by Scott Creighton
It never ceases to amaze me how powerful a tool identity politics has become since they started marketing celebrity personalities like triple “A” rated financial products.
The newest “must have” thing on the market isn’t a widget or an app, it’s affirmation. As things get worse in this country, as people become more confused about what is happening and afraid for their future, affirmation will be an easier sell than ice cubes in hell.
Everyone wants to know what they feel in their heart is right while all around them hell-hounds are baying at their heels.
Free market capitalism, Global warming, 9/11, the War on Terror, Tiger Woods, Michael Jackson, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Julian Assange, Barack Obama… these aren’t proven corrupt economic systems or legitimately debatable theories or seriously questionable events or malicious globalist campaigns or flawed 3 dimensional people… they are caricatures of ideals presented in such a manner as to elevate each of them to a near religious status in the eyes of the targeted “consumer”. They become a representation of the self and as such their validity may never be called into question less the consumer question their own perception of reality and the validity of their own set of values. No matter what evidence comes to light which contradicts the product’s marketed image, these affirmations, these product associations will remain untarnished and unchallenged for the life of the consumer because they are the consumer.
Yesterday, while the “professional left” worried and wrote and blogged about Japan’s horrific tragedy, those who create policy quietly advanced a White House agenda which seeks to empower the FBI with the same unconstitutional authority given them to fight the “terrorists” only this Obama administration hopes to use that power to hunt down those who stream copyrighted materials on the internet. They want warrant-less wiretaps and unlimited surveillance authority to go after people who might stream a basketball game or a music video on their website because that just might cost Apple or Sony a few bucks.
When the Bush administration suggested this unconstitutional power to fight the terrorists, the “professional left” and the “nut job right” were up in arms. It took the still unsolved anthrax attacks to get the Patriot Act through congress. Each time it came up for renewal that vast majority of the left resisted and marched and cried out in unison that it was wrong and un-American and dangerous. But now that Product Obama is in charge… where is the outrage?
Bush claimed he needed these totalitarian powers to protect us from near certain death and he and his staff worked diligently with the MSM and various mentally challenged patsies to fabricate one fake terror alert after the other in order to justify his actions. Still, the resistance to this undemocratic power-grab was wide-spread and covered the political spectrum.
Obama is pressing for an unprecedented advancement of those very same unconstitutional powers for no other reason than to make more money for multi-national corporations and where is the outcry? Not even the pretense of the protection of the people is needed just so long as the identification with the product is strong enough.
Julian Assange is another fine example. There are literally tons of reasons for thoughtful, intelligent, concerned people to have serious doubts about the genesis of Wikileaks and their front-man Julian Assange but the product identification with the targeted consumers is so strong as to negate any rational internal debate.
The other day the leading corporate MSM of his home country allowed him to ask a question of their new prime minister which put her on the defensive and provided some much needed product credibility for Assange himself. The recorded question, the “moment”, was planned a week or so in advance and penned with about the same subtlety as your average infomercial script selling Sham-Wow.
He didn’t ask her if it’s treason to sell out the interest of Australian citizens to multi-national banking conglomerates or whether it should be considered treason to commit Australian troops to a war fought for control of the natural resources and the central banking system of a sovereign nation for the benefit of a few, foreign oligarchs. He didn’t ask his prime minister if it was treason to participate in illegal rendition programs or to aid a nation openly admitting to torture for the sake of an illegal occupation. No, Julian asked if it was treason to hand over information about him and his organization… and nothing else. He asked this question while facing possible extradition proceedings from a billionaire’s mansion in England not from a prison cell in Virginia. His own personal self-serving motivations are quite obvious.
His motivations for denying connections with Bradley Manning are also obvious and just as self-serving.
Let us remember that what Assange did with these leaks that Manning is being detained for. He gave them to globalist MSM outlets to do with them and use them as they saw fit. He has never produced the Bank of America leaks that he promised the world and the leaks, if that is what they are, seem to support whatever globalist agenda is needed at the moment. He did that with the material Bradley is sitting in jail for giving him, Assange gave them to the very institutions that Manning himself chose not to entrust with them, and then Julian started asking for money.
Yesterday, Julian went out of his way to create a legal buffer between himself and Bradley Manning. This of course is self-preservation. It seems that Julian doesn’t want to give up the new digs at the billionaire’s palatial homestead in exchange for the cell next to the man who made him an international cause celeb.
“We have no idea whether he is one of our sources. All our technology is geared up to make sure we have no idea.”
“He is in a terrible situation. And if he is not connected to us, [then] he is there as an innocent … and if he is in some manner connected to our publications, then of course we have some responsibility. That said, there is no allegation that he was arrested as the result of anything to do with us. The allegation is that he was arrested as a result of him speaking to Wired magazine in the United States.” Julian Assange
Think about the tortured logic of that and the raw cowardice that motivates it.
Bradley isn’t in jail (if you believe that sort of thing) because he talked to a known FBI informant at Wired magazine. Bradley is in jail because, if you believe the story from the known FBI informant, he stole confidential emails from a server and then gave them to a third party to publish.
If you traffic in stolen goods, that’s called “fencing” and it is a crime. Pawn shops lose their licenses over such matters and the owners can go to jail.
No one, no one, can argue that Julian Assange has not profited from his part in these communications passed on to him. But for that matter, the same argument can be made for the New York Times, the Guardian, and Der Spegal. They have all profited from the redistribution of these so-called stolen items.
But Julian’s defense of himself is beyond convoluted. He passed on the materials that another person took, ergo, it’s not the conversation that Bradley is in trouble for, it’s the removal of material that Julian admits he was in possession of.
That’s obvious. Beyond obvious.
But the PR marketing campaign writers for Product Assange wrote him something just convoluted enough to provide their product’s consumers with sufficient plausible deny-ability as to ignore their hero’s cowardly, self-serving actions. “I do not know you sir”
In the same speech, after literally and figuratively turning his back on Bradley Manning, Product Assange tried desperately to spin the current revolutions in Africa and the Middle East as direct results of his Wikileaks campaign. He tried to take credit, to emotionally attach himself to the heroic struggle of real people fighting real enemies and putting their real lives on the line for their own real aspirations and dreams for a real chance at a better life for themselves, their children, and their brothers. He took this and tried to wrap himself in their victory from the safety of his billionaire globalist friend’s estate in Great Britain, the country most responsible for the tyrants that people are dying to overthrow in Africa and the Middle East.
Assange said that cables released by WikiLeaks played a key role in both fomenting unrest in the Middle East and forcing the US government not to back former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak.
Assange said diplomatic cables concerning US attitudes to the former Tunisian regime had given strength to revolutionary forces across the region. Alternet
His release of the cables Bradley Manning provided played no role in fomenting unrest in the Middle East. None what-so-ever. Nor did they prevent the state department from aiding on behalf of the totalitarian dictatorships as the people were literally dying to overthrow. To claim so is the worst kind of blatant opportunism and self-promotion and he does all of this while betraying the one person most responsible for the little good that those “leaks” which Julian handed over to MSM outlets did provide.
The revolution to Julian’s newest forays into the public realm should be wide-spread and near universal throughout the “professional left” … or what’s left of it. But instead, he will be praised for his latest marketing campaigns while Bradley either rots or he doesn’t in a hole in Virginia and revolutionaries choke on poisoned gas in Yemen provided by the very country Julian hides out in.
This is the power of identity politics, of cognitive dissonance and of willful ignorance in the new American left. You look at one thing and see another. You look in the mirror and see someone else and then superimpose that figure on whatever false idol promises to reinforce that distorted self-image. And no matter how obvious it becomes, the product of your own illusion will never tarnish, will never fade just so long as you BELIEVE in the rightness of you.
When we look at Judas Iscariot and we see Jesus Christ, we are morally decrepit, far beyond merely bankrupt, and the world is quickly becoming a darker place for it.
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