Abracadabra

Cyrus Safdari @ Iran Affairs-

I have been having an online disucssion with Laura Rozen of Mother Jones about a MoJo blog forum consisting of several experts who she asked to opine about whether Israel/Bush will bomb Iran. At least one of the experts is a personal friend, but my point was that creating an atmosphere of hype, fear and uncertainty about the issue is a deliberate ploy by Bush/Israel, and when the pundits get together an collectively speculate on it, they’re unconsciously buying into and promoting that policy.

They’re also allowing themselves to be distracted from asking other, more important questions: Instead of asking whether or when Israel will bomb Iran, they should be asking why should Israel bomb Iran in the first place. By skipping right over the why question, they’e making it seem as if it is a given fact and foregone conclusion that it is OK for any bombing to happen at all. In short they end up actually promoting the Bush admin policy by participating and contributing to these sorts of limited debates, albeit unintentionally.

Regarding the content of this post, a respected sociologist tells me:
“In social interaction we call these “domain assumptions.”  The taken for granted frames of reference that are the bedrock of all communication.  In the discussion of Iranian nuclear option the taken for granted assumptions are that the US nuclear conduct, Western nuclear arsenals, and of course, Israel is never questioned.  The question is “what to do about” Iran or North Korea etc.”

And indeed this is how it develops, like the deployment of a conjurer’s misdirection, a stirring of the Mushroom Soup. First our attention is drawn to the subject -whichever target our ruling class deems opportune- We are told about it, in the least flattering terms, a job already half done by our cultural supremacy & biases. Then- Oh Lordy can you believe it!!!!!- this place might mean us harm, but of course the assessment of that is done by super secret spy people, but what would you know? Our hard working press now reveal some leaked and classified information (and their access to powerful people & ‘insider’ information proves they are hard working super duper journalists, oh yes indeedy, no need to question why their work seems to support the government’s case, no none at all! After all they are patriots like you and the only people saying different, well they are…different). Yep, this evil land is secretly meaning to do us great harm, with great-big-terrible-weapons-of-Nuclear-Mass-Destruction!!!!!.

Oh my gosh, and when they are confronted on this, these foreign people, they are very rude to us. Well Really!! It’s not as if they have tried to negotiate and been turned down flat and any new talks have such preconditions they are planned failures before they begin. Oh no the media, they’d tell us that wouldn’t they? The baddies are all sneaky and shit, our side, well while no one trust the government on taxes, the environment, connections to rich corporations and well everything, when it comes to foreign issues and killing foreign people…. they are like saints and virgins in their scrupulous honesty, humanitarianism and good faith! Yet these foreign…others…why they don’t seem the least bit as if they want to do whatever we tell them to. Why and indeed HOW can they hate us???? We are great, we are the best, wow this proves not only are they very impolite but they are aggressive, showing they must be hiding…. exactly what we suspected (because it’s we now, that what the government says it believes is now what we the people believes, oh yes. And the helpful media have polls to bolster our confidence our view is the sensible majority!) They means us ill!! The stories were right, the intelligence warned us of this, they have the means, the motive,…but look our brave leader he means to deny them the opportunity.

Yep, he doesn’t like having to do this, Lord knows (and he is a Godly man, so that shows how hard it is for him to do this) how he would never put our brave boys and girls in harms way unless it was absolutely necessary to save the world…like in movies!!! So jeez, if he is saying we must deny our enemy -yes they are our enemy, that is clear now- the chance to strike, the the best defense is a good offense that’s common sense. Our leader, he’s plain speaking, he’s a man of the people, he asks you to trust him, yes there are some doubters but isn’t that what makes our democracy great, we allow them a voice, in the street, surrounded by police! Lucky citizen’s of a democracy!

And we go from how should we deal with this country to- should we use force- to when should we use force. Of course all the time the elites discourse was simply the last state -when do we use force, when can we get away with it. The previous theatre, like the conjurer’s assistant (and don’t the media look nice in sequinned leotards) was to keep the populace subdued and never to realise the fundamental pro-war nature of the great and the good.

Of course you may have noticed something, a magician controls the audience, punters think they have some input into the performance (pick a card!), but in reality they have no significant control. So this would seem to be a faulty metaphor for our lovely democracies. Now the condition of our democracy would be a discourse worth having, shame these wars and dangerous outside threats keep coming up and distracting us from that.