Over There Republican Propaganda

Over There=Propaganda=Doubleplusgood

It's gotten 5 thumbs downs, in a row, from MilBloggers and general Right of Center folks.

It's a shame, considering how well it propagandizes he war, as the war is going on, in a situation where you have the Republican Administration doing jack shit on the PR front, the Republican Party too busy with freaking judicial nominees to come up with any unified message concerning the WoT, the god damn Army giving reporters stupified CRAP that the media machine then turns into daily bodycount and other freakish shit they put out on the air to propagandize the American people into dissing the war, and last but not least in an environment where the experts in camera manipulation, story board creation, and dialogue mesmerization are all lumped on the Left waiting to be unleashed to attack America, the military, and whatever fruitty cause they cooked up next.

In such a pocked up world as that, you better pray to God that FX's installment of Over There keeps going like the energizer bunny. Because there sure as hell won't be any other propaganda aiding the Republicans in the future. Cause there sure as hell ain't any NOW, that's for sure.

You have the entire MSM on the Left trying to take down the war effort and AMerica in general. Then you have the Army PR folks that give these hotel journalists body counts and shit like that, so that journalists don't have to go out and get the real story. Then the journalists conveniently make the audience assume every single pocking thing they report is original and not from the press releases of the freaking army that they ANNOYING tell us they are watching for the American people. Utter Bullshit.

I wouldn't feel good sleeping at night if the Army was iffing good at propaganda and manipulation, but it doesn't mean that I'm pleased by the utter incompetency and stupidity of the Army in NOT GETTING ONE INCH of returns for giving the media journalists information so they don't have to risk their well conditioned tans out in the real world.

So that's basically the situation as is, when Over There on FX came out. THe Army was helping the media screw America over. The Media was helping the terroists screw us over. The AP was helping our media screw us over. The Republicans had their heads up their asses ignoring this while it was happening cause they didn't know what to do or how to do it or who to manipulate/blackmail/threaten/shutdown.

Now, for the sheer propaganda glory that is Over There, witness here my testimony and review. I actually watched whole episodes, instead of "channel surfing" around like most other commentators. That is because I didn't see it on tv, I downloaded it off BitTorrent. You'd think most of these bloggers would've found out that you could download these tv episodes instead of staying up till midnight to see them... must be old folks.

Okay, first episode was pretty much what most people made it out to be. Just remove all the negative conclusions they made up out of their asses and I'd be in agreement. Here's the propaganda effect.

Al-Jazeera is portrayed as an enemy corroborator, and seen as the root cause of much of our hero's misfortune. We are intellectually and morally and emotionally turned against him, both by his manner, by real world events, by personal biases and prejudices, and by the subtle propaganda due to the emotional connections formed between the soldiers on Over There and the audience. Score 1 for Over There.

Second point scored is when one soldier says that they are sending the terroist to Abu Ghraib because he violated the agreement to surrender. He said that he got a lot of his men killed because he chose to fight instead of honoring his surrender agreement. This shows the inhumane side of terroists, how all terroists want to die and go to Allah, and reminds everyone that terroists don't give a damn how we treat them so long as we kill them and they get to go to heaven. This reminds people of Abu Ghraib and how a lot of terroists acted like they felt sympathy for the prisoners. If the audience thinks longer and harder, they will realize that terroists just wanted us to execute their men and get it over with, otherwise they would have to spring them and have them die in battle to get to heaven. Again, the propaganda seethes in subtly, and it takes a lot of active thinking to ponder our the logical conclusions of the propaganda suggestions.

Second episode I didn't watch, so I skip that.

Third episode was pretty good. It showed an unarmed man captured, and taken to a remote village to be interrogated.

The Army Intel guy, a Colonel (Unrealistic, but doesn't really matter since most of the audience doens't know jack about rank structures), is in charge of the interrogation. A LOT OF PROPAGANDA scores for Over There in episode 3.

First, Over There scores by showing that the most we could do to a prisoner is to have him bend his knees and assume a "stress" position, to which he could simply refuse to do and we couldn't make him. Wow, ain't that the picture of American war crimes.

Second, another propaganda score is awarded when the terroist feigns that he has collapsed from exhaustion and a worried soldier goes over to check over him, and then promptly gets attacked and jumped on. Nice, a visual of terroists taking advantage of poor naive American boys that just wanted to make friends.

This stuff is propaganda guys, it isn't supposed to be accurate or real. What it has to be is the TRUTH. And it is TRUE that terroists take advantage of American naivety and our following gentlemanlike conduct, i.e. Fallujah. If you don't know how to make good propaganda, then I suggest you sit down and shut up about accuracy and inaccuracies and unreal crap.

Propaganda is supposed to help our side, not help the enemy side understand how we operate. As such, most of the scenarios must be faked, whether they intended it to be this way or not, and the tactics/strategy SOP must also be faked and made up. Fiction Version in the extreme.

To truly educate the American public, we would have to show them the truth, but in so doing we also show our enemy, and then we're screwed because the American public won't be able to make use of that information to help our armed forces while the terroists WILL use it to hurt us.

They can't handle the truth truth, so we give them a sanitized pre-approved propaganda truth. Just as good as the real thing, so long as they understand it is fiction and not real. If the America public had known the true costs of WWII instead of the an intellectual's intellectual take on things, it would have been a lot different.

Then there is the absolutely wonderful final interrogation and the breaking of the suspect, where the tough as nails Colonel (who looks like a god damned "idealized" 18 Bravo for Jesus sakes) tells the subject that if he doesn't tell us where the Stinger missiles are at, then he will give his 15 year old sister to the Pakistanis. And since the Pakistanis don't operate by American rules, but by the rules of Islam, his sister will be beaten to an inch of her life, and raped until she turns black and she is too sick to touch.

Here you have a sobbing terroist fuck, the greatly heralded pocking FREEDOM FIGHTERS and fearless Jihadists, fighting for Sharia law in which will be the fate of millions of women, and he can't stand to have his own sister be treated to the rules that he fights for... Freedom for me, but not for you I guess. Pathetic, he might not fear death, but we can sure as hell make him fear life.

This all came after a nice psychological exchange between the Intel Colonel and the Intellectual Soldier. In which the Intel guy told him that in order to break the subject, he had to make him believe that the Colonel was desperate enough to do what he said he would do.

In the end, the American audience is left feeling a bit shocked, awed, and a bit apprehensive at interrogations in war. And then they realize that torture, the application of physical pain, is only worse in degree from the kind of treatment that subject was given under the Colonel. Then they realize that none of what the Colonel said would happen, would actually have happened, but he had to act as if he had the will to do so, to avoid carrying out his threats. A paradox the audiencei s confronted with. They automatically search for a reason, and the closest reason they have, the closest truth they cna acquire, is that of American exceptionalism. The belief that we do not need torture because we are so very good at mentally breaking down a subject. It is a different belief than the belief that we are hamstringed by our own rules to the detriment of us and the advantage of the terroists, this is the FIRST time they have seen American mental jujitsu at work. It is a reason to hope, it is a reason to believe we will win. And that is the one thing the American public needs most now. Point 1, for Over There.

The ending was bad, stupid even. Score 1 for Hollywood.

Episode 4=Boring as hell. A lot of backstory about the cheating wife, the neglected kid, and etc.

Episode 5= This is the shit man. Imbedded Reporter Time. AMERICAN ATROCITIES REVEALED, and then shockingly, we understand that in war a pocking camera may focus on the American soldier shooting and the women/children falling, but it tends to miss out on the fact that the kid was throwing shit in a god damned firefight and that there was a pocking enemy with a RPK behind the woman and child shooting off god knows where with his pray and shoot shit.

Propaganda teaching people how to recognize propaganda... Uber Cool. Score 2pts for Over There.

Then we see the reporter trying to talk to the village sheik/terroist whatever the pock he is, trying to explain how it was all a setup, that there was a camera in the village ready to film "American atrocities" and crap like someone told the child to run into the line of fire so the mother will try to get him and get shot. Guess what happens? Village Sheik already knows... Score 1 for Over There Propaganda for anti-terroist.

99% of the technical stuff, aside from weapons/vehicles/uniforms are fake as hell. Thank God, time we got away from Imbedded Reporters reporting on our shit and crap to the enemy so they can tape it and show it in their training camps about how they are using the Satan's evil against it... Oh, wait, didn't that already happen in Episode 5? Bah.

Episode 6

This is a killathon all right. We get to see lots of terroist scumbags eating dirt facedown in the gutter. A nice emotional release for the audience after seeing so much shit happen where our soldiers are attacked and we never do the attacking it seemed.