Deconstructing
the reality behind The Reality of the "Lesser Evil"
November
15, 2012
Project
Humanbeingsfirst.org
Begin
Quote
This
little boy was named Naeemullah.
He was in his house -- maybe playing, maybe sleeping, maybe having a
meal -- when an American drone missile was fired into the residential
area where he lived and blew up the house next door.
As
we all know, these drone missiles are, like the president who wields
them, super-smart, a triumph of technology and technocratic
expertise. We know, for the president and his aides have repeatedly
told us, that these weapons -- launched only after careful
consultation of the just-war strictures of St. Augustine and St.
Thomas Aquinas -- strike nothing but their intended targets and kill
no one but "bad guys." Indeed, the president's top aides
have testified under oath that not a single innocent person has been
among the thousands of Pakistani civilians -- that is, civilians of a
sovereign nation that is not at war with the United States -- who
have been killed by the drone missile campaign of the Nobel Peace
Prize Laureate.
... As Wired
reports,
shrapnel and debris went flying through the walls of Naeemullah's
house and ripped through his small body. When the attack was over --
when the buzzing drone sent with Augustinian wisdom by the Peace
Laureate was no longer lurking over the village, shadowing the lives
of every defenseless inhabitant with the terrorist threat of imminent
death, Naeemullah was taken to the hospital in a nearby town.
...
Before the election, we heard a lot of talk about this notion of the
"lesser evil." From prominent dissidents and opponents of
empire like Daniel Ellsberg and Noam Chomsky and Robert Parry to
innumerable progressive blogs to personal conversations, one heard
this basic argument:
“Yes, the
drone wars, the gutting of civil liberties, the White House death
squads and all the rest are bad; but Romney would be worse.
Therefore, with great reluctance, holding our noses and shaking our
heads sadly, we must choose the lesser evil of Obama and vote
accordingly.” --- Chris Floyd, Dead Enough: The Reality of the
“Lesser Evil” 09 November 2012
End
Quote
Thanks to Chris
Floyd
[1] for remembering this tiny little Pakistani “unworthy
victim” named Naeemullah, as Noam Chomsky would characterize
this innocent unmourned victim of the good guys, who, predictably as
always, is dismissed merely as “collateral damage”, the
“lesser evil” in the war against a greater evil.
By
Chomsky's definition, the “worthy victim” is always
worthy of being mourned, as it is made victim by the bad guys or
their allies. The “unworthy victim” is unworthy of being
mourned or even worrying about, as it is made victim by the good guys
or their allies.
So
the equally innocent child Malala
Yousafzai,
the “worthy victim”, a victim of the evil-doers, is to be
honored and even celebrated, perhaps even anointed as the
“peace-maker” and awarded the Nobel Peace prize. It makes
the bad guys look really bad and advances the cause of empire's
counter-insurgency operations against them.
And
because frequently occurring “worthy victims” continually
refuel the necessary “doctrinal motivation, intellectual
commitment, and patriotic gratification” to sustain
“imperial mobilization” since “democracy
is inimical to imperial mobilization” as Zbigniew
Brzezinski puts it, it is not beyond empire to create the “worthy
victims” itself using the bad guys as stooges:
Quote
US Army Field Manual
“Top
Secret: There may be times when host country governments show
passivity or indecision in the face of Communist subversion ... US
Army Intelligence must have the means of launching special operations
which will convince host country governments and public opinion of
the reality of the insurgent danger ... US Army Intelligence should
seek to penetrate the insurgency by means of agents of special
assignments, with the task of forming special action groups among the
most radical elements of the insurgency.” -- Source: see The
Mighty Wurlitzer
End
Quote
The
brutal creation and public-relations harvesting of “worthy
victims” enables putting to bed all the “unworthy
victims” as merely the “lesser evil” in empire's
counter-insurgency operations. This is examined in the report:
Insurgency
vs. Counter-Insurgency
( http://tinyurl.com/Insurgency-Counterinsurgency ).
( http://tinyurl.com/Insurgency-Counterinsurgency ).
The
brilliant nomenclature of “worthy” vs. “unworthy”
I hope helps shed some forensic light for the confused
[2] as to why empire's favorite Malala Yousafzai even has November
11th, 2012, declared by the UN Special Envoy for Global Education and
former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, as the ‘Malala
Day’, while Dr.
Aafia Siddiqui
( http://tinyurl.com/Dr-Aafia-Siddiqui
) has ignominiously been put in jail for life. Since no one really
likes to remember the “unworthy victims”, I have included
their images here.
My
old prof. from MIT has surely contributed a great deal of meaningful
vocabulary and penetrating concepts for explaining the Machiavellian
statecraft of perception management throughout his extraordinary life
of dissent. Including the following:
Quote
Noam Chomsky
‘This
“debate” is a typical illustration of a primary principle
of sophisticated propaganda. In crude and brutal societies, the Party
Line is publicly proclaimed and must be obeyed — or else. What
you actually believe is your own business and of far less concern. In
societies where the state has lost the capacity to control by force,
the Party Line is simply presupposed; then, vigorous debate is
encouraged within the limits imposed by unstated doctrinal orthodoxy.
The cruder of the two systems leads, naturally enough, to disbelief;
the sophisticated variant gives an impression of openness and
freedom, and so far more effectively serves to instill the Party
Line. It becomes beyond question, beyond thought itself, like the air
we breathe.’
and
‘Democratic
societies use a different method: they don’t articulate the
party line. That’s a mistake. What they do is presuppose it,
then encourage vigorous debate within the framework of the party
line. This serves two purposes. For one thing it gives the impression
of a free and open society because, after all, we have lively debate.
It also instills a propaganda line that becomes something you
presuppose, like the air you breathe.’
and
‘The smart
way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the
spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within
that spectrum – even encourage the more critical and dissident
views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking
going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are
being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.’
End
Quote
It
is most essential to understand the unstated backdrop for this
“lesser evil” concept emanating from the dissent-chiefs
who are evidently employing the same methods of perception management
that they have explained the empire employing for “manufacturing
consent”. So, logically speaking, are they manufacturing
dissent – or straightforwardly manufacturing consent?
Virtually
everyone who critiques empire's burlesque, ahem, its excesses, has
almost always made the pre-supposition that its “war on terror”
is real because 9/11 was an invasion by terrorists from abroad. “Like
the air we breathe”, once that pre-supposition becomes
the silent and unnoticed backdrop, the lovely progressives and their
dissent-chiefs can easily go about discussing the best way to fight
that “war”, and that's where the discourse of “lesser
evil” concept cleverly plays in. It only serves to legitimize
the “war on terror” axiom which itself remains
unchallenged.
Thus
one can go freely about critiquing empire's methods of prosecuting
that war, and not the axiom upon which it is based. Therefore,
automatically, the “war” against the “terrorist”
is the natural outcome once that core-axiom remains unchallenged. And
we end up with what is the “lesser evil” debate –
giving the illusion of “lively debate within that
spectrum – even encourage the more critical and dissident
views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking
going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are
being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.”
Noam
Chomsky, Daniel Ellsberg, and Progressives et. al., have together
echoed the same core-axiom as the Pentagon, the White House, the
mainstream media, et. al., that 9/11 was the work of the Muslim
terrorist Osama Bin Laden espousing the vile “militant Islam”.
Amazing that they each have so much in common with their supposed
“antagonists”! I had thought that dissent is supposed to
challenge, inter alia, the Machiavellian narratives of the state? I
guess it is only some narratives and not others that are to be
challenged and dissented against.
I
imagine I could easily classify these as “worthy narratives”
(truths promulgated by power) and “unworthy narratives”
(lies promulgated by power). The former to remain untouched by
dissent-chiefs and those skeptics going after them to be labeled
“conspiracy theorist”. The latter to be legitimately
critiqued by dissent-chiefs and awarded peace prizes for as belonging
to the “voices of conscience” and to “peace
makers”. The “conspiracy theorist” label is
examined in some depth in the report: Anatomy
of Conspiracy Theory
( http://tinyurl.com/anatomy-conspiracy-theory
).
It
is a perception management game of which virtually all the so called
“progressives” in the Western hemisphere, and laudingly
led by their vaunted dissent-chiefs whom they often air prominently,
are an essential part. It constitutes the Hegelian Dialectic of
Dissent. This is also examined in much depth in the report: The
Mighty Wurlitzer
(http://tinyurl.com/MightyWurlitzer).
Unless
one can understand the various methods of perception management,
including manufacturing dissent to capture those moral souls escaping
from the manufacturing consent factory, one cannot understand
anything of modernity. Including this “lesser evil”
mantra. Some of these methods of controlled dissent the Mighty Noam
Chomsky has himself brilliantly articulated, as evidenced from his
perceptive quotes above. And he is celebrated as “arguably
the most important intellectual alive” by the
mouthpiece of empire itself, the New York Times.
All
this manufactured “celebrity” status has garnered these
“moral consciences” of the West a great following of
useful idiots – people formerly in the mainstream who got
fed-up with the lies of the state and were captured by these
“collection agents” lest they become troublesome and
effective in their opposition. Hitler characterized this lot rather
well in his Mein Kampf as type-2. The report on Manufacturing
Dissent
( http://tinyurl.com/Dissent-Factory
) examines the import of this exercise of craftily putting dissent on
the treadmill running in place to nowhere for sustaining "imperial
mobilization" unfettered.
As
for Chris Floyd's main observation of the Progressives: “...
but Romney would be worse. Therefore, with great reluctance, holding
our noses and shaking our heads sadly, we must choose the lesser evil
of Obama and vote accordingly.”, any genuine dissent-chief
with even an iota of analytical reasoning skills and the ability to
astutely navigate the empire's many rabbit holes would have argued
what this scribe suggested in October
2008:
“Not-Voting is a ‘YES’ vote to Reject a Corrupt
System which thrives on the facade of Elections and Democracy!”
( http://tinyurl.com/Not-Voting-is-Yes-Vote-Reject
)
It
would be laughable, were it not actually a sophisticated propaganda
engine, that among these so called “Progressives” led by
their dissent-chiefs, the same spirit of presupposition of the party
line is at play in their virtually every discourse with its
concomitant “vigorous debate within the framework of the
party line” as ably depicted by their most notable leader
in his quoted passages at the top. “It also instills a
propaganda line that becomes something you presuppose, like the air
you breathe.” That “propaganda line”,
that presupposition upon which the entire game of democracy is so
vigorously contested and protected, is the myth of elections being
anything useful in bringing change. This myth has been so craftily
cultivated over the past two generations that none are able to see
through the fog of indoctrination that something else entirely, “a
power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked,
so complete, so pervasive,” such that people only
whisper in hushed voices “when they speak in condemnation
of it”, runs the United States with the elected
Representatives merely as its front faces.
Which
is why core policies of the state do not change by changing the front
faces in the White House. Often minor domestic policy changes are put
on the table and “then, vigorous debate is encouraged
within the limits imposed by unstated doctrinal orthodoxy”
just to maintain the facade of democracy and elections being the
harbingers of the much needed change.
Advertising
Age’s 2008 Marketer of the Year award to President Obama for
his election campaign of the “Change” mantra, the Nobel
committee’s awarding him the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, and the
New York Times' flashy report after the 2012 elections: “Academic
'Dream Team' Helped Obama's Effort”, testify to the empiricism
of this observation. The NYT November 12, 2012 disclosure after the
fact, as it virtually always is – “All the News That's
Fit to Print” that they deem what and when it is fit to print,
and almost always ex post facto if they are going to print it at all
– is just revealing:
'This
election season the Obama campaign won a reputation for drawing on
the tools of social science. The book “The Victory Lab,”
by Sasha Issenberg, and news reports have portrayed an operation that
ran its own experiment and, among other efforts, consulted with the
Analyst Institute, a Washington voter research group established in
2007 by union officials and their allies to help Democratic
candidates.
Less
well known is that the Obama campaign also had a panel of unpaid
academic advisers. The group — which calls itself the
“consortium of behavioral scientists,” or COBS —
provided ideas on how to counter false rumors, like one that
President Obama is a Muslim. It suggested how to characterize the
Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, in advertisements. It also
delivered research-based advice on how to mobilize voters.' --- New
York Times, Nov. 12, 2012
The
Manufacturing Consent factory in the mainstream glorifies the
electioneering candidates with astute perception management. The
Manufacturing Dissent factory among the skeptics and the rebels
pitches the “lesser evil” mantra to push the same
candidate forward. Both factories of perception management of their
respective constituencies work towards the same end from opposites
sides!
In
this game-theory laced entertainment for the masses, even if there is
a voter-upset in the election game as a wildcard, the choice
presented to the public is always carefully between twiddledee and
twiddledum. All horses in the race are from the same stable so how
much of an upset can the race outcome ever be? The game is further
kept entertaining with various side shows, intrigues and scandals,
like electronic ballot, voter-theft, etceteras. It keeps the people
happy that they have a religion, the religion of democracy,
watchfully guarded by the liberal-conservative corporate nexus of
ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX and CNN on one side, and the Progressives and
Pacifica non-corporate conscience of the nation on the other. The
masses go for pilgrimage happy-happy every four years to do their
religious duty. It keeps the priestly oligarchy class also happy, and
perpetually in power.
The
empirical fact of the matter is that there is no “lesser evil”
as the entire “democratic elections” system is a scam
based on primarily choosing between Vanilla and Chocolate, both
carefully manufactured at the same confectionary owned by the same
oligarchy! “Vanilla or Chocolate is merely the icing on the
devil’s cake!” This is examined in some depth in
Flashback:
From President George W. Bush to President Barrack Obama – More
faces change, more they remain the same!
( http://tinyurl.com/PresidentsChange-Policies-Dont
).
Those
who preach the “lesser evil” to push the system's own
manufactured candidates forward using their brilliance in specious
argumentation rather than expose the outright sham of the so called
democracy and its elections, are in fact manufacturing consent for
the same oligarchic propaganda line while wearing the moral garb of
dissent. I think when Jesus had referred to such peoples as
“hypocrites”, he had perhaps missed the concept of “noora
kushti” and never witnessed the circus clowns warming up the
crowds to keep them interested in empire's games. In other words,
Jesus had perhaps never seen a WWF wrestling game, or met the
ubermensch who see themselves as being “beyond good and
evil”! Which is why all prophets of antiquity only preached
within the template of “good and evil”. But both Plato
and Friedrich Nietzsche, despite being separated in time by at least
two millennia, evidently understood this game far more perceptively
than the theistic prophets. This wonderful game of the oligarchy is
further deconstructed in: Election
2012 vs. Election 2008: What has Changed?
( http://tinyurl.com/Election2012-Election2008
).
The
only sensible thing to do for the public is to challenge the sham ab
initio. Something you'd think the dissent-chiefs would take the lead
in as the moral compass of humanity. But these compasses today have
all been salted. Alas, we are at the day when the salt itself has
rusted!
So
long as the oligarchy exists and continues to control the purse
strings of any nation, elections and democracy will remain their ace
in the hole to continue Machiavellianly ruling the public with an
iron fist in the name of their new god of modernity, “democracy”,
no differently than when the priestly class of antiquity ruled their
public in the name of their anointed deities. The difference today is
that the public is presented with the illusion of “choice”
with sophisticated perception management and behavior control. And
these are all the presuppositions of “the Party Line”
which constitute the invisible backdrop that remains “beyond
question, beyond thought itself, like the air we breathe.”
If
you are bothered by the images of “Harmless innocence Melt;
Flours of all hue, and without Thorn the Rose” (Milton)
mercilessly snuffed out in the bud with empire's bombs and sanctions,
drones and checkpoints, from Palestine to Pakistan, and soon coming
to the police state near you, that's where you must begin, before it
is all a fait accompli.
Catch
a man a fish and feed him for a day, teach him how to fish and feed
him for life -- or something like that....
Zahir
Ebrahim
Project
Humanbeingsfirst.org
Footnotes
Zahir Ebrahim,
an ordinary researcher and writer on contemporary matters, grew up in
Pakistan, studied EECS at UET, MIT, and Stanford, engineered for a
while in high-tech Silicon Valley (http://tinyurl.com/zahir-patents),
and retired early to pursue other responsible interests. His maiden
2003 book of protest, written in the aftermath of 9/11, was rejected
by countless publishers and can be read on the web at
http://PrisonersoftheCave.org.
His prolific writings may be read at http://Humanbeingsfirst.org.
First
Published November 15, 2012 | Last Updated Sunday, December 16, 2012
03:00 pm 3214
Link
fix November 9, 2016
Zahir Ebrahim's Response to Chris
Floyd's 'Dead Enough: The Reality of the "Lesser Evil"'