Trapped in a Mad World By Chris Floyd--Counter Punch. THIS is worth reading! (last half of the article only). The current catastrophes shaking the world—Gaza, Ukraine, Syria, Iraq – give ample evidence of the disorder. In each case, witless elites blunder on and on in their automatic responses. Take the Iraq-Syria hydra. Barack Obama —self-proclaimed bringer of hope and change—sends troops and drones and planes back to Iraq to defend a corrupt and authoritarian American-installed regime against an Islamic insurgency … while demanding $500 million to arm and train the same insurgency in Syria: the identical insanity of violent intervention and “savvy” geopolitical gaming that has led the country, and the world, from disaster to disaster, year after year. Like a robot, he doesn’t know what else to do. Afflicted with the madness, he literally cannot think straight. He just keeps doing what the system has programmed him to do: kill people, force them to do your will, keep the War Machine expanding and churning, making big money for the few while plunging the many into fear, chaos and death. You will find the same in each crisis. Historical amnesia wipes out any lessons that might be learned from the past, while the drives of the lower brain, blindly seeking short-term gain, know nothing and care nothing about future consequences. Instead we are trapped, like the mad, in an “Eternal Now,” an airless, depthless present, where horrible things just “happen,” seemingly springing up from nowhere—like ISIS in the Mesopotamian desert—for no clear reason. For example, the downing of the Malaysian airliner over Ukraine was a tragedy 20 years in the making, starting with the Western elite’s insane decision to desolate Russia with “Shock Doctrine” tactics and support for a corrupt regime, hoping to leave the country supine and ripe for exploitation. Meanwhile, they pushed NATO to the very borders of Russia, betraying solemn promises not to do so. In this desolation, which drove millions of people to premature deaths, a turn to authoritarianism and distrust was virtually inevitable. But that was not all. Still heedless, still driven by short-term gain, Washington spent billions to destabilize Ukraine and oust the elected government for a more amenable one. From this followed the annexation of Crimea and the civil war in eastern Ukraine—and an airplane blown from the sky. Again, no knowledge of the past, no thought for the future. This is not to say that there isn’t calculation and deliberation behind the madness. The Israeli slaughterfest in Gaza is the result of many months of planning and careful deception to “justify” it in the world’s eyes. But the attack itself is just another robotic repetition of habitual behavior. Israel cannot solve its “Palestinian problem” with these repeated assaults, no matter how bloody. It cannot “secure the realm” or build a stable and secure future with these policies. But afflicted with the madness—nationalism, sectarianism, short-term profit for elites – it plunges recklessly on. Madness rules. Wisdom has fled, empathy is hiding. Some malevolent spiritus mundi is in ascendance. We must resist it in every way we can. We must keep a higher idea of humanity alive, even if, like a Chekhov character, we have to look hundreds of years ahead to see the chance for a better world. We must do our flawed and finite bit to build that future. And in this way, we will enact, in some small measure, the humanity we hope to preserve. cp Madness reigns. Madness, and a malevolent will. A virus in the mind, mutating, spreading, growing ever-more virulent, devouring its host. It’s as if it has already eaten away huge tracts of the collective mind, destroying neural networks that once kept that mind in balance. Memory, capacity for empathy, regulators of anxiety and aggression, sustainers of higher-order thinking (reason, reflection, self-awareness, imagination)—all are atrophied, diminished, blunted. Madness encloses and constricts; the field of consciousness narrows, and rote reactions – the deepest grooves cut by the most primitive processes—take over. The dispassionate observation required for insight and wise choices— and the emotional courage necessary for a genuine, open engagement with others—are impossible to achieve in the disorder of this madness. Instead we have robotic repetition of habitual behaviors; hysterical, aggressive projections of panic and fear onto demonized others; and a regression to barbaric, animalistic drives for dominance and submission. We see it on all sides, on nearly every front, across regions, nations, cultures. We see it in politics and government, in religion, in business, the same dynamic everywhere: primitive savagery and hard-hearted stupidity behind a guise of savvy expertise, noble ideals, technological sophistication. We see it increasingly in populations fracturing along cultural lines—lines defined largely by shallow media tropes and commercial interests—as the disordered collective mind loses its understanding of such highly evolved notions as the common good, the common humanity of all – or, in the words of Arthur Silber, “the in
Posted on: Wed, 13 Aug 2014 19:00:36 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015