AL QAEDA AND HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS: Al Qaeda, Al Qaeda…. An Incessant and Repetitive Public Discourse
I’ve been thinking about this and talking about it for a while now, the structuralized cultural insanity necessitated by war that has taken on new form thanks to NeoConservatives and NeoLiberals capitalizing (literally, in most cases) on 9/11.
I do not, however, believe that this is just a matter of bald propaganda, where the powerful push a lie they are fully cognizant of being 100% false in order to further their own very personal interests. Howard Zinn noted that “war corrupts everyone” and he really did mean everyone involved. War, by nature of how horrid it is, necessitates believing in an enemy where such acts are are at least excusable if not justified. Those who carry out and promote the war have to believe in these lies too.* What makes the current war unique is that as a war defined as Global and undefined as to ultimate objective (a way or time to end it), this lie that is taken for granted by all (including its sellers) must be all-encompassing in scale and be reinforced continually. Something reinforced over so much time (we’re talking over a decade now) becomes ingested culturally, as not just a cultural insanity but a structural one. Take the Cold War, its fear and paranoia of a looming enemy that could be anywhere in the world and its enforcement over decades, make its clandestine actions of war (proxy or otherwise) public and guided/justified by law and mandate, add in blatant armed conflict in the traditional sense… well, we may be living through a third World War though no one seems to want to call it that (I am fine not calling it that).
This mythology of Al Qaeda is a part of the larger Islamophobia-Industrial Complex. There are those involved in the traffic of these ideas who are concerned about the “the threat” and there are those who are helping sell the ideas because it is simply the way the market of ideas is trending for maximal profit, but either way the continuation of this reinforces the myth into realm of accepted fundamental “truth” and investigation into unseating the myth is eventually seen not only as unnecessary but dangerous. When the insanity is dominant in a perpetual war atmosphere to be sane places one in the camp of the enemy, and you know how we feel about The Enemy.
*This is not to say that there aren’t war profiteers who are more concerned with selling their product than the nature of the war. Of course these figures fit nicely into the current structure and structural stability of the War/Islamophobia-Industrial Complex regardless.
this is my new favourite gif. AMAZING.
Thursday Thorsday: Bring me all your myths in gif format. Bring me all your Goya (also myths) in gif format.
Also, in case you hate reading, here is the audio of Hijacking Myth #5, from Fortnight Journal.
Yay.
oh thank god. I hate reading so much.
Hey enterprising History nerds, here’s your free book idea…
the story of the American Century told from two angles: 1) The myth we get told, of the enterprising America that could do anything, the century gets kicked off in the late 19th Century with the building of the Brooklyn bridge vs. 2) The underlying mythologies not explicit yet supporting the other nonsense… and the opposite truths they hide (America as Capitalism’s worldwide bastion and the horrible human/environmental cost…). This century gets kicked off in the mid-to-late 19th Century via Horatio Alger.
Thursday Thorsday - Let’s set some mythologies straight:
Old Myths - Pegasus > Unicorn
New Myths - Androgynous Shining Knight > Any other Shining Knight
Eternal Myths - Meeting Death Laughing > Any Other Fate
Thursday Thorsday - Let’s improve some mythologies.
“Jesus and the Bear” by Jim Woodring. A moon bear, too.
“Science Of Myth” by Screeching WeaselSee half the world sees the myth as fact
while it’s seen as a lie by the other half and
the simple truth is that it’s none of that and
somehow no matter what the world keeps turning
Somehow we get by without ever learningAnthems of my fucking youth, man.
Reblogging oneself is a sin (much like blogging about blogging) but I thought this was relevant to something I said earlier and it’s been in my head all day as a result so…. screw it. Also, was reflecting, once again, how it is not nearly musically loud enough on Tumblr.
Today’s Conclusions, 7/28/11
- I’m glad Esperanza Glass isn’t a real person to have a crush on.
- Kinda wishing I had named the cats Tanngrisnir and Tanngnjóstr (Never having children, but if I had twins…. Surely someone out there will name their kids this. We should be friends)
- Grace doesn’t necessarily mean “economy of motion”
