America is a land dominated by celluloid fantasy. Of what could be and should be, not what is.

Americans do not care much for history (indeed, they are unique in the world for coining the term “you’re history” as a choice reprobation). Their vision of the past comes not from the pages of books, but the frames of film reels; frames now digitised, and available on demand via the web, both legitimately and illegitimately.

Ergo, it shouldn’t surprise us that 35% of US citizens believe Ronald Reagan – himself forged of stupendous filmic daydreams, a man whose imagined character and legacy ricochets across America today thanks to hagiographic, televisual propaganda dress-up – to be the finest President they ever produced. It is equally unsurprising that the little strip of Los Angeles which birthed Reagan has done more in its brief existence to flog America to the world than even Coca-Cola and Elvis Presley – and sells America’s empire to Americans better than WPP ever could.

Reagan became President not because of innovative policies, indefatigable conviction nor awe-inspiring political vision. Wealthy corporations needed a spokesperson; a casting call went up, and in strutted box-fresh Ronnie, the absolute quintessence of everything Good and American. After all, over the course of his on-screen career, he had played every role befitting a Good American – cowboy, athlete, soldier, detective, lawyer and wife beater (an ideal curriculum vitae). When not playing at being somebody, Reagan had kept himself very busy; variously, he appeared in adverts for Chesterfield cigarettes (that most American of killing machines), lent his voice to campaigns condemning universal healthcare, and served as a shill for real estate companies profiting from the sequester of land from Japanese Nationals. When running for President, he spoke of his military record, and his experiences of liberating a Nazi concentration camp. He neglected to mention his contribution to the struggle amounted to appearing in propaganda movies funded by the US War Department, but that didn't seem to matter much to the public, nor Reagan himself. It was only to be expected that a populace struggling with the tricky business of separating actuality from invention was more than happy to select someone similarly ensnared by this predicament as their Managing Director.

It was also only to be expected that a man wholly fabricated from the feet up would quickly become the first televisual President. The use of media by politicians to disseminate propaganda was nothing new by 1981, of course. Wilson had created the Office of Public Information during World War I, using it to flood the press with tales of the evil, pillaging Hun (transmogrifying a primarily pacifistic, isolationist population into a rabidly pugilistic mob in the process). The paraplegic Franklin D Roosevelt convinced the American public he could walk through the use of sly camera angles, and speeches primarily given on the radio. Inexhaustible philanderer John Fitzgerald Kennedy liked to address the nation accompanied by his handsome wife. However, never prior had a President’s power and authority stemmed nigh-on exclusively from news reporting. Reagan helped mint the state of affairs the West finds itself in now – wherein what (and how) the media record becomes reality, and that which goes unreported evaporates into nothingness.

The mephitic consequences of the visurient politics inaugurated by Reagan cannot be underestimated or trivialized. 24/7 news reporting – all false urgency, impulsive prophesying and magnification of the extraneous – might be its most evident heritage. The execution of James Foley may well be its latest expression.

Ever since the video of Foley’s beheading was posted on YouTube on August 19th, clips have permeated the Western media (although showing it – or even viewing it – in full in the UK may, we are dutifully informed by Scotland Yard’s Counter Terrorism Command, constitute a criminal offence).

ISIS couldn’t have picked a better target than James Foley, a manifestation of everything they are alleged to hate, and everything that is recommendable about that Eden between the Oceans. A God(of the Bible)-fearing, courageous all-American, Foley had been imprisoned by Islamist villains before. In April 2011, he was captured by Gaddafi loyalists in Libya, and was held hostage for 44 days. He numbed the anguish of his incarceration with daily doses of rosary prayers and dreams of steaming platters of apple pie.

Upon his release and arrival back in the country he loved so much, Foley restated his belief in the importance and necessity of ‘frontline’ journalism, and pledged to return to the battlefield in due course.

Return he did, and on October 20th 2011, he was one of two Western journalists to witness first-hand the capture of Gaddafi by rebel forces. Alas, he didn’t stick around and see what lay in store for the captive – namely, the production of a vicious snuff film starring the Colonel in the lead role.

This murder scene got a full airing on most Western news channels. Newspapers reproduced stills in their pages, and their accompanying websites embedded the clip for all to see. It did the rounds on YouTube without an apparently pressing need for removal. No warnings from the Cop Shop attended its sharing on social media channels. Watching and rewatching the brutal bumping off of an officially mandated enemy of the West couldn’t have been easier.

Reagan was long-dead by the time Gaddafi was smudged from the face of terra firma, but chances are he would’ve found the event most agreeable. After all, it was Reagan who had set out to depict Gaddafi as “the heart and mind of the new global disease of terrorism”, unaffectionately dubbing him ‘Mad Dog’ (a moniker enthusiastically seized and regurgitated by mainstream news’ fawning stenographers ever since) and overloading a pliant media with tall tales of the man’s insurrectionary designs and prowess. One particular story alleged that Gaddafi had sent a team of hitmen, led by Carlos The Jackal, to assassinate the President. Whilst later admitted to be false by the journalist who published the story, and the Reagan administration itself, it was duly rolled out as an example of Gaddafi’s terroristic predilections by Barack Obama in the lead up to the Libyan intervention.

Given how extensively NATO’s unprovoked attack on Libya was featured in the news, and how graphically Gaddafi’s death was celebrated via column inches and airtime, one could forgive ISIS for finding the opprobrium and threats that have accompanied the release of their snuff flick bewildering. After all, they were merely following a time-honoured blueprint, codified by Reagan and improved upon by his successors. Indeed, even the death of Osama Bin Laden, whilst not televised, was heralded by the release of photos portraying Obama and his band of merry marauders sitting in rapt attention, revelling in the Al Qaeda leader’s demise via closed-circuit. Later, it was revealed the pictures were staged, recreating an actual event – later still, it was admitted no such event had actually taken place. No matter – it was still of the utmost importance that someone was seen to have witnessed these final moments, as we live in a world where what isn’t televised never actually happened, and the genuine and the unreal are indivisible.

Many within ISIS’ swelling ranks may find the content positively tame in comparison to the telecasted sacrifices of such scoundrels as Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein. What ISIS have failed to comprehend, of course, is that graphic videos depicting the death of a state’s adversaries are a lavishness they may not partake in. The hanging, drawing and quartering of America’s enemies can (and, perhaps, must) be committed to film in full, glorious technicolour; the much-edited fatality of an American citizen is a war crime.

Armed citizens of the Third World have faced such a dilemma before. As radioactive fireballs nimbly ravaged their way through Hiroshima and Nagasaki, World War II slithered to a toxic finale. With every established Empire in abject tatters, the colonies and overseas possessions these powers controlled found themselves the inheritors of a glorious – and, unfortunately, fleeting – power vacuum. Making the mistake of taking empowering chatter from Churchill, Truman, Roosevelt and De Gaulle about ‘freedom’, ‘democracy’ and ‘liberation’ at face value, independence movements sprouted. Every continent and sub-continent bristled with revolutionary energy, only to be met with brutal responses from their still-recovering oppressors. The subtext was that democracy and freedom were an opulence, to be rationed and restricted to the people that really needed it.

Monstrous and distressing as James Foley’s execution was, it is alas a symptom of a world dominated by the optical and the saleable. In a sense, the paradigm ushered in by Reagan and his acolytes has reached its venomous zenith. His murderers are not hungry exhibitionists or desperate self-publicists, driven violently loopy by a giddying combination of gore and the promise of widespread exposure. They are people who understand that the best way to wage their war is via televisual means.