The Obama speech. Rank naivete or rank cynicism? Both?
"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to escape the ravages of our CIA regime-change assets."
Lady Liberty has become a self-feeding oroborus. Her head's now parked squarely up her robes. I don't even think it's concerted deception anymore. The Noble Liars have simply lost their cheat sheets. The only thing beyond good and evil is more evil. Every seven-year-old learns that in Sunday School, but that's the white Christian in me talking. Some go on to become clever fools and digest Plato, Nietzsche and Leo Strauss. So, once they feel we're up to the task, they're going to call off global totalitarianism, collapse the panopticon and unleash an era of universal self-determination?? Is that really the party line?? Deep deep down, absolute power has a benign soft middle just dying to get out. Who but a bunch of poets would believe that?
But yes, regular Americans need to come to terms with their very busy covert side. A good place to start is the new book out by Salon founder David Talbot,
The Devil's Chessboard, on the (arguably psychopathic) Allen Dulles and his decades of international mischief. He's as close as you'll get to a Typhoid Mary for mayhem in the post-WW2 era. Who would guess from today's headlines, for example, that Iran was the second Muslim-majority nation (behind Turkey) to recognize the State of Israel? Unfortunately, Iran was disabused of Western goodwill in large part by Dulles' CIA's assassination of democratically-elected Mossadegh in '53. We suffer the effects of that crime even today.
Let's also not forget that the modern activated form of jihadism was invented by America, or certainly minted in our name, by one Polish refugee Zbigniew Brzezinski via the Afghan Mujahideen in 1979. This nihilistic abberant form of Islam needn't have been weaponized. Indeed it might have lain dormant forever as a vestige of a bygone barbarous age. But there was a Soviet Empire to defeat. The Saudis are compounding this error by bankrolling jihadists whose ultimate prize (after Damascus) is, let's face it, Mecca.
Evil seems to have a 'sorcerer's apprentice' complex. While it condescends to human direction for an early foothold, it ultimately detests being wielded and strives to become its own master. That would be global jihadism. The genie is out of the bottle. Humanity's about to learn you can't steer an abyss. Those who think they site astride it are victims of hubris. It'll just eat them last.