The Emperor is Wearing No Clothes Syndrome
Double Talk, Hypocrisy, and Deceit in War
So what is it that makes people crave ideology, external structure, authoritarianism, totalitarianism? What is it that makes them abandon their inner spiritual "reality" and authority, inner wisdom, and true nature?
As we have seen previously ideology and obsequiousness is the result of psychological trauma brought about by fear, terror, confusion, a sense of deep hopelessness, and resultant lack of self esteem.
This is the food that conspiracies of demagogues and priesthood feed off -- if people's have no self confidence, then they are far more likely willing to place their confidence in external authority -- if people have no internal sense of security, order, and meaning they are far more likely willing to adopt some one else's or external order. The extreme epitome of external order and predictability is a very structured society, a security oriented state, a police state, or totalitarian state. Here people are no longer "burdened" at thinking things out for themselves and taking responsibility. The state and its propaganda machine do this for us.
Any success the state has, the people can identify as succeeding themselves (as they are part of the team, yet conveniently if the state makes a mistake a bureaucrat is blamed while the citizens can continue to disown any responsibility. A totalitarian state is thus a very inhuman and unconscionable state.
So with this context in mind we can view the recent cycle of organized mass murder (bombings in New York, Washington, and Kabul in perspective with the escalation of violence that occurred in Iraq, Iran, Belfast, Kosovo, Panama City, Grenada, Vietnam, Bay of Pigs, Indonesia, Dominican Republic, Libya, Nicaragua, and elsewhere.
Organized mass murder (war) is very often justified as "justice" or moral. Indeed it is almost always the good guys against the bad guys (unless it is a war waged by mercenaries). American wars are always in foreign countries against native peoples, so on the surface it is hard to understand why America is in so much denial about their empirism, colonialism, and imperialism). Thus thou shall not kill (which all religions support) is translated as "thou shall destroy evil". Thus in war the enemy is demonized, marginalized, made out to be non-human, an agent of the devil, and the like, while the priesthood is really the propaganda machine who keeps "the troops" in line and the populace obsequious. Thus guilt, lack of self esteem, and defensiveness is superseded by aggressiveness, pride, arrogance, and self righteousness. We are superior, right, and good while "they" are inferior, bad, and wrong.
When we look deeply (behind the facade of this self deceit/delusion) we see that it is a very crude, gross, and base form of denial based on the original trauma/rend from inner peace, inner wisdom/gnosis, meaning and purpose -- knowing who we are in a transpersonal sense -- in a realm of wholeness and completeness where beauty, well being, and peace with Self reign. Thus war is ultimately not really about demagogues, bad leadership, failed diplomacy, and propaganda as much as it about the people who are gullible and naive -- disempowered and desperate enough to do the bidding of the empire -- about people who have become inured to a realm of Empire -- of constant struggle, stress, conflict, separation, self estrangement, alienation, pain, and confusion (confusing their inner demons with externalized phantoms and projections).
Recent Events in Afghanistan
Thus a disempowered populace who does not have the self confidence
to do their own thinking are told by their propaganda machine that they are
intelligent and thoughtful -- they are praised for doing the bidding of the
empire. Secondly a populace who wages so much war, violence upon others, and
destruction of the environment are told that they are a kind and peace loving
nation. A co-dependent relationship between the media of empire and those who
are being massaged by it is bound together into one symbiotic dysfunctional
modality. Here a dysfunctional government reinforces "denial" in its
people -- they are afraid of its own people and must maintain their delusion,
self deceit, manufactured conceit, illusion, and confusion. More laws reinforcing
a police state always reflect a government that is afraid of its people, but
there is always a ruse (the government requires the cooperation of its people
in their own process of control and self imprisonment. The extent to which this
is becomes entrenched upon the degree of the self delusion, how skillfully it
is reinforced, to how insidious the fear, insecurity, confusion, paranoia, and
one's dependence/addiction upon external order. Such a state of mind becomes
a constant known "reality" and is reinforced, while peace, trust,
openness, vulnerability, and the like become foreign. People living in this
realm of empire, are usually told that it is in their best interest or in the
current situation -- that controls and added security are necessary in order
to preserve freedom. That's pretty obviously a contradiction, but unfortunately
confused people have learned to crave it.
Today the president, congress, and the rest of the rest of the good old boys
lack even rudimentary integrity. That is how they have managed to succeed in
today's corporate state electoral system (by becoming experts in pretension
while selling out to the hilt). Being drunk on power, they have lost perspective
and are not able to stand back and see their won contradiction. Really they
are very "far out" people.
The "show" boils down to who has the bigger stick, while the attempts at justifying themselves are pitiful (as seen from here). Since these actors are so far off their own energetic/spiritual center -- so far away from reality -- they are unaware on how bizarre they appear to indigenous people. In a time that electoral/campaign reform, disease care care reform, social security reform, energy reform, etc., would throw a monkey wrench into the status quo of the current corporate state empire; war will prove an effective diversion (as wars are won't to do). This is because political campaigns which cost so much money require the consent and sanction of those who have the money i.e., the status quo forces who are already landed and in control. They also need money in order to keep Madison avenue and the Universities on retainer to come up with bigger and better justifications -- in order to sell the people their programs and deception.
Sadly, since the American people are immersed in guilt, they crave justification -- they crave praise -- they want to hear that they are good, are the best, they will continue to be in denial and ignorance -- they want to believe in the fairy tale. It is high theater and they watch the "best" (one lie is not as good as the other). In other words they crave the manufactured and artful illusions catering to self aggrandizement, conceit/deceit and have become uncritical of them -- they love it. In such dysfunction everyone is afraid to say that the emperor is wearing no clothes, not only because it shatters the illusion, but more so because the "reality" to fall back upon has become forgotten, marginalized, ridiculed, and in many cases even demonized to the extent that any viable "option" appears as a vast chasm.
This dysfunctional syndrome (due to a conditioned and programmed lack of true self esteem and self worth) creates a desire for an ersatz validation, a clinging to a system where one feels secure and protected (police state), a need to be patted on the back, validated, and treated like a child, to be accepted, to be praised, to work hard for externally bestowed honor, privilege, status - to do the king's bidding and to follow the leader -- to conform and at all costs to avoid responsibility and blame ;except that which is directed at the "other" a conventionalized "evil", scapegoat, or enemy -- toward a scapegoat who is an non-participant in the mass illusion. These "bad" guys are necessary for the insecure, so it is the despots job to keep the populace insecure, disempowered, and confused. Thus in the realm of empire, independent thinking and critical/creative thought is taboo, while the external order upheld by the ersatz father figure, authoritarian character, "fuhrer", king, or empire is magnified defended -- more external dependence upon the the authoritarian state is generated.
This craving by disempowered victims for this acceptance, sanction, honor, respect, status, privilege, and/or justification fantasy, delusion, self deceit/conceit, "honorable" mask and appearance is a manifestation of denial driven by guilt -- a delusion plain and simple, but one upheld by the state, "consensus reality", peers, and the mass propaganda machine. If we look at America, for example, with its short history full of broken treaties, the murdered and poisoned Indians, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Viet Nam, the poisoned ozone, the rape of the top soil, the decimation of the buffalo and salmon, the oceans, rain forest, extinction, slavery, acid rain, the plutonium containers rusting in the ocean and buried in the ground, 300,000 dead in Iraq, Grenada, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Panama, Nicaragua, Bay of Pigs, the Sudan, the bombing of Bosnia, the murder of Allende, Vietnam, the support of the ruthless dictatorships of Sukarno, Markos, the Shah of Iran, Suharto, Perez, the Palestinian struggle ... even the creation of Al- Quaida and the Taliban ... the list goes on and on there is exposed a clear message of exploitation and greed. We are the world's number one arms dealer, maker of destructive weapons that kill, the world's number one polluter, the world's most violent nation with the highest incarceration rate anywhere, yet we are the only first world nation without national health care// the list of dysfunction goes on because the dysfunctional illusion says, "we are the best .. we can make no mistakes". In that milieu, we make the same mistakes over and over again. That is why it is called, dysfunction.
All this may be painful to see if you identify as being an American because in a democracy because it is not the soldier who kills, but rather it is the citizen -- it is not the bureaucrat who pulls the switch of the electric chair, but the taxpayer and voter. Simply put the common American is in denial due to very deep trauma while self-serving authorities are exploiting the situation to their advantage (empire building). Such has been characteristic of the many demagogues and selfish exploiters of mankind throughout human history and this will not change until their servants wake up (read uprise).
Propaganda "logic" based on denial is simplistic, i.e., if "that" (what I do) is judged by "authority" as "bad" then I am "bad". Thus any messages, truths, evidence, beliefs, information, or "reality" which does not support the institutionalized delusional arrogance appears as a personal attack -- an attack on one's core belief about "self" and reality; while in actual reality, it is only an attack on the delusion (the delusion and self deceit are not the true self.
In this spiritual and social malaise "authority" tells the people authoritatively what they want to hear i.e., that they are good. Here the media must identify with "the authority" and power structure in order to gain credibility i.e., be authoritative. Such massive guilt which goes far beyond simple lack of self esteem demands a court jester -- and a mass infotainment media and dissuasion industry which can produce a theater of justification. One can say that they are simply duped, confused, and afraid -- but I say that their denial (of the truth) is deeper. If we don't look deeper we won't really understand it. For one who has done their inner work this all seems like madness or a bad joke, but to the indigenous peoples of the world it is an old story of suffering and exploitation taken now to a modern insane extreme.
In the end Americans are in denial of reality not as much out of fear, but rather out of greed. They "think" that the war will be successful and that they will economically benefit from it so they need the media and the president to lie and put up a good show of righteousness to justify their greed. They want to have their cake and eat it too at the same time. Such lust driven people will change when it is shown that policy will not give them what they desire. Of course their greed and insecurity is a result of misplaced trust in the first place -- a neurotic result of the more primal trauma and displacement of spiritual alienation but they are not ready to go there "yet" -- to awake in order to peer out of the veil. They have confused security and well beingness placed in inanimate gross material security and external symbols of "safety", rather than in terms of spiritual peace, well beingness, and self knowledge. In other words the basic mistake of materialism is that adherents are convinced that peace is found outside of themselves.
If however one becomes somewhat"open" to the truth -- as soon as it is shown that a war is a mistake or at least that it is not economically advantageous, then one may start to blame some bureaucrat, fall guy, or mis-leader. However healthy people learn by their mistakes i.e., they have to admit that they made a mistake in the first place in order not to repeat it. This is why Americans are so widely hated, despised, and are being attacked -- they harm others while ignoring their complaints with impunity --in their conditioned arrogance to which they cling, they still end up in denial and ignore the truth. The best thing of course is spiritual awakening, this is the long term hope. The second method is to learn the hard way (being the materialists that they are) by realizing that their economic security is not being served by the war, or else to be beaten by a "bigger stick".
In other words pure materialists are deceived. They live on a very confused, insecure, and non-integrated, corrupted, disparate "level" and as such fixed in their "core beliefs" they are not usually open or receptive to the truth or integrity. They have bought into being "bad", taking from the helpless, oppressing people, exploitation, while hiding it (denying it). Their ideology is show and self-justification. Materialists (by definition) do not even know who they are. Abundance and healing comes from mother earth and father sky. We take these offerings within context so as to embody love -- sop we can continue the co-creative dance of evolution of creator/creation.
Doubletalk of the Day.
I have never seen so much blatant double talk (hypocrisy and lies) going on before. It is widespread because deluded people are craving it.
President George Bush said on October 17, 2001
By Roger Atwood and Sayed Salahuddin
WASHINGTON/KABUL (Reuters) -" 'People are going to get tired of the war on terrorism,'' Bush said in the interview with Asian news organizations. 'And by the way, it may take more than two years ... I envision something longer than that,' he said."
'''There's a variety of theaters. So long as anybody's terrorizing established governments, there needs to be a war,' he said in the interview, a transcript of which was released by the White House"
I guess that means no genuine revolutions are allowed? For example according to Bush, the Afghani revolution against the Soviets would be considered terrorism on part of the Afghani rebels. In other words legitimate revolutions (or at least those which we favor which are designed to over throw those authorities which we do not like) are called liberation struggles, while those which are destructive to puppet countries whom we support are labeled as terrorism. This was not a condemnation of violence (something that the US uses repeatedly in its many wars) but of terrorism (as if American authorities had the exclusive ability to define such).
For example, since the Taliban are the rulers of Afghanistan (at the moment) I guess Bush would have to call it terrorism upon an established government if some one bombed Afghanistan if he used his own definition. Forget Korea, Viet Nam, or Somalia (they were fair game weren't they) but what about attacking Libya, invading Grenada, the Dominican Republic, the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, the invasion of Panama, Cambodia, -- gosh we could go on like Kosovo, Bosnia, Lebanon, Nicaragua, the Sudan, Iraq -- these were all established governments and some of them like Grenada and Panama were even elected. What president Bush is really saying is that we will threaten to attack any country that we judge "bad" or "evil" i.e., any country that we please, but if anyone attacks a country which he considers "good' America will consider it terrorism and punish the perpetuators. Of course this is more than arbitrary. Presently with the new anti-sedition laws in the US, if one supports such a terrorist organization anywhere in the world, then one is guilty according to SB 1510 (now US law) of terrorism.
Pretty insipid rhetoric spurted out by desperate fools with no leg to stand on except their vast military power and a psychologically dysfunctional populace. Simply put American policy has been "do it my way or I'll beat you with my bigger stick". Now that is a "better" description of real terrorism, but wait Bush would be a terrorist!!! Really, having the world's most advanced killing machine (the US military) is in the least a bit intimidating (especially when it's used so flagrantly (collateral damage is to be expected, nicht wahr?).
The Afghan war is only upfront coercion (with the support of the Northern Alliance Warlords) perpetuated against the Afghan government and people. The US has been terrorizing South America from the getgo, through supplying ruthless dictators military weapons and training to terrorize and suppress their own citizens. This drove them to communism, not vice versa. This same stupid American dysfunctional militarism is driving the middle east toward religious fundamentalism -- where else are they to go for justice? The American people lost the meaning of the Iranian revolution. Heck, giving the richest man in the world, the Shah of Iran, military aid and training his death squads for all those years that he ruthlessly murdered, jailed, and terrorized his own people did not win the Iranian hearts. Gosh, whaddya expect? Iran is only one example of the iatrogenic pathology of American dysfunctional foreign policy (but hey we still got a few redwoods to pay for this waste.
What about economic terrorism such as, "do it my way or we will starve your population and let 500,000 of your children die" (something that Madeline Albright at the UN said was acceptable policy when confronted by UNESCO on the US sanctions against Iraq after the Gulf War). But such abuse of power and lack of honesty can only succeed with the support of the American people. The emperor is wearing no clothes, but yes he does have a big stick (but that stick is on loan from us -- the people - and we can reclaim it!). The American people can pretend that they were being duped by the politicians (they didn't know), but really they are enjoying giving all those "bad" people a good beating. That makes them feel "good". Not very functional considering that the money spent is being taken away from their social security, health care, schools, highways, and the like, but boys will be boys.
What about intellectual terrorism, I mean, if you support terrorism verbally by saying, "I support that group's right for self determination or if you criticize American policy, are you supporting terrorism? I heard with my own ears on the radio shortly after the beginning of the Afghan war, the president's justification of bombing the Red Cross in Kabul. Now a more suave president would have said that it was a mistake, but rather this president said:
"Let us be clear. If you feed a terrorist, you are a terrorist and you will be treated as a terrorist. If you shelter a terrorist, you are a terrorist yourself, and you will be treated as a terrorist. If you aid a terrorist you will be treated as a terrorist".
Most likely the president may have been thinking more about the upcoming new totalitarian police state that he was promoting for America's domestic future. In other words if support of terrorism can be considered food and shelter and certainly money what about verbal support -- what about the right to criticize the empire? What about giving money to your local charity which in turn gives money to an organization which in turn is labeled a terrorist organization? What about giving support to the International Red Cross which is known to feed and clothe terrorists? Better not risk it, huh?
See:
Noam Chomsky "Reporter from Mars" January 23, 2002 speech This speech addresses the gross arrogant hypocrisy masquerading as American Foreign policy (In streaming audio (must have "Real Audio" to listen)
Indigenous Politics, Green Politics, the Consciousness of Power and the Power of Consciousness
Institutionalized Paranoia and Guilt: Denial, Dysfunction, and Symbiotic Co-dependence between Externalized Authority and the American Media to Promote and Exploit the Afghan War
Denial, Dysfunction, Character Armoring, and Delusion in Modern America
Follow the Leader Virus Infects Washington DC -Some details on the potentially far reaching new Anti-Terrorism Bill SB 1510
Current Events Page: Utilizing current events to disclose the underlying indigenous context.
Peace Patriots: Where war is presented as organized murder, imposition, terror, and the ultimate violent act, while working toward peace becomes a patriotic duty.