September 06, 2006
Deceipt and Self Deception
Enough of natural beauty, and exotic sundae toppings that set the heart aflutter. A serious, nay, learned, discussion is in order on the subject of deceit and self deception. A most relevant topic, as ABC airs the truthie, revised, neoconservative reconstitution of "9/11".
I could go on, but then I would risk the possibility that you will skip a most edifying conversation about deceit and self deception between Robert Trivers and Noam Chomsky. I know, I could hardly gather the will to plunge into their discussion either, but, once wet, it was clear and invigorating. I guarantee that you will be rewarded. A sample
Robert Trivers: So you're talking about self-deception in at least two contexts. One is intellectuals who, in a sense, go through a process of education which results in a self-deceived organism who is really working to serve the interests of the privileged few without necessarily being conscious of it at all. The other thing is these massive industries of persuasion and deception, which, one can conceptualize, are also inducing a form of either ignorance or self-deception in listeners, where they come to believe that they know the truth when in fact they're just being manipulated.
War is one of the major issues about which Americans deceive themselves. Gabriel Kolko, the war historian, points out that war is becoming democratized, accessible to all. More and more nations possess devastating weaponry. The US has been an generous participant in the global distribution of lethal weapons. Ultimately, it was a terrible idea and is backfiring badly. The United States has also "intervened" militarily over 150 times since 1898. Impressive for a benevolent democracy, eh?
This lack of control leads America's leaders to a lack of coherence and a loss of priorities, because when wars begin their eventual consequences and outcome can never be predicted. This was true long before the U.S. became the preeminent global power and it is still the case. Events over the past year have confirmed that destabilization and friends becoming enemies--and via versa--are the rule in warfare and grand geopolitics, and to be expected. America's interventions since 1947 have usually not succeeded by the criteria it originally defined, and its security at the beginning of the twenty-first century is much more imperiled than it was fifty years ago.The U.S. has more determined and probably more numerous enemies today than ever, and many of those who hate it are ready and able to inflict death and destruction on its shores. Its interventions often triumphed in the purely military sense, which is all the Pentagon worries about, but they have been political failures in all too many cases and led to yet more interventions. Its virtually instinctive activist mentality has led it to leap into situations where it often had no interests, much less durable solutions, and where it has repeatedly created disasters and enduring enmities. America has power without wisdom, and cannot recognize the limits of arms despite its repeated experiences. The result has been folly, and hatred, which is a recipe for disasters. September 11 confirmed that. The war has come home.
Wouldn't it be better to make peace?
Photo note: Ah, at last, a metaphorophoto. Here we have the American Flag, diminished, blurred, distorted, reflected, immersed in glass blue skies and the arched structure that is representative of the corporate. At the very bottom of the photo are several scraggly, leafless branches representing nature in this context. Snappy , huh?.
Addendum:"The Great Equalizer" by Gabriel Kolko appended here because it kept eradicating my entry when I tried to embed it.
Posted by Dakota at September 6, 2006 06:55 PM