Such cases of pretending can be quite entertaining when part of a well-done drama, although they can't save a cheesy plot from annoying the living daylights out of those who are forced to be its audience. As I think of Manchester, and of the recent "terror" attack which took place there, I have to confess that I am annoyed. The trouble to me is that it has all the markings of other attacks which were perpetrated in Europe and the United States over the last several years, characteristics such as the following:
- The attacks were supposedly perpetrated by some vague, shadowy "Islamic State" bent on imposing Muslim rule throughout the world;
- The attacks did not materially degrade the military capabilities of the nations where they took place;
- The attacks had an effect exactly opposite the supposed aims of the supposed perpetrators. The actual effect of the attacks was to provide an excuse to inflame anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant (especially anti-dark-skinned-immigrant) sentiment in the nations where they took place, and to provide a justification for the nations of the Global North to attack Muslim and Arab nations where there were large concentrations of mineral resources.
- The alleged perpetrators of the attacks all wound up conveniently very dead, and thus unable to stand trial in pubic.
- After each attack, critical thinkers began to expose holes and inconsistencies in the official narrative put forward by government authorities. One example of this includes the fact that after a supposed Islamic jihadist supposedly drove a truck into a crowd of people in France last year, French anti-terror police asked the city in which the attack occurred to destroy all video surveillance footage of the attack. (See this also. And, oh, by the way, did you know that remotely driven trucks have existed for years?) If the police were really interested in getting to the bottom of this attack, why destroy video footage that could provide valuable evidence? Another example is the presence of faked passports among the dead in the 2015 Paris terror attack. Now in the wake of Manchester, an analyst and critical thinker is again raising questions. And even some of his potential enemies have begun to listen.
In his book, The Powers That Be, theologian Walter Wink does a good job exposing the myth of redemptive violence and the uses which dictators and autocrats make of this myth in propping up their regimes. If you follow his logic, you can see that George W. Bush was Marduk. Dick Cheney was Marduk. Ronald Reagan was Marduk. Donald Trump is Marduk. (Indeed, Trump is a spectacular Marduk, as he is only good for protecting us from "threats" that don't exist. Other than that, he is worthless as an agent of the common good.) Maybe Theresa May is about to become a Marduk. (In that case, "he" will become "she" for a while.) And Vladimir Putin is Marduk, as he showed in March of this year when he rallied his security forces against the outbreak of...CHAAAOOOOSSSS!!!!!!
The execrable part of this program is that too often, it actually brainwashes ordinary people who are susceptible to national narcissism, as in the case of Germany at present, where in 2016 there were about ten attacks a day against asylum-seekers, or in the case of Portland, Oregon, in the United States, where last Friday, a crazed white supremacist killed two passengers with a knife and seriously injured a third while they were riding a MAX train.
What is the actual nature of the "chaos" of which the Marduks of the Global North are afraid? If we're going to be honest, this "chaos" is nothing more than the loss of white supremacy and global domination, and the emergence of a world in which one nation cannot bully or unilaterally impose its will on other nations. It is a world in which you can't get anywhere without taking your turn, saying "Please," or "Thank you." It is also a world populated by many, many really neat, decent people - even though they are not of European descent! It is a world in which nations that formerly dominated the world must acknowledge these non-European people as people, as fellow human beings. It is a world in which national narcissism simply won't fly, but will instead lead to a moment in which the leaders of narcissistic nations are forced to look at each other and say, "You arrogant coyote, you've killed us!" Britain is having such a moment just now. For narcissists always miscalculate. And the outworkings of damnation always find those who have made themselves damnable. "Whatever a man sows, that he will also reap."