← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Fernando Wood
Thread ID: 12191 | Posts: 30 | Started: 2004-02-06
2004-02-06 04:02 | User Profile
[url]http://vdare.com/francis/wmd.htm[/url]
February 05, 2004
Weapons of Mass Deception: Somebody Lied
By Sam Francis
2004-02-06 04:22 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Fernando Wood]...My own answer is that the lie was fabricated by neo-conservatives in the administration whose first loyalty is to Israel and its interests and who wanted the United States to smash Iraq because it was the biggest potential threat to Israel in the region...[/QUOTE]
Slam-dunk for Francis. There is no way this can be more explicit and get published in America.
2004-02-06 07:10 | User Profile
The thing that irks me about all of this is that it was bloody obvious that Shrub was lying at the time he asked for Congressional approval, and only now is anybody (other than the usual suspects, like Justin Raimondo) talking about it.
Any grifter will tell you that his success depends upon the mark's desire to be conned.
For whatever sick reasons, the mark needs the story the grifter is feeding him so much that he'll suspend disbelief and buy into a story that is too good to be true.
The question then arises what psychological need are the neo-cons exploiting? What is it that millions of Americans need so much that they're willing to buy into an obvious con, to the tune of billions of dollars and the lives of their children?
I'm seriously posing this question, and I'd really like to hear what others think about that. Sometimes I feel that our deliberations here on OD are my only "reality check" - everybody else in my life (with a few exceptions) are deeply committed to the neo-con version of reality, despite all evidence to the contrary.
Here are my two cents.
I think that part of it is that people feel a need to be close to the rich and famous. I suspect that there are evolutionary reasons for this - we evolved a need to feel close to the tribal chief and since our atomized society and vast empire make any real relationship impossible, we cling to the images the media create for us. Your comments here would be most welcome.
Thus, there's an element of "star power" at work in this. The Michael Jackson and OJ Simpson matters are cases in point. Here millions of people actually feel that they know these people, when of course they only thing they know are the flickering images on the telescreen. Elvis, the Beatles. Heck, poor John Lennon was killed because somebody mistook the media image for the man.
One sees the "star power" factor clearly at work in the Democrat Party. Barbara Steisand hanging out with the Clintons is emblematic. And everybody in the Democratic Party was a "Friend of Bill." The point is that these delusions are real, they're on a mass scale, and that they're so much a part of our lives that we tend strongly to take them for granted. It's important I think to remind ourselves from time to time that we don't actually know any of the people we see on the little screen. Not the movie stars, not the politicians. It's really is all just a grand illusion, as the old song goes.
To recap, the thing is that we need to feel close to the rich and powerful. As a species we are like that, and since for most of us the rich and powerful are so far removed from us we create imaginary connections for ourselves with them, abetted by the images the media churn out for us. This is clearly what the Democrats are all about, and they actually make no bones about it. The Democrats openly proclaim Jewish rule, Negro ascendancy, and white subjugation and dispossession, and it you're on board you get your 15 minutes with Bill & Babs, and maybe a job at the local Equal Opportunity Commission, Welfare Board, or Wymyn's Studies Program.
But it's the same thing with the GOP (their recent election of a Kennedy to the Goverorship of California is one of the most bizarre episodes in modern politics, IMHO.) But as I said, I think that this need to feel close to the rich and powerful drives the Freepers and the Left Behind crowd, as well, although these folks don't like to admit it and it's more subtle. Freepers know in their hearts that Jews run the world, and the whole Dispensationalist thing allows them to suck up to the princes of this world, but with the added ego-balm of appearing to take the part of the underdog.
The sight of all of those American Christian Dispensationalists marching through Tel Aviv with the undeclared ruler of the western world, Ariel Sharon, shouting through the megaphone "you're our best friends!" - and all the while telling themselves that they're bravely taking the side of the weak and dowtrodden Jews (!) - is an ego-feeding proposition indeed. I must be like a powerful narcotic - and just as addictive.
Note that one of the motifs in the pro-Jewish films like Schindler's List, the Pianist and so forth is the good gentile who helps the embattled Jew and then can expect rewards after. It's a not-so-subtle message that if you support us, you can feel heroic even while you keep your job. Doing well while doing good, so to speak. It's an offer from Old Slewfoot himself.
The Jews are, as a people, grifters. It's like that old Yiddish joke that Woody Alan mentions at the end of one of his films, about the old lady who has an imaginary chicken but her neighbors won't tell her about her delusion because they need the eggs. Our people need the imaginary eggs our Jewish neighbors are selling them.
2004-02-06 07:58 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Walter Yannis]The question then arises what psychological need are the neo-cons exploiting? What is it that millions of Americans need so much that they're willing to buy into an obvious con, to the tune of billions of dollars and the lives of their children?[/QUOTE]
Quite simply, patriotism -- the overwhelming need of middle Americans to feel that their country is still a force for moral good in this decaying world. When you take into consideration how most of us were educated and the history we were taught about our country, I think it is easy to see how difficult and psychologically disconcerting it is for the great majority of folks to shed that belief. To be on the outside looking in is not a position easily transitioned into for most, because questioning the basic foundations of one's entire world-view or belief system is a hard, hard task. It's much easier to paste that flag on the back of your truck and not give thought to the fundamental questions that may be bothersome.
2004-02-06 20:35 | User Profile
AntiYuppie,
I think that Raimondo is correct in his latest column. If the Plame investigation results in indictments we can expect the hear the neo-cons claim that this is the results of "antisemitism." When they start that crap a good way to deal with it would be to use their love of (hyper) "individualism" against them. That is to say "it is only a coincident that all the people indicted are Jews and we should only focus on the acts of these individuals." :) Of course it is only a coincident that the majority of the liars are Jews. Ha!
I think that in the end they will hang themselves with their own hypocrisy.
2004-02-07 03:20 | User Profile
[sarcasm; not for retards, midgets or small pets]:
But-but-but-but -- who would lie? The only people who gained from the Iraq invasion are the people of Israel......saaaaay.....you don't suppose.....naaahhhh.....
:blink:
2004-02-07 05:11 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Franco][sarcasm; not for retards, midgets or small pets]:
But-but-but-but -- who would lie? The only people who gained from the Iraq invasion are the people of Israel......saaaaay.....you don't suppose.....naaahhhh.....
:blink:[/QUOTE]
Look at the new oil pipe, the one wich picture was taken by satellite, and you will see that the oil is going to the Zionist state. And for that our boys are now dead............
2004-02-07 06:35 | User Profile
Somebody lied? Even before the war, is was clear that these lies originated with the Bush administration. The administrion leaned on the CIA to come up with d*mning reports, the CIA complied because Bush is the boss and it's the nature of the CIA to dream up worse-case scenarios. Still, Bush's claims went well beyond anything that could be supported even by the highly biased CIA reports.
2004-02-07 07:37 | User Profile
There are so many lessons to be taken from this. So many areas that could be explored and commented on. One of the more interesting examples gleaned from this latest National Nightmare is the zhids once again showing that they have no loyalty to anyone or anything other than themselves. Bushie II did the job for them ... but that's the past. It truly is incredible.
Jorge will be looking for a life preserver, but the jews will toss him a sack of bricks. What do they care? He isn't in charge. They are.
2004-02-07 16:57 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Happy Hacker]Somebody lied? Even before the war, is was clear that these lies originated with the Bush administration. The administrion leaned on the CIA to come up with d*mning reports, the CIA complied because Bush is the boss and it's the nature of the CIA to dream up worse-case scenarios. Still, Bush's claims went well beyond anything that could be supported even by the highly biased CIA reports.[/QUOTE]
This is exactly the point I'm trying to make.
IT WAS CLEAR AT THE TIME that Shrub was at least very probably lying. Obvious. Hell, we all talked about it here.
It was clear, so the question arises as to why anybody would choose to suspend disbelief and buy the whole line. What is the motivation to doublethink here? And that's what it is - doublethink. Mental cheating. It's knowing that you're being lied to by the used car salesman but signing the contract anyway.
Tex says "patriotism" but I think that begs the question of why folks buy the lies of some charlatan that's OBVIOUSLY committing crimes in America's name. Patriotism as the word is normally understood implies fighting internal enemies as fiercely as external ones.
There's some need that the neo-kahns fill with their propaganda. I mean, there has to be a reason the Freepers fawn all over Jews. Backing up Israel's lies over the truth on the Liberty incident couldn't be inspired by "patriotism" by definition, as just one example.
No, it's really treason on a mass scale, and it's happening I think because the average American desparately wants to feel known and loved by the power that rules this country. In accordance with the principles of doublethink, they recognize the fact that Jews control America and through America the world while simultaneously holding the contradictory notion that Jews are downtrodden and that they're noble for standing with Israelis in tanks against those big, bad nasty Palestinian kids in ragged running shoes throwing stones.
It's nuts, but it's controlled madness. No, I can't let my fellow Americans off the hook for this. They know what they're doing, but they lie to themselves about it. The only thing I'm not clear on is their emotional motivation for suspending reason in favor of this particular manifestation of the madness of crowds.
Walter
2004-02-07 18:00 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Walter Yannis]
No, it's really treason on a mass scale, and it's happening I think because the average American desparately wants to feel known and loved by the power that rules this country. In accordance with the principles of doublethink, they recognize the fact that Jews control America and through America the world while simultaneously holding the contradictory notion that Jews are downtrodden and that they're noble for standing with Israelis in tanks against those big, bad nasty Palestinian kids in ragged running shoes throwing stones. [/QUOTE]
Walter,
My sense is that the "notion" is not altogether contradictory, in that the kosher-cons identify with the Lesser Judeans as fellow colonialists, sweeping aside and exterminating the sub-human, savage aborigines/atrocity-perpetrating terrorists. And I sense that the image of european emigrants fleeing ethnic/religious persecution sentimentally links the Zionists to the apple-pie-patriotic, civics-class-indoctrinated, good-little-Christian, so-called right-wing element in fly-over country.
2004-02-07 19:38 | User Profile
[QUOTE]IT WAS CLEAR AT THE TIME that Shrub was at least very probably lying.[/QUOTE] No, it was clear [I]to you.[/I] [QUOTE]It was clear, so the question arises as to why anybody would choose to suspend disbelief and buy the whole line. [/QUOTE] For many or most Republicans, it was not a matter of choice -- because what was clear to you was not clear to them. It is not a matter of suspending disbelief, it is a matter of suspending [I]suspicion[/I], of suspending critical inquiry. As a result, even when the relevant data were presented in a logically compelling manner, the Bushbots were incapable of appreciating their significance.
Humans are social animals, and for quite a while now you have appeared comfortable speaking of something along the lines of a "social organism". Humans have evolved not only as individuals but also in groups and as components of groups. The most fundamental advantage of a human society results from the possibility of a division of labor.
From evolutionary biologist Matt Ridley in "The Origins of Virtue" (p. 41):
"...in human society, the advantages of society are those provided by the division of labour..... Only when we look at the society of cells that form a body do we find a comparable complexity of specialized function. The division of labour is what makes a body worth inventing."
As you have acknowledged, society includes followers and leaders, and this is part of the division of labour that advantages human groups over human individuals. Moreover, form the perspective of multilevel selection, it is easy to hypothesize the adaptiveness of this division of labor in between-group selection. Too much mistrust, too much skepticism regarding the information and commands received from those in putatively trustworthy positions would be inefficient and would hinder the action of the group as a coordinated individual. Such a group would be at a competitive disadvantage versus a more efficient, better coordinated group.
It seems plausible that, evolving in the context of the group, some people are born to follow -- they lack (in varying degrees) the psychological mechanisms that would enable them to challenge the veracity of the information and the legitimacy of the directives that they receive through the channels of mass communication and the chaiin of command. Again, as explained above, this sort of division of labor within the group as it evolves may be adaptive. But it is adaptive only to a point.
A group with too much blind loyalty runs the risk of being unable to recognize that their activities are being coordinated for the achievement of goals inimical to the putative group's. Such a group is at a competitive disadvantage versus a group whose followers are not quite so blind in the aggregate.
[QUOTE]In accordance with the principles of doublethink, they recognize the fact that Jews control America and through America the world while simultaneously holding the contradictory notion that Jews are downtrodden and that they're noble for standing with Israelis in tanks against those big, bad nasty Palestinian kids in ragged running shoes throwing stones.[/QUOTE] Perhaps in your neck of the woods, but for the vast majority of Southerners, "Jew" is not even a political category, let alone an [I]important [/I] one.
2004-02-07 19:52 | User Profile
[IMG]http://img.coxnewsweb.com/C/00/38/12/image_412380.jpg[/IMG]
2004-02-07 19:53 | User Profile
[QUOTE]No, it's really treason on a mass scale, and it's happening I think because the average American desparately wants to feel known and loved by the power that rules this country. [/QUOTE] The importance of "status yearnings" as a relatively proximate cause of social coordination is always an important consideration. The average American may also want to appear to belong to the leadership class and thus conform his beliefs and actions to those of the ruling elite. You know that already, though.
I recommend that you read Boyd & Richerson's works on conformism.
But only after you read Ridley's "The Origins of Virtue".
2004-02-08 01:47 | User Profile
The question then arises what psychological need are the neo-cons exploiting? What is it that millions of Americans need so much that they're willing to buy into an obvious con, to the tune of billions of dollars and the lives of their children? That's an important and fundamental question. There seem to be several confluent factors, not all of them psychological, acting upon a mostly-vulnerable population that's still feeling some effects of the 9/11 attacks. Here's my theory about it...
First of all, the mainstream media have been complicit in the scam. We can definitely attribute this at least in part to Jewish media control, but there is more to it than that. We all acknowledge the simple reality that the individual media outlets are perpetually fighting for dominance in a competitive marketplace. Ratings mean money, and high-level government officials are in a position to passive-aggressively harm those media organizations whose representatives (mostly reporters) ask too many tough questions. For example, if a certain reporter repeatedly asks Rumsfeld uncomfortable questions at press conferences, it's not too much of a leap to assume that Rumsfeld will no longer call on that reporter when his hand is raised. This makes that reporter's job a lot more difficult, and his supervisors are likely to take notice. Similar situations can arise if, say, network XYZ does not put enough of an "official" slant on its "objective" news reporting. Like all networks, XYZ relies upon the government to provide it with much of its information, generally in the form of press releases or other canned information that the government wishes to disseminate. If XYZ displeases the government, it might have to work harder to get that information, thus placing XYZ at a competitive disadvantage in the media marketplace.
This is perhaps why the mainstream media, rather than having a clear-cut "liberal" or "conservative" bias, seems to be biased more in favor of whatever government is in power at the time. It's a balancing act: no network wants to get the government PO'd, but they will sometimes take risks if the profits to be gained offset those concerns. Of course, all of the above is mostly invisible to the general public, which tends to believe what it sees on the news despite the frequent adoption of a trendy facade of skepticism.
The effects of the propaganda disseminated by the government through "objective" media channels are reinforced by the work of Jews and their Gentile shills on talk radio shows, newspaper editorials, and so on.
Once the media gets the ball rolling and the majority of the sheep have been provided with their opinions, factors such as the common human need to "belong" begin to play a major role in cementing the national viewpoint. The patriotism mentioned by Tex falls into this category. Also, I think that pride prevents a lot of people from admitting to themselves that they've been duped. No one likes to hear "I told you so," especially from political rivals.
2004-02-08 03:37 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Walter Yannis]IT WAS CLEAR AT THE TIME that Shrub was at least very probably lying. Obvious. Hell, we all talked about it here.
With Bush's poll numbers low enough that his re-election looks in danger, and after his own lackey, inspector Kay, said there weren't any WMDs in Iraq, Bush is now supporting an "investigation." That's like OJ looking for the real killer.
Anyone who entertains the idea that bungled intelligence could be at fault is again guilty of suspending disbelief.
It was clear, so the question arises as to why anybody would choose to suspend disbelief and buy the whole line.
Just to keep myself humble, I try to figure out why people believe such obvious lies (lies that harm them, rather than benefit them). My frustration reminds me that I don't have all the answers. ;)
Patriotism? Wanting to be loved by the leaders?
I think it's a matter of the psychology behind the Big Lie. When people hear only one side, and they hear that side all the time, they want to believe there is truth to it even though it doesn't make much sense.
I wonder what my beliefs would be if the internet didn't exist. I would probably believe that Iraq was overflowing with WMDs because that's the only impression the mainstream media presented before the war. I wouldn't know that those aluminum tubes were very unsuitable for uranium refinement and that those tubes were identical to specs of parts used for some Iraqi rockets. I would only know that Saddam was gathering parts to build nukes.
2004-02-08 06:00 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Happy Hacker]I wonder what my beliefs would be if the internet didn't exist. I would probably believe that Iraq was overflowing with WMDs because that's the only impression the mainstream media presented before the war. I wouldn't know that those aluminum tubes were very unsuitable for uranium refinement and that those tubes were identical to specs of parts used for some Iraqi rockets. I would only know that Saddam was gathering parts to build nukes.[/QUOTE]
Maybe not. (Cut yourself some slack!)
There was no internet in the 60s and everyone thought the Warren report on John Kennedy's assassination was a load of bunk.
There was no internet in the 70s and Nixon still got run out of town for his lies and attempts to intimidate his enemies.
The truth has a way of getting out!
With luck, the internet will move things along quicker.
Think on this: America was already bogged down in Vietnam 4, maybe 5 years before the serious cracks in the official story started getting everyone involved. It's been less than a year and we're already further along on Bush and his WMD lies. Which, if there is any justice at all, will run him out of town faster than Nixon.
On this point I'm 100% optimistic. :smoke:
2004-02-08 19:26 | User Profile
[QUOTE]Quite simply, patriotism -- the overwhelming need of middle Americans to feel that their country is still a force for moral good in this decaying world. [/QUOTE]
...when they already suspect that we are also the [I]source [/I] of the decay in this "decaying world"?
[QUOTE]The question then arises ....What is it that millions of Americans need so much that they're willing to buy into an obvious con, to the tune of billions of dollars and the lives of their children? [/QUOTE]
The answer to all these questions are distressingly simple: [I]it's because we're stupid[/I]. It is a process begun in WW2, when patriotism became a reflex instead of a belief arrived at, and the FedGov began being Disney-deified as a benevolent elite of Wise Elders of the Tribe, presided over by a godlike Chief Executive. The one-way momentum of the process became irreversible with the founding of the State of Israel and the Cold War pointed up that the battle lines were now drawn being not dueling [I]ideologies [/I] but dueling [I]totalitarian [/I] ideologies.
Don't quote me on the numbers, but I'm close enough - less than 10% of the population buys so much as ONE book in a calendar year. Less than 5% buy [I]more[/I] than one. Now deduct everyone who purchases books because they've been assigned, or are otherwise mandatory, and the numbers become a lot more scary-accurate. (And if the books they ARE buying are popular titles, copyright within the past 25 years or so - thus chock full of multi-cult goodness.... chances are those numbers will continue to decline.) Neither are those new statistics. They pretty much have held steady for two decades or so now. Face it: we're stupid. Our kids are even stupider. Nor did this just, y'know, [I]happen[/I]: we're even too stupid to notice that nothing we could have done as a people short of violent overthrow of all govt institutions was going to prevent this war from happening. Bush wanted it, the Jews wanted it, Halliburton and GE and McDonald's and Viacom wanted it. YOU were never in the equation. Nobody stops to ask a dope for his opinion when there's money on the table [I]already [/I] burning a hole in your pocket. But when that kid with no family and no arms and legs becomes a martyr-figure for the next generation of much-higher-tech suicide bombers, they won't stop to make nuanced distinctions about ultimate guilt, because while the spoils were grabbed by a few, the masses clapped and laughed and booed the French. It never bothered them a bit that this sort of murder and plunder was all done in their name. What else is on, honey? [I]Frasier[/I]?
Well, what did you [I]expect [/I] from the relentless nigrification of the culture? [I]Fewer [/I] ni***rs?
[QUOTE]There are so many lessons to be taken from this. [/QUOTE] None of which will be learned.
2004-02-08 19:40 | User Profile
Why do people believe such obvious lies? For the same reason they don't get outraged after the lies get exposed: they don't give a crap. "Freedom" or totalitarianism: most people are sheep. And during the time of prosperity, there is little in terms of inconviniences and negative emotions to stir people up enough to interrupt their chowing and make them stop and think a little.
2004-02-09 01:28 | User Profile
Oh IR, a few people will learn the lesson(s). That's how people like those at OD end up figuring out the truth. Not many will learn - but a few will start to try and fan the fog out of the way.
2004-02-09 02:32 | User Profile
Mad Russian,
For most people the hardest thing to do is to think intelligently. I believe that is where we have the biggest problem. It is so much easier to let someone else do that even if they are wrong and once folks allow that to happen to them they hate to admit they made a mistake.
2004-02-09 03:13 | User Profile
Thanks to Sam Francis for his article. For a good book that explores this phenomenon of the American sheeple not even beliving what they see or having the ability to think, I highly recomend the book: "The Death of Reality" by Lawrence Dawson.
2004-02-09 04:59 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Roy Batty]Oh IR, a few people will learn the lesson(s). That's how people like those at OD end up figuring out the truth. Not many will learn - but a few will start to try and fan the fog out of the way.[/QUOTE]
A person is like a computer, garbage in garbage out, and they can only learn as to what is going on according to what they learn by reading. I am sorry to say that the majority of Americans only care about their six pack and their football game. In order to really learn as to what is going on in the USA is to read the news from the outside of the USA, as you well know the news in USA is controlled by those from above and they will show you only that wich they want you to know. You would be horrified to learn what is going on in Palestine, but you will never learn the crimes committed by the IDF for the simple reazon that the Zionists control the news in this country. "When the truth comes into the light, the lies will hide in the dark",,,,,Ponce
2004-02-09 10:19 | User Profile
[QUOTE=mwdallas]The importance of "status yearnings" as a relatively proximate cause of social coordination is always an important consideration. The average American may also want to appear to belong to the leadership class and thus conform his beliefs and actions to those of the ruling elite. You know that already, though.
I recommend that you read Boyd & Richerson's works on conformism.
But only after you read Ridley's "The Origins of Virtue".[/QUOTE]
Thank you for your very thoughtful response, which deserves more of a considered reply than I can handle this week.
I will check out the books you mention. Your last recommendation - Darwin's Cathedral - really should be on our classics list. I do indeed feel comfortable with the organismic notion. I see no contradiction to Catholic teaching here, inasmuch as it provides more empirical evidence for Catholic theology, especially in regard to doctines of the Eucharist and the place of race and nation in God's plan of salvation.
2004-02-09 10:22 | User Profile
[QUOTE=NeoNietzsche]Walter,
My sense is that the "notion" is not altogether contradictory, in that the kosher-cons identify with the Lesser Judeans as fellow colonialists, sweeping aside and exterminating the sub-human, savage aborigines/atrocity-perpetrating terrorists. And I sense that the image of european emigrants fleeing ethnic/religious persecution sentimentally links the Zionists to the apple-pie-patriotic, civics-class-indoctrinated, good-little-Christian, so-called right-wing element in fly-over country.[/QUOTE]
Neo, it's great to hear from you.
I suspect that mwdallas has it right - most people are supposed to be followers, and I'm expecting something from them that I in other instances freely admit they are constitutionally incapable.
But I'll have to mull that over.
Walter
2004-02-09 18:38 | User Profile
"It never pays to bet against the ability of the Descendants of European Christendom to delude themselves with abstract slogans into behaving in ways which are wildly contrary to their own individual and collective self interest."
So says Ygg.
2004-02-09 18:44 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Marlowe]"It never pays to bet against the ability of the Descendants of European Christendom to delude themselves with abstract slogans into behaving in ways which are wildly contrary to their own individual and collective self interest."
So says Ygg.[/QUOTE]
Few people have bullshit overrides (or bullshit meters in other words), that would reject bullshit if implications of it are too silly. It's a regular congame to lead someone with a series of false conclusions, each one of them being subtly false and requiring a great effort to deconstruct, and then arrive at something grossly false. People don't have the common sense to check the final conclusions against the common sense and are too busy deconstructing the intermediate steps, drowning in senseless contention and irrelevancies.
Being educated just enough to believe one can follow more complicated arguments, but not enough to be able to destroy bullshit arguments, is worse then rejecting bullshit outright while looking at the result.
2004-02-09 19:10 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Marlowe]"It never pays to bet against the ability of the Descendants of European Christendom to delude themselves with abstract slogans into behaving in ways which are wildly contrary to their own individual and collective self interest."
So says Ygg.[/QUOTE]
How about the Chinese? Now there's a group who are given to mass delusions. I have a copy of a PBS documentary on the history of China in the 20th century that I highly recommend. I watched it recently.
Whoa, dude. I mean, those people just take the cake for severing all ties to reality and pursuing just patently insane goals waaaaay beyond the point of absurdity. Tens of millions of people starved to death in the Great Leap Forward. That included episodes like all one billion of them waking up one morning with the brilliant idea that what they really need is a small steel smelter in their back yards, and so hundreds of millions of them go absolutely apesh*t looking for anything made of steel that they can find. Oh, and anything that will burn (didn't have coke). They felled all their trees and they melted down every useful item made of steel in the whole country into carbon-laced slag (they used wood to melt the metal, what could they expect). Literally entire areas of the country were left without a tree or a pot to boil water in, or hoes or shovels to till their fields. The economy was wiped out for hundreds of millions of starving peasants, and tens of millions starved to death with many, many more left maimed, orphaned, homeless.
Less than 10 years later, in the Cultural Revolution, an entire generation of young people rose as a single man against the past, and murdered teachers, parents, grandparents, tore down architectual treasures, burned books and paraded old people through the streets beating them as they went.
The great Chinese people are tragically given to mass hysteria, or so it would seem. It's caused them unspeakable pain on a scale we can scarcely imagine.
Not that I'm saying we white people are any less given to delusional thinking than our East Asian brethren, because clearly we're totally out of our minds on any number of issues. But I kept thinking to myself as I watched this truly fine documentary (filled with historic film footage) that their delusions are somehow different from ours. They proceed from other conscious motivations than we do, and I'm not quite sure what it is. Maybe it's that they wanted to save China itself instead of some abstract notion like saving the world from Communism or "ending evil" (that one really has to be the most thoroughly deluded cause to die for we've ever come up with - and by none other than Shrub himself. Maybe he's smarter than we think.)
Maybe it would behoove us to study Chinese mass delusional thinking as a sort of distant mirror for our own. If we could better understand what caused them to kill tens of millions of their own people, then maybe we'd get a more objective view of our own madness.
Walter
2004-02-09 19:18 | User Profile
[QUOTE]I think that in the end they will hang themselves with their own hypocrisy.[/QUOTE]
Well, if history is any guide then that would seem to be foreordained.
The problem of course is that many of us will get caught in the sh*tstorm that is sure to follow.
Walter
2004-02-10 16:16 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Walter Yannis]How about the Chinese? it's that they wanted to save China itself instead of some abstract notion like saving the world from Communism or "ending evil" (that one really has to be the most thoroughly deluded cause to die for we've ever come up with - and by none other than Shrub himself. Maybe he's smarter than we think.)
Maybe it would behoove us to study Chinese mass delusional thinking as a sort of distant mirror for our own. If we could better understand what caused them to kill tens of millions of their own people, then maybe we'd get a more objective view of our own madness.
Walter[/QUOTE]
"Mass deluisional thinking" canot be eliminated in favor of "reality", "objectivity" or whatever, in large groups, because group identity is defined through it. (correct?) It's embodied in the terms individuals use for self-reference, including their 'history'. Who "we" are, said by [B]anybody[/B] is "who we think we are". That has to be brought home by fantasy -- the basis of delusion -- in individuals, shared by use of the personal pronoun or designated state-term ("Chinese", "American", etc.)
China is the last remaining well of mystery for the US to start its delusional shitting into ("dumping" into poison containers, like the Jews into Jesus, whom they fantasized as wanting to kill them = their delusion of what they are to themselves.) That is what is on some right-wing "conservative" menus, as started to be evident already in l998, as I In fact lectured on before retiring, because it was self-evident that the fantasy- products that keep the "anti-liberal" windmills of US minds going were running out of "Communist" (=daddy=killer) countries to attack.
Defeating "communism" psychologically = defeating daddy-killers: communists are the ones who "killed the father" in unconscious group fantasy, so killing communists is, like, Saving daddy, and everybody wants to save daddy, hell, he saved us. right? (If not our personal progenitors, our impersonal -- "higher" -- Father who Art in Heaven -- that is what communism kills -- it actually frees the spirit, Jung held; the last step in the spiritual male's individuality. But it hurts a lot to do it, because they can really be great, self-sacrificing, etc. -- but [B]they[/B] want us to "kill daddy" (in our heads), if they are really great.)
People often start picking on others -- pick, pick, pick -- in order to show their daddy is better. But why should they need to, if He really is?
That explains Reagan's conversion from a liberal kid -- he led a student sit-in protest, in Eureka college days (cf. L. deMause, "Reagan's America") -- into a rabid anti-communist. His alcoholic father, Jack Reagan, once kicked him in the head with his boot when Ronnie tried to drag him off the porch into the house after he came home drunk and passed out. Reagan's autobiography, entitled "Where's the Rest of Me?" is about how his conversion into anti-communism was an attempt to "make up to the old man" by honoring [B]ALL[/B] FATHERS = Big Daddies in the military, etc. with great delusional devotion. Anti-communism is the core delusional fantasy of the US that all WWII hypsters play on. And it always works, becaue we love our daddies so much. I did mine, to the extent of protesting the Vietnam war, which he supported, and cut me off for "going left", but later told me I was right, after he understood what went down. Fathers can be really wrong. Look at Bush's.