Original_To:  JNET%"disarm-l@albnyvm1"
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.disarm-l
Date:         Fri, 8 Jan 1993 16:26:00 PDT
From:         ORWELL@TRIUMFER.BITNET
Subject:      Guardians at the Gate (Re: We're Looking for a few good Jedi
              Knights)

The following posting is something I had half-composed about 2 years ago
in response to Charles Swett (Pentagon employee, and energetic
defender of his employer), who was then active on this list;
the topic seems to fit in with my previous posting on the
"sword and sorcery" Marine recruitment ad.

Charles Swett, quoting Thomas Sowell:
[Sowell, BTW, is a well-known American neo-conservative; he is
a favorite of some people because he is a black intellectual
who criticizes government intervention in favor of civil rights.]

>"Western Universities are turning out whole classes of people who
>engage in moral exhibitionism by opposing the very military force that
>makes their freedom... and their lives... possible."

Aragorn speaking at the "Council of Elrond" in
J.R.R. Tolkien's classic fantasy trilogy, "The Lord of the Rings":

"Peace and freedom, do you say?  The North would have known them
little but for us.  Fear would have destroyed them.  But when dark
things come from the nameless hills, or creep from sunless woods, they
fly from us.  What roads would any dare to tread, what safety would
there be in quiet lands, or in the homes of simple men at night, if
the Dunedain were asleep or were all gone into the grave.  And yet
less thanks have we than you.  Travellers scowl at us, and country men
give us scornful names.  "Strider" I am to one fat man who lives
within a day's march of foes that would freeze his heart if he were
not guarded ceaselessly.  If simple folk are free from care and fear,
simple they will be, and we must be secret to keep them so.  That
has been the task of my kindred, while the years have lengthened and
the grass has grown."
[Aragorn, in J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings"]

I quote the above passage from a fantasy novel not as satire
but because I think it expresses rather well the deeper
metaphorical and allegorical content of Sowell's comment (and
innumerable similar ones -- compare the land of Mordor with the "Evil
Empire"!) --- that the military are the "guardians at
the gates of civilization" performing a lonely, difficult duty ---
and yet being criticized by the weak, simple folk they are protecting.
This metaphor of the "guardians at the gates" is
undeniably *emotionally powerful*, but for intellectual self-defense
we must then ask ourselves, does it fit the facts?  I have argued
previously on this list at some length that that the name
"U.S. Department of Defense" (changed from the honest
"War Department" in 1947) is a complete misnomer; I
will not repeat this here.  My purpose here is to simply
note the power of the unexamined metaphor for propaganda purposes.

In the same vein, I draw readers attention to Michael Parenti's
("Inventing Reality", 1986, "Democracy for the Few", 5th edition 1987,
"The Sword and the Dollar" , 1989, all St. Martin's Press) most recent
book, "Make-Believe Media: The Politics of Entertainment" (1992,
St. Martin's Press) which analyzes the political content of `popular'
entertainment presented in TV and movies.  (Note that Neil Postman
has argued persuasively -- in "Amusing Ourselves to Death" and
most recently in "How to Watch TV News" with Steve Powers --
that TV news is not essentially different from other TV
entertainment programs.)  One feature of television shows/movies --
especially action-adventure shows -- is that (again following the
structure of fairy tales) they predispose you emotionally to believe that
the evils of the world are due to, well, *evil people*, and if
only these evil people could be eliminated  (if only our police
were not hamstrung by absurd "technicalities" like civil liberties!)
then everything would be fine.  The `brilliant psychopath' is an
especially convenient plot device for police-action shows, because it
allows the writer to spin out any number of exciting, implausible,
events together which are nominally connected by the villain's
particular pathological compulsion.  Evil is rarely connected to
structural causes.

Some people may scoff that `I know the difference between
TV entertainment and reality', but I believe this means they
have not yet thought seriously about the issues involved.  Our brains
do not have distinct storage mechanisms for `constructed images we
saw on the television screen' as opposed to `images we
saw in real life'.  For a person *not* to be affected by
frequent TV-watching, they would have to be catatonic.

Ron Balden
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