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Aghogho mentioned the rift between various discourses and the reality that is plainly to be seen. And that reminded me of an old claim regurgitated by Douglas Murray – that Israel could not possibly be carrying out genocide since apparently “statistics show” the population of Gaza is increasing! I’ve heard this astonishing claim repeated often and I fail to see how it can square with the devastation so obviously being visited on Gaza.
There may be a parallel here with the increasing saturation of the public mind with the virtual reality generated by computer games and movies.
And talking about Israel, I see a lot of this meme about how Israel dragged the US into this “conflict”. Indeed, this is always accompanied by the remarkable news that America doesn’t have an empire and isn’t interested in founding one etc. And this line is hardly new. It seems that foreign interference is always unpopular with the US public and so the US government has to manufacture support for these ventures via frauds like the Nayirah Testimony. And when the fallout of that scam becomes apparent, there seems to be this big drive to convince the public that it was a matter of some rogue faction dragging the “good name” of America into the dirt etc.
It’s as if America always hovers invisibly as the “presupposed goodness” that is always being warped. I think there is a parallel here with Brecht’s observation that “capitalism is a gentleman who doesn’t like to hear his name mentioned”. Thus capitalism is always quietly presupposed as the ideal system hovering in the background – as natural as the weather.
But if “the tail wags the dog” then surely the dog must WANT to get wagged?
Also, on the topic of the Middle East, Jonathan Cook has this:
And this is a lovely bit about the elasticated ever re-definable label “terrorist”:
“HTS is proscribed as a terrorist group by both the US and Britain. The CIA has placed a $10m bounty on Jolani’s head. Strangely, amid the excitement, the BBC and the rest of the western media forgot to mention HTS’s status as a proscribed organisation – as they do in kneejerk fashion every time the Palestinian resistance group Hamas is referred to. Notably, the very western politicians and media now celebrating the “liberation” of Syria by HTS are the same ones insisting that the eradication of the “terrorists” of Hamas in Gaza is so important it justifies the bombing and starvation of the enclave’s two million-plus Palestinian population.”
The cow fart matter links in with a general feeling I’m now getting: that so much of all this, for whatever other purpose it may serve, is pure distraction. Why e.g. is X taken up so much with arguing about whether men are women?
As for the UFO meme, and in the spirit of John’s explication a few podcasts back about the psychological significance of post-apocalyptic zombie movies, I’ve been reflecting on the theme of outer space as it functions in sci-fi. I note that the first two Star Trek franchises (the original series and the next generation) seem to hint at some wonderful society of the future (and, to pay it its due, it at least dares to be optimistic) but we get very little info on how this society works – though we are told at one point the fascinating detail that they have no money! It’s surely significant that whenever these programmes go to this earth of the future, they actually dodge the whole issue by going through a time loop into the past. Or, in the case of one next generation episode, Captain Picard goes back to meet his brother who – conveniently – turns out to be an old reactionary who lives on a vineyard in a feudal landscape. Thus the only insight we get into how this future society works is what we see on the starships in outer space. And what we see is clearly a military formation. That this world of the future which has solved all problems is run like an army unit might indicate the inescapable destination of fascism for any project that will have nothing to do with communism.
And on a totally irrelevant topic, I’ve started to watch the new Day of the Jackal. I note the impressive visuals which for me recalled those self-consciously “hip” 60s movies that usually featured Steve McQueen or Michael Cain. I don’t recall the Edward Fox/ Jackal film but the new series seems thoroughly conventionalised with The Jackal clearly being presented as a figure that the viewer is supposed to empathise with. I’m half way through and it appears to be veering towards the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I think that even the shark has jumped the shark!
And I can’t resist a final curiosity. In the UK there is an attempt at whipping up anxiety about wood burners because – wait for it! – they’re bad for you and – wait for it again! – they’re bad for the planet! This little titbit rang a bell in my mind. Didn’t Karl Marx start on his way to radicalism due to an old wood burning law whereby peasants who had collected wood for centuries were suddenly banned from doing so by landowners who insisted that the wood belonged to them even though they had no use for it? So it now seems we have gone in a huge circle back to the beginning though the “reasoning” behind it is now of a form that Marx would never have anticipated.
outer space....made me think of danny boyle's Sushine https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0448134/
where outer space resembles a screening room for dailies at a studio. The absolute exhaustion of western imagination.
Aghogho mentioned the rift between various discourses and the reality that is plainly to be seen. And that reminded me of an old claim regurgitated by Douglas Murray – that Israel could not possibly be carrying out genocide since apparently “statistics show” the population of Gaza is increasing! I’ve heard this astonishing claim repeated often and I fail to see how it can square with the devastation so obviously being visited on Gaza.
There may be a parallel here with the increasing saturation of the public mind with the virtual reality generated by computer games and movies.
And talking about Israel, I see a lot of this meme about how Israel dragged the US into this “conflict”. Indeed, this is always accompanied by the remarkable news that America doesn’t have an empire and isn’t interested in founding one etc. And this line is hardly new. It seems that foreign interference is always unpopular with the US public and so the US government has to manufacture support for these ventures via frauds like the Nayirah Testimony. And when the fallout of that scam becomes apparent, there seems to be this big drive to convince the public that it was a matter of some rogue faction dragging the “good name” of America into the dirt etc.
It’s as if America always hovers invisibly as the “presupposed goodness” that is always being warped. I think there is a parallel here with Brecht’s observation that “capitalism is a gentleman who doesn’t like to hear his name mentioned”. Thus capitalism is always quietly presupposed as the ideal system hovering in the background – as natural as the weather.
But if “the tail wags the dog” then surely the dog must WANT to get wagged?
Also, on the topic of the Middle East, Jonathan Cook has this:
https://www.jonathan-cook.net/2024-12-11/syria-assad-pentagon-plan/
And this is a lovely bit about the elasticated ever re-definable label “terrorist”:
“HTS is proscribed as a terrorist group by both the US and Britain. The CIA has placed a $10m bounty on Jolani’s head. Strangely, amid the excitement, the BBC and the rest of the western media forgot to mention HTS’s status as a proscribed organisation – as they do in kneejerk fashion every time the Palestinian resistance group Hamas is referred to. Notably, the very western politicians and media now celebrating the “liberation” of Syria by HTS are the same ones insisting that the eradication of the “terrorists” of Hamas in Gaza is so important it justifies the bombing and starvation of the enclave’s two million-plus Palestinian population.”
The cow fart matter links in with a general feeling I’m now getting: that so much of all this, for whatever other purpose it may serve, is pure distraction. Why e.g. is X taken up so much with arguing about whether men are women?
As for the UFO meme, and in the spirit of John’s explication a few podcasts back about the psychological significance of post-apocalyptic zombie movies, I’ve been reflecting on the theme of outer space as it functions in sci-fi. I note that the first two Star Trek franchises (the original series and the next generation) seem to hint at some wonderful society of the future (and, to pay it its due, it at least dares to be optimistic) but we get very little info on how this society works – though we are told at one point the fascinating detail that they have no money! It’s surely significant that whenever these programmes go to this earth of the future, they actually dodge the whole issue by going through a time loop into the past. Or, in the case of one next generation episode, Captain Picard goes back to meet his brother who – conveniently – turns out to be an old reactionary who lives on a vineyard in a feudal landscape. Thus the only insight we get into how this future society works is what we see on the starships in outer space. And what we see is clearly a military formation. That this world of the future which has solved all problems is run like an army unit might indicate the inescapable destination of fascism for any project that will have nothing to do with communism.
And on a totally irrelevant topic, I’ve started to watch the new Day of the Jackal. I note the impressive visuals which for me recalled those self-consciously “hip” 60s movies that usually featured Steve McQueen or Michael Cain. I don’t recall the Edward Fox/ Jackal film but the new series seems thoroughly conventionalised with The Jackal clearly being presented as a figure that the viewer is supposed to empathise with. I’m half way through and it appears to be veering towards the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I think that even the shark has jumped the shark!
And I can’t resist a final curiosity. In the UK there is an attempt at whipping up anxiety about wood burners because – wait for it! – they’re bad for you and – wait for it again! – they’re bad for the planet! This little titbit rang a bell in my mind. Didn’t Karl Marx start on his way to radicalism due to an old wood burning law whereby peasants who had collected wood for centuries were suddenly banned from doing so by landowners who insisted that the wood belonged to them even though they had no use for it? So it now seems we have gone in a huge circle back to the beginning though the “reasoning” behind it is now of a form that Marx would never have anticipated.