Another stunning illustration of the success of propaganda, which has considerable import for the future, is the cult of the great killer and torturer Ronald Reagan, one of the grand criminals of the modern era, who also—he also had an unerring instinct for favoring the most brutal terrorists and murderers around the world, from Zia-ul-Haq and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar in what’s now called AfPak to the most dedicated killers in Central America to the South African racists who killed an estimated 1.5 million people in the Reagan years and had to be supported because they were under attack by Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress, one of “more notorious terrorist groups” in the world, the Reaganites determined in 1988. And on and on, with remarkable consistency.
Now, his grisly record was quickly expunged in favor of mythic constructions that would have impressed Kim Il-sung. Among other feats, he was anointed as the apostle of free markets, while raising protectionist barriers more than probably all other postwar presidents combined and implementing massive government intervention in the economy. He was a great exponent of law and order, while he informed the business world that labor laws would not be enforced, so that illegal firing of union organizers tripled under his supervision. His hatred of working people was exceeded perhaps only by his contempt for the rich black women driving their limousines to collect their welfare checks.
Well, there should be no need to continue with the record, but the outcome tells us quite a lot about the intellectual and moral culture in which we live. For President Obama, this monstrous creature was a “transformative figure.” If you go over to Stanford University’s prestigious Hoover Institute, he’s a colossus—I’m quoting—whose “spirit seems to stride the country, watching us like a warm and friendly ghost.” Well, painfully to record, many of the Joe Stacks, whose lives he was ruining, join in the adulation and hasten to shelter under the umbrella of the power and the violence that he symbolized.
Chomsky also complained about Barack Obama "breaking records" with his military budgets and lamented Arnold Schwarzenegger dismantling the government of California:
California’s plight results in large part from anti-tax fanaticism. And that extends over much of the country.Well, encouraging anti-tax sentiment has long been a staple of the business propaganda that dominates the doctrinal system. So people must be indoctrinated to hate and fear the government, for very good reasons: of the existing power systems, the government is the only one that, in principle, and sometimes in fact, is answerable to the public and can impose some constraints on the depredations of private power; the corollary to “getting government off our back” is groaning beneath the even greater weight of unaccountable private tyranny. So-called libertarians don’t seem to see that that’s what they’re calling for.
Related: Huffington Post's Memorial Day 2008: Bush Is a Murderer
