To radically understand the evil of the empire: bigotry, alienation, and manufacture of consent

by orrior of the cruciaL aRtz

summary
This article is inspired by the recent news of a new "nonlethal" laser ray weapon that the u.s. has developed, allegedly to be used on all who violently oppose u.s./nato imperialism-type aggressions. Shared here is from an informal confrontive (non-pacifist) ""cruciaL aRts"" perspective; controversial to traditonal politics for sure, yet offering input to thinking through the continuing intensity.

article:
One thing we know is that we are to be kept off-balance. We are to be kept afraid, divided, and feeling powerless.

Another thing we know is that the u.s. media constantly engineers opinion about how "stupid" people are, while never empathizing or giving contexts to such people's actions.

We also know that bigotry about the alleged "stupidity" of people prevails within all the support and implementation structures of society. Every "well educated" person pretty much has a conception which, at the bottom line, mirrors prevailing managerial beliefs about the "lumpen proletariat"; aka "the masses".

By now you **should** have heard of Noam Chomsky's trenchant analysis of the alienated bigotry of what he calls 'social and cultural managers'. In crucially repetitive form, he's mentioned the all-too-separated prejudice of Walter Lippmann (see, for example, _Public Opinion_), Reinhold Niebuhr, George Kennan, and Harold Lasswell, all leading figures of influence in the public relations industry. He's quoted them at length, and analyzed their ideas.

But the momentum of much of our politics --at least the euro-centric variety (re: Left, Right, and post-left)-- as well as of our organized response to all of this continues to be stuck in trenches. Stuck in rigid camps of 'Us v. Them'. No **radical** empathy allowed. Just mobilize mobilize mobilize!

We do not have to buy into this way of thinking, which First Nations thinkers have called "dark ages ruling control forms". We can activate our intelligence in unprecedented ways! We can "walk in the others' moccassins" and at the very least avoid demonizing those who have no sense; who are so alienated from the rest of humanity that they fully believe that the u.s./nato route of pre-emption and other aggressions, are valid. Keep our resistance consciousness and intellectual self-defense awareness intact, yet not be tooled, either!

You think like they do, and you might come up with the "pragmatic" view of a "leading" technologically-"advanced" Great Society working in an "impossible situation" to streamline the world into civil and sane being.

If you are being groomed to be an elite implementer of foreign or domestic policy, you will likely share such a conception. You won't be encouraged to focus on the **why's** and psychology of a world-travelling tourist populace so empty at home that it wants to "fill up" that emptiness by leaving the Great Society and starting anew elsewhere. Neither will you think through the insanity of reducing whole populations --in the "third world" and so on-- to accept the "fate" of our patronizing hand and mind-set.

So divorced from empathy for themselves and the power they **ought** to have if their Great Society was so Great and advanced, that they are unable to truly empathize with anyone else.

So this seems to be the crux of the thing. And fighting such hellish fire with more hellish fire cannot solve the problem! What we need to do is activate our radically empathetic, visionary intelligence, AND get back in touch with our ancestral values of making and holding meaningful extended families and villages!

Consider what a Jewish couple did when harrassed, for months, by an official in the kkk. I saw the article in an old "Reader's Digest" and tho it's usually full of b.s., there are of course gems every once in awhile too (how would it be so popular if it didn't have "Laughter, the best medicine", after all?). The story showed how the couple's perserverance in responding with unconditional love-type responses broke down the severely alienated kkk official, and finally, bridged with him as a human being.

Amazing, you ask?

This is just one example of putting our powers into action.

The pivotal truth, though, is that it may be easier to reach fellow human beings informally than formally. That is, reaching each other on the street, in our neighborhoods, etc. as human beings seeing the value of keeping connections with other human beings, even if we heatedly disagree on the "issues" (even the "issues" are often tainted with barriers in language, but that's another article).

Now, mind you, I'm not saying that **we** should go out of our way to try to reach "the worst offenders" (though this isn't a bad idea, considering their influence); I'm saying that we should be real, we should realize the value of reaching out to those who we *feel like* reaching out to/with.

I don't think this is ideological. Anyone is free to **realize the value** of such things, or not.

Can such work? How do we know for sure? If we can mobilize the best and most meaningful of who we are as human beings, maybe we'll have as much power as the couple who bridged with the kkk official.

True, the political police have been instructed, most likely, to block "all challenge before it can build momentum" (as Chomsky says in the preface to _Necessary Illusions_; see www.zmag.org/chomsky/ni ). But what if we persisted anyway? What if we got it in our heads that being *radically excellent* and *radically beautiful* with each other was worth RISKING OUR LIVES FOR?!

What is life if you force yourself to live the hellish? (and no, i ain't trying to push dogmatic religion, either; for me, life is a spritual path, where i may interpret all input into the heavenish i desire!)

(Some may call this naive and idealistic, but my praxis is based on first-hand experience in some of the heaviest of circumstances)

Your thoughtful input invited!