You know what I think? I think that I sense that more people are beginning to sense the same things as I. Though "sense" and "think" are pedantically understood as state verbs, I think it's not unwarranted "to McDonald" at least one of the words into the immediacy of the present continuous and say that I think that I am sensing a collective sensing.
But the thing is, no matter how relatively original my perspective might be, I've thought nothing without looking to see what other people are thinking, and the enhanced ability in the twenty-first century to access such information is so mediated that I wonder if it's not vastly more inaccurate than even the most suspicious mind might assume. Thinking others sense this, as well, or are beginning to, amounts to a counter-circular kind of reasoning that seems beyond untangling.
Nevertheless, I do think that now as much as ever, people are sensing that their reactions to current events are being stage managed, even if the events themselves are not. I sense that they have just now begun to wonder who we are that we would deliver ourselves up to this system of mediation.
I think more people are skeptical of this massive mixture of language apt and language absurd as it relates to depictions of what we're all supposed to be thinking and sense that others, like themselves, are finding absurd this or that public personality's selective expression of sympathy or call for unity, because the public are sensing that there might be diverging interpretations of unity involved, and that the sudden and arbitrary appearance of sympathy strikes a discordant tone that's impossible to harmonize and less easy to ignore.
I think people are uneasy more than they are afraid, in that they have suddenly found themselves reticent to state frankly what they are uneasy about. If pressed they could name a few things they are afraid of that would extend beyond the most immediate. I think now more than ever before, these would include names of those who give us the names of things we have to fear.
They say this is a game changer, which would legitimize the big red, block letters they use to pithily inform us of the relevant subject. But the real game changer is that more people are choosing not to join in on the reaction they are told they're already a part of.
If not explicitly, people sense that the sudden outpouring of sympathy is not just inconsistent with the behavior of real sympathetic people, but obscene. That's what I am sensing. At least that's what I think.
When you hear a hand-wringing liberal voter hypocritically waffling re. the inconsistency of US policy vs. Saudi Arabia, they certainly are not expressing a preference that the US start bombing the entire peninsula in preparation for invasion.
There is no new geographically defined border that invites traditionally tenable warfare against an enemy that can be defeated. Sure, the Frenchies and her more powerfully equipped kin from NATO and Israel and even Iran or any other part-time accomplice could go all-in in Syr/rak, but they'd only still be fighting the murky enemy who is always & forever a covertly avocational ally. No matter how much the region were devastated, it wouldn't stop shooters in theatres meant for a different kind of entertainment. On the contrary.
But they could give it a shot. Or, they could step off — and pre-empt the primary persuasion of the coming-of-age "islamist" and what would be a new generation even more deeply convinced of the necessity to take the fight to the rest of the evil world.
They have said that "we" gotta take them there so we don't have to fight them here, and even if the new leaders don't identify with the party that made the original statement, they continue its implication by continuing the fight. Now they would like to enable the presentation of Paris as evidence that this is true. Is anyone buying this shit? Cannot we see that taking them over there is what brings them over here, regardless how they arrive?
There is no question in my mind that Paris is casus belli for whatever machinations come next, including but not limited to grand displays of "diplomacy" to "forge regime change" in Syria, and that the primary beneficiaries are the corporate heads of state and their obscenely highly compensated clientele. I think that more and more people are beginning to sense this enough that they no longer believe the details of the stories they're told, if they really believed them to begin with.
Unfortunately, tribal identities prevent some people from asking questions like how on earth regime change in Syria is likely to be any different from the one in Iraq. Or Afghanistan. Or Egypt. Or Iran. They'll vote for the one of two or three candidates who seems more likely to subscribe to the congenial approach to bringing brand democracy to the middle east — even as all evidence points to that tactic's being part of the continu-itous contrary — and they'll breathe a self-congratulatory sigh of relief at having prevented the worse war, as if war is only declared in Paris on Friday the thirteenth and not Beirut on throwback Thursday the twelfth.
No matter how high on the pyramid they may rest, people of power cannot necessarily keep things under the kind of control that even they would like to think they can, and their threshold is a pretty chaotic already.
This, I think, is a large part of the unease people are increasingly sensing: That we are in a suicide pact with friendly overlords whose ruling decisions are determined by how we play along. Or don't. I would like to think more people are sensing that.
But I could very well be another tiny tool at one of the many incomprehensibly far-flung margins of manufactured plausible consent.
But the thing is, no matter how relatively original my perspective might be, I've thought nothing without looking to see what other people are thinking, and the enhanced ability in the twenty-first century to access such information is so mediated that I wonder if it's not vastly more inaccurate than even the most suspicious mind might assume. Thinking others sense this, as well, or are beginning to, amounts to a counter-circular kind of reasoning that seems beyond untangling.
Nevertheless, I do think that now as much as ever, people are sensing that their reactions to current events are being stage managed, even if the events themselves are not. I sense that they have just now begun to wonder who we are that we would deliver ourselves up to this system of mediation.
I think more people are skeptical of this massive mixture of language apt and language absurd as it relates to depictions of what we're all supposed to be thinking and sense that others, like themselves, are finding absurd this or that public personality's selective expression of sympathy or call for unity, because the public are sensing that there might be diverging interpretations of unity involved, and that the sudden and arbitrary appearance of sympathy strikes a discordant tone that's impossible to harmonize and less easy to ignore.
I think people are uneasy more than they are afraid, in that they have suddenly found themselves reticent to state frankly what they are uneasy about. If pressed they could name a few things they are afraid of that would extend beyond the most immediate. I think now more than ever before, these would include names of those who give us the names of things we have to fear.
They say this is a game changer, which would legitimize the big red, block letters they use to pithily inform us of the relevant subject. But the real game changer is that more people are choosing not to join in on the reaction they are told they're already a part of.
If not explicitly, people sense that the sudden outpouring of sympathy is not just inconsistent with the behavior of real sympathetic people, but obscene. That's what I am sensing. At least that's what I think.
__
When you hear a hand-wringing liberal voter hypocritically waffling re. the inconsistency of US policy vs. Saudi Arabia, they certainly are not expressing a preference that the US start bombing the entire peninsula in preparation for invasion.
There is no new geographically defined border that invites traditionally tenable warfare against an enemy that can be defeated. Sure, the Frenchies and her more powerfully equipped kin from NATO and Israel and even Iran or any other part-time accomplice could go all-in in Syr/rak, but they'd only still be fighting the murky enemy who is always & forever a covertly avocational ally. No matter how much the region were devastated, it wouldn't stop shooters in theatres meant for a different kind of entertainment. On the contrary.
But they could give it a shot. Or, they could step off — and pre-empt the primary persuasion of the coming-of-age "islamist" and what would be a new generation even more deeply convinced of the necessity to take the fight to the rest of the evil world.
They have said that "we" gotta take them there so we don't have to fight them here, and even if the new leaders don't identify with the party that made the original statement, they continue its implication by continuing the fight. Now they would like to enable the presentation of Paris as evidence that this is true. Is anyone buying this shit? Cannot we see that taking them over there is what brings them over here, regardless how they arrive?
There is no question in my mind that Paris is casus belli for whatever machinations come next, including but not limited to grand displays of "diplomacy" to "forge regime change" in Syria, and that the primary beneficiaries are the corporate heads of state and their obscenely highly compensated clientele. I think that more and more people are beginning to sense this enough that they no longer believe the details of the stories they're told, if they really believed them to begin with.
Unfortunately, tribal identities prevent some people from asking questions like how on earth regime change in Syria is likely to be any different from the one in Iraq. Or Afghanistan. Or Egypt. Or Iran. They'll vote for the one of two or three candidates who seems more likely to subscribe to the congenial approach to bringing brand democracy to the middle east — even as all evidence points to that tactic's being part of the continu-itous contrary — and they'll breathe a self-congratulatory sigh of relief at having prevented the worse war, as if war is only declared in Paris on Friday the thirteenth and not Beirut on throwback Thursday the twelfth.
No matter how high on the pyramid they may rest, people of power cannot necessarily keep things under the kind of control that even they would like to think they can, and their threshold is a pretty chaotic already.
This, I think, is a large part of the unease people are increasingly sensing: That we are in a suicide pact with friendly overlords whose ruling decisions are determined by how we play along. Or don't. I would like to think more people are sensing that.
But I could very well be another tiny tool at one of the many incomprehensibly far-flung margins of manufactured plausible consent.
