For me it's not helpful to imagine language as an all-inclusive category of consciousness and conflict. Doing that blurs the focus on the inter-dependant mechanisms of power and mind that get people into these disastrous situations in the first place. The problem isn’t language, the problem is an elite with limited accountability waging an unnecessary war for their own enrichment and empowerment using the resources of a complacent population. The war is obviously not in the interest of the people of the US, so the people have to be managed by lying to them. Lying is one of functions language can be used for. Exposing lies is another. Analyzing the propaganda is obviously important, but the strategy used in the propaganda is so rudimentary, it’s persuasive power so weak yet so effective, that I immediately move on the question -- what is the psychological dynamic of the population that wishes to accept stories and rationales that are so obviously not the case?

In the few discussions I’ve had with those who believe, for instance, that the war is being waged as a response to 9-11, I find that people believe this because that is what the TV said. That’s the end of their logical conception of it. It’s not stupidity exactly, it’s that the lack of interest in facts is the direct result of imagining yourself as being on the power grid -- it is ego inflation. My team is strong and knowledgeable and does what’s right so what they say must be true. To do even a rudimentary investigation into their preposterous lie would be a opening into the perception that, in fact, as a citizen of the US, you could be more reasonably described as a part of a group being exploited by it’s elites in the course of this war. You pay for their oil war. Your children die for their personal enrichment and empowerment. Not an acceptable thought. This may even lead to hints of a further unraveling of conceptions of nationality, to the perception that the war is actually a mutual exploitation by the respective elites in each country of the respective populations. The logical conclusion would be to decapitate both sets of elites, and do away with the concept of a “country“ as anything but a dangerous fantasy.

There is also a displacement of anger at work. Many people have trouble directly expressing their anger in appropriate way toward the actual object of that anger. It is often deflected toward some other unrelated object of frustration. This is esp. disastrous when it is picked up and used by elites, and coupled with the irrational ascribing of collective guilt. Since there’s no evidence to justify making a connection from 911 to Iraq, those who accept it must feel that any Arabs out of favor with western power will make an appropriate target of their vengeance.

Accepting the war also seems to involve clinging to naive ideas about the motivations of those in power, wanting to think the best of people, and esp. of those supposedly representing you -- self images and parental images. I’ve been dumbfounded by conversations with otherwise intelligent and sensitive people, political liberals, who really believe that our leaders must be good people who don’t mean harm. More and more I think of this “optimism” as something dangerous to humanity.