The United States of Fear Amidst the “Submissive Void” of the People

Source: Organizing Notes "Message from Ukraine" -- worth a read (trigger warning).

We U.S. taxpayers now find ourselves in the fearful state of supporting both neo-Nazis in Ukraine and Zionist fascists in Israel. 

At home, death is just a gun shot away.

Citizens brandishing weapons are permitted to roam our streets, sometimes threatening children made refugees by violence and poverty in Central America,

Source: Breitbart "Leaked images reveal children warehoused in crowded US cells, border patrol overwhelmed"

Source: The Daily Banter

whilst bullies scream at low income women seeking health care services. Rapists are protected rather than prosecuted by authorities at our universities. Corporations who profit by raping Earth are given a free ride as their media outlets pump out lies packaged as news to confound the masses.

Hitler’s propagandist Leni Riefenstahl noted that her work succeeded due to the “submissive void” of the German people, “especially the intelligentsia.”

How did this become our way of life?

The U.S. as a nation founded on settlement, genocide and slavery will reap what it sows -- while the fear engendered by projecting hate onto our fellow human beings works to keep us ignorant.

Source: RT "Allan Sørensen, the Middle Eastern correspondent for the Danish newspaper Kristeligt Dagblad, said that he took the image on Wednesday in Sderot, a city about two kilometers from Gaza."

This season of Israeli youth cheering the bombing of trapped civilians in Gaza while the world watches soccer matches that displaced tens of thousands of poor people in Brazil makes for a strange vacation. 

I've been in Australia as images of children torn apart by bombs I helped pay for scroll across the screen of my self-harvested news. People I've met in Oz are no more informed than my fellow Americans, relying as they do on corporations for cues on where to pay attention.

Source: Electronic Intifada "Urgent call from Gaza civil society: act now!"

Or, in the case of the alternative types I usually find myself among, eschewing television or news of any sort for cultural pursuits that dull the sounds of screaming coming from next door.

An uneasy few noticed as Article 9 of Japan's constitution crumbled and the former imperial rapists of east Asia began to remilitarize at the behest of their best buddy the U.S. 

A handful of Australians were shocked to hear their prime minister greet the visiting prime minister of Japan with the claim that "We admired the skill and the sense of honor that [Japanese imperial troops] brought to their task.” Some attribute Australia's support of U.S. 21st century foreign wars to the perception that the Yanks saved them from Japan's imperial war machine right on their very own shores, and Australians’ fear of their inability to defend themselves as European settlers far from home. European settlers who shot the aboriginal peoples of Australia on sight as "vermin" according to a few appalled observers.

My good friend Janet Weil recommended I read Hope Into Practice: Jewish women choosing justice despite our fears, a book by Penny Rosenwasser about the struggle to rise above fear as a defining force. When I see Janet soon we'll discuss Rosenwasser's finding that she and the other members of the Jewish diaspora were raised on the constant fear of their own violent death. I think this will shed some light on a question my own students  raised this year as we considered history and current events: how can Zionists as survivors of the Nazi Holocaust project so much violence and suffering onto Palestinians? 

And I would add the questions, how can so many other Jews (not all by any means) remain silent about it? And how can the U.S. support this?

The same way they can support fascist militias slaughtering civilians in Kiev, dear children. Amid fear -- and fear-engendered ignorance -- for all.