenomenon is to argue that
Americans are a very informal, sporty people and enjoy
spoofs of politics and politicians. Ever-popular WWF
wrestlers mimic the president and wear underwear with
the stars-and-stripes on it. "Dubyaman" comics and
pictures of Bush reading "Presidency for Dummies"
circulate with rapidity. Talk show comedians come on
television and rubbish Kim Jong-il as a dissolute
dimwit. Irreverence and casualness, according to this
line of thought, is endemic to the American way of life
and no icon is too big to be spared some debunking in
popular culture.
The alternative view, which I
hold, is that Herobuilders company is nicely buttressing
the Bush doctrine of preemptive war to "extend the
benefits of freedom across the world". (See The National
Security Strategy of the United States of America,
September 2002). When legendary trainer Nick Bollettieri
was asked the secret of America's monopoly of world
tennis champions, he replied, "We catch them young."
Political dolls do a similar service - they capture and
color the psychology of American youth at a formative
and impressionistic age. The norms and ideas the Bush,
Saddam and bin Laden dolls impart are far more effective
than what children learn in school textbooks.
As
subtle carriers of propaganda, a-la James Bond films
during the Cold War, the dolls help shape a new
generation of proud, nationalistic and
president-saluting citizens. They sow the seeds of a
peculiar American morality whose first canon is "we" are
good and "they" ("Russkies", "commies" or "jhadis") are
evil. The simplistic dichotomy of good against evil,
which the Bush doctrine reiterates, does not raise
eyebrows in average American homes, thanks to the
groundwork laid by action figures and Superman cartoons.
It is the same spadework that results in a singularly
American trait: "flag patriotism", which far supersedes
the occasional underwear buffoonery of wrestlers. In no
other country does one get to see the national flag so
profusely exhibited in front of homesteads, on motor
vehicles, in shopping malls and on school bags of tiny
tots.
These visual symbols collectively assist
in inculcating the unquestioning sense of loyalty toward
a regime that is waging war after war after war. Latest
opinion polls conducted earlier this month reveal that
87 percent of Americans consider Iraq a "threat to
national security". That such an overwhelming majority
has bought the Bush line - without conducting any
objective analysis or common sense thinking - is living
proof that the business of "getting folks to rally
behind the flag" is roaring in America.
Noted
historian Tariq Ali has likened Bush's Americanism to
another form of religious fundamentalism that thrives on
whitewashing domination, manipulation and
extermination, and relying on the good-evil paradigm to
prepare domestic constituencies for foreign
misdemeanors. Taboo questions that are not encouraged in
this "religion" range from "Why are we going after some
evil, and ignoring or mollycoddling other evil?" and
"Did you know that the US air force used chemical and
biological weapons extensively in the Korean War?" to
"Why do we spuriously parrot that our actions always
defend democracy and liberate oppressed people when we
know that it is a lie?"
The most that adherents
of this religion are willing to acknowledge, as the
character named "Control" does to Richard Burton in the
classic Cold War flick The Spy Who Came in From the
Cold, is that "we" sometimes use "evil methods" to
counter evil, thereby preserving good in the end.
A tiny segment of American civil society,
located in university campuses, church dioceses and
human rights organizations, is without doubt vibrant and
vigilant, organizing peace marches and asking the taboo
questions. But their efforts are largely met with
apathy, or worse, antipathy from the mainstream. Last
month, I marched in a peace rally in Syracuse, a small
New York town, and found to my consternation that the
50-odd banners we planted on the grass along pavements
near the city center were crossed out with red paint the
morning after the demonstration.
Our script had
read "No blood for oil in Iraq". In red sanguine-looking
paint, someone had retorted: "Be American. God Bless."
Only a religion, thoroughly internalized, can propel
citizens to brave the cold of snowy nights simply to
overwrite a few taboo questions on innocuous placards.
Here was a first-rate illustration of Tariq Ali's "clash
of fundamentalisms".
In 1988, John Mackenzie
published Propaganda and Empire. The Manipulation of
British Public Opinion, a remarkable history of
ideas and norms that formed the societal consensus
behind the last round of British worldwide expansionism.
Glorification of martial virtues and the persona of
Queen Victoria, backed by misinformation about the
civilizing mission of colonizers like Cecil Rhodes,
spread to all layers of British society from the 1880s
onward. Textbooks, imaginative brochures, advertising,
theater, radio and institutions like the Boy Scouts were
used by the crown to trumpet the "liberation" (more
accurately, the selective genocide) of the "heathen
lands". No room was left for doubt whether the colonial
project was causing irreparable human and psychological
damage to the subject peoples.
The air in
America these days is a lot similar. The Cold War ended
de jure in 1991, but the glory and religious fervor of
unipolar empire is sinking in only after September 11.
More and more common citizens are getting touchy about
"pacifists" who oppose the Bush doctrine. More and more
school kids are punching the plastic helmet on
Herobuilders' Saddam Hussein toy to hear the Iraqi
dictator guffaw and warn, "America, I'm coming for you
with all my germs." More and more children, asked what
they want to be when they grow up, say "Real American
Hero".
(©2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com
for information on our sales and syndication policies,
or to submit a letter to the editor.)
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