It would be comical, if not so pathetic.

“More than 10 blinking electronic devices planted at bridges and other spots in Boston threw a scare into the city Wednesday in what turned out to be a publicity campaign for a late-night cable cartoon. Most if not all of the devices depict a character giving the finger,” reports the Associated Press. “Highways, bridges and a section of the Charles River were shut down and bomb squads were sent in before authorities declared the devices were harmless.”

In short, Americans are easily frightened by crass manifestations of the tawdry and shallow consumer society they passively accept, even celebrate, usually with dangerous levels of credit card debt. Fear and mistrust are now endemic, thanks to nearly six years of incessant propaganda concerning universal terrorists, Muslim evil-doers, liquid bombs, homegrown fanatics, even dire warnings of pregnant suicide bombers lurking on the local bus or train.

“Turner Broadcasting, a division of Time Warner Inc. and parent of Cartoon Network, said the devices were part of a promotion for the TV show ‘Aqua Teen Hunger Force,’ a surreal series about a talking milkshake, a box of fries and a meatball…. It said the devices have been in place for two to three weeks in 10 cities: Boston, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Seattle, Portland, Ore., Austin, Texas, San Francisco and Philadelphia.”

However, nothing is more surreal than the idea Muslims want to convert the world to Islam by sword or nuke, kill all the Jews, behead heretics in Thedford, Nebraska, and force all our women to wear chadors. Nothing is more ludicrous than the term “Islamofascism” and brainless comparisons between Hitler and Ahmadinejad. It is completely absurd to believe Iran will patch together a nuke one day and drop it on Israel the next. Indeed, the prospect of flag-draped coffins arriving at Dover AFB in increasing numbers and over 600,000 dead Iraqis predicated on lies and absurd falsification is grotesquely and nauseatingly surreal, to say the least.

Obviously, the neocons have us right where they want us—afraid of our own shadows, mistaking such for Osama with blood-soaked scimitar in hand, and taking puerile marketing gimmicks staged by multinational “entertainment” corporations as bombs.

“Hoaxes are a tremendous burden on local law enforcement and counter-terrorism resources and there’s absolutely no place for them in a post-9/11 world,” declared Russ Knocke, spokesman for the Ministry of Homeland Security.

Hoaxes? Please. Osama bin Laden and “al-Qaeda” are probably the most successful hoax in modern history. It says something when millions of people are so petrified of neocon contrived boogiemen in turbans and cartoon characters—no, not three anthropomorphic fast food items and their life together in New Jersey, but Osama, al-Zarqawi, and Azzam the American—they allow their capacity for higher reasoning to atrophy. Not only that, they allow their birthright, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, to be torched right before their eyes.