I would argue Greenwald is essential reading now.
http://www.salon.com/2012/05/30/how_extremism_is_normalized/
So, speaking of narratives, this one is certainly part of that arc of police state mediation. The welcoming arms of the US populace is very strange. Of course, there are huge numbers not welcoming.
https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/#!/petition/create-do-not-kill-list/HwqFwRtG
and here….. Chris Floyd’s tasty critique http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/1-latest-news/2247-hymns-to-the-violence-the-nyts-love-letter-to-obamas-murder-racket.html#comment-543013573
and this, related, summary of the new Kill-Prez and his change that can drone-bomb you……and his minions in Justice…..http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/05/30/obamas-wisconsin-betrayal/
Underneath a lot of this is a masculinity trope. How race intersects is fascinating. But I will stick with the masculinity notion for a moment. This is a good deal more than the wimp factor or Dukakis atop a tank. There are instinctive balancing acts that always go on, in public and private. A word of pro gay marriage (a stage managed bit of window dressing, really) must be countered with the hyper masculine act of murder. There is, apparently, in modern post industrial capital, nothing that so provides a boost to masculine self image, and public image, than wholesale carnage — death from above — even if its only a fucking robot up there, I AM THE FINGER OF GOD, on the button of death.
The Empire extends everywhere…..and to grasp the magnitude of this reality, just go here….
http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/10/28/graphic-mapping-a-superpower-sized-military/
So, the story line is always one that ends with white power, western superiority, for being the finger of god, becoming death, the destroyer of worlds… the phallic center of the universe…establishes cred. From the tier boss in Attica or Soledad, to the man in the White House, from televesion melodrama that must ALWAYS establish the p.o.v. of state authority as legitimate (more on that soon, because its worth examining the narratives that occulde this…Hunger Games, and other Orwell knock offs) and the repository of virtue.
A footnote occurs to me. Our identification with authority contains within it a deeper identification with power. And intersecting this is the inner drama of criminality. Within the irrational universe of western capital, western fascism, lurks a knowledge that the men who push the buttons, the empty suits, the bankers and hedge fund managers, and studio executives and those of elite wealth….a knowledge of their own illegitimacy. For they all desire for the authentic. (you will note that in media representations, only the outlaw cop, or rogue FBI agent contains this authenticity).That tier boss in Soledad possess the authentic, even if he has been stripped of all else. Deep down the creeps in suits WISH they could inspire the fear that ‘real’ criminals inspire. Part of this has to do with an innate understanding that the criminal is alive. The hedge fund manager is dead. (speaking of zombies again).
from Greenwald:
“There is one important passage from yesterday’s big New York Times article on President Obama’s personal issuance of secret, due-process-free death sentences that I failed to highlight despite twice writing about that article. The fact that I did not even bother to highlight it among all the other passages I wrote about is itself significant, as it reflects how rapidly true extremism becomes normalized:
That record, and Mr. Awlaki’s calls for more attacks, presented Mr. Obama with an urgent question: Could he order the targeted killing of an American citizen, in a country with which the United States was not at war, in secret and without the benefit of a trial?
The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel prepared a lengthy memo justifying that extraordinary step, asserting that while the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of due process applied, it could be satisfied by internal deliberations in the executive branch.
Mr. Obama gave his approval, and Mr. Awlaki was killed in September 2011, along with a fellow propagandist, Samir Khan, an American citizen who was not on the target list but was traveling with him.”
This is murder, plain and simple.
the masculinity “trope,” a subset menifestation of civilizational patriarchy has been a problem since at least the mesolithic.
and identification with authority/power as a means for control became a problem with the rise of caste-based agricultural societies.
not a capitalism problem. a human problem.
well. it IS a capitalism problem. But its of course much more and a lot has been written on this over the last two years of blog posts.