The drums of the Middle East keep on pounding away, far off in the distance, but routed direct through television to the living room of our homes. Year by year, month by month...right down to moment by moment, the twisting turns and sinuous paths of those vibrations are changed to meet the behavioral control needs of a very few. We, those of us who think of ourselves as intelligent interpreters of this jumbled mess of communication, are nearly as stumped as the rest of the population, as to who those few are. We are not sure, either, of what real direction they are caging us to follow. Is the combined power of the media really simply the beast of finance? Does it only respond to what makes it money? Or are there other motivations as to the messages channeled so personally into the heart of our very lives? And where, among all these messages, across all the mediums, is there any truth at all? We watch the network news, looking for clues (or maybe just laying there...senseless after a very hard day's work for too little pay), then move to the cable channels for more. Some of us listen to the radio, attempting to 'true up' any of what we have received from the other sources. Near the end, there are the newspapers. All those sources of supposed news contain 'vetted' stories, which means that someone has looked them over and checked them out to make sure they have some semblance of truth in them. Finally, there is the internet. From blogs to YouTube, and then down into the Facebook and Twitter stuff. And what are we to make of it all?
Iran has had an election. Some kind of election. We are never sure of any of that anymore. We have such deep suspicions about our own elections to the point that now, when we see or hear the word 'election,' we take the information in with a skeptical, barely contained, sneer of disdain. The message streaming from almost every source tells us that the current leader of Iran has stolen his re-election bid. The loser really won. We are given no figures because we have nobody, at all, in Iran (from any part of the mass media). The few that were there merely filmed what they could from hotel windows before they fled to the airport and got the hell out of there. Since Iran is connected to the internet, we have gotten YouTube footage and Twitter reports. But what can we make of them? Anybody can say or do anything on the internet, using video as well, if they are schooled in the technology of its use.
But lets look at the overall message we are getting from almost all sources. Iran's leader is bad. He stole the election. People are protesting. The runner-up should be crowned leader. Iran's leader should step down. All peoples everywhere have the right to peaceful assembly and protest.
Now re-read that paragraph. What is the message we are supposed to be getting? Maybe we should get more elemental than that. Okay, let's ask a more elemental question. Why should we care one whit? The current leader of Iran is just as big a hater of America as the runner-up! Yeah, the other guy was running around with that same screwy Iman who spear-headed the whole hostage crisis which catapulted Reagan into office. And the peaceful protest garbage! What is that? We don't have the right to protest here in the U.S.! Have you not noticed? Our cops and Secret Service have carte blanche to arrest and incarcerate anyone who assembles to protest, if that protest is anywhere near any of our big leaders. At the presidential conventions last year the protestors at both events were relegated to cages specially built to hold them, miles from the actual events! And this is in America! There is no right to peaceful protest of big leaders anywhere in the world. So what the hell is going on? This nonsensical 'reporting' is just like the idiocy that gets printed about torture. We decry all forms of torture...except the torture we commit as a nation. Yes, your nation and in your name.
We hate the Arabs. As a culture we hate them. We don't really want to, but we do. We hate Iran, Iraq, Libya and even Afghanistan. We are scared crapless of islam and everyone over there who follows its teachings. If they come here, to our country, we accept them...conditionally. But not over there. We have given Israel (now there is a bunch of cool-headed clever dudes living in a desert oasis!) nuclear weapons and every bit of high tech weaponry we can make. That is how scared we are. And so our news reflects this fact. There were supposed to be tons of YouTube tapes and Twitter comments about the riots in Iran. Those did not materialize after they were predicted. What do you suppose our vaunted mass media had to say about that? They said that Iran had gotten really good at internet suppression! All those Youtubes and Tweets were there, but suppressed by the brilliant internet hackers from under the sand in Iran. Oh please.
What humor, if you sit back and look at it. There were no YouTube tapes or Tweets because there were no real riots of any kind. I think you can pretty much take that to the bank (well, a bank in the Channel Islands, if you have connections and are smart). Oh sure, there was some demonstrating and crowd interaction. But that was it. And we are not even sure what any of that was about because our own media high-tailed it the hell out of there.
We believe the the Persian's hate us. And we keep asking the question about why they do. The question is meaningless because the premise is bogus. They do not hate us. They are frightened to death of us! How would you feel if a monster country, possessing more nuclear weapons than any combination of countries in the world, hated you? A monster country that has proven it will indeed use nuclear weapons if it fears and hates you enough? We need, as a culture, to begin asking the right questions. Why do we hate them? What exactly is it about them that we are so abominated by? Why do we fear these small groups of strange believing peoples living in awful desert conditions so very much? If we can't even ask ourselves those things then what are we to do? Wait for just the right opportunity to blow them all into oblivion? Is that any kind of answer at all?
Osama Bin Laden. There are all kinds of small groups around the world who want power. Individuals crave it. We are hard-wired by sociobiology to crave it. The leaders get to impregnate more females (if they are male) or secure a quality future for their spawn (if they are female). Just look at Michael Jackson as an example. He was one miserable human being. I don't think that that can be denied. His personal life did not exist. But he craved public attention right up to the end. Osama does too. Cheney does too. These people never go away, unless it is to 'write' another book and then return. Or make another video. We must understand, as a culture, that this will always be the case. There will always be an opposition party. There will always be militia groups and terrorist outfits. It is hard-wired into our genetics. Evolution will only allow that to change if 'survival of the fittest' no longer includes getting rid of those presumed to be weaker. I, personally hoped, when I was younger, that technology would eventually allow us to vault up from the murder pit of amoral evolutionary expedition. As I age, I wonder, and the wondering is not a good thing.
We are so hurtfully directed to success. We are driven by fears so deep and dark that we cannot ever discuss them. If they are revealed by others we deny them and put down those others or label them losers or the weak. Only success matters. It permeates our financial sector, our trading mercantile sectors, our sports and even our television shows. It is all, and only, about winning. And it means that most people have to be losers. Do the math. "There can only be one Highlander," is a favorite expression of mine.
We must all be of Persian Persuasion in order to stop hating them. We must know them to care for them and about them. It is applied anthropology. Anthro, closely followed by history, is one of those disciplines, however, which interests many but is practiced by only a few, and almost none of the few are leaders of any sort. If we had paid attention to the anthropology of Iraq we would not be there. If we had paid attention, right after WWII to anthropology, Iraq would never have existed as a country for us to attack. Anthropology is about understanding other cultures. Amazingly, once you understand other cultures, guess what? You come to like them. So, in reality, our problems with the Middle East are all about schooling. We don't teach the right things in our educations system here, and then the media fails miserably to educate when we are done with that formal system.
This internet 'cloud' phenomenon, as some are terming it today, may be our only hope. Only here can words be written and read everywhere. They are not read everywhere for most of us who write here, however. There is just no easy or simple way to get people's attention to be read. That attention is being consumed by the famous. The Krugmans, Krauthammers, Coulters and Limbaughs gather the people in, but in becoming famous, they surrender telling the truth about what they are communicating. They communicate to stay famous and become more famous. Until they too are ready for their last shot of Demerol. But then, maybe, it only takes a few thinking human beings to influence the course of events. I pray that is so.
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The point of "experience" is that it is supposed to provide judgment and it is clear that Obama showed better judgment than Clinton did on the Iraq war. Although some would try to dismiss his position as just one speech, as if it were an isolated incident, it did not happen by accident. Sen. Obama didn't just flip a coin to decide what position to take; he based his assessment on research and careful consideration of the facts. Obama read the National Intelligence Estimate, while others appear to have been paying more attention to public opinion polls.
I'd really like to keep this positive, but it is also necessary to delineate the nature of the choice facing the Democratic party: We have one candidate who, faced with an important national security issue, does his homework, and carefully considers what is best for the nation. We have another candidate who, faced with the same issue, just does what is popular.
Who would you rather have answering that phone?
