Image and Reality

 The pseudo-intellectual and holistic humbug of Leo Strauss, Bernhard Lewis and Samuel P. Huntington, among others, provide the "intellectual" and academic foundations for the project for that new American century, that some believe will culminate in the ruputure and the end days. For the time being, at least, Israel is on the side of the "goodies", of course, and the enemy is Islam. Drivel of the most dangerous sort but drivel, which permeates into the consciences of those of us who are less "intellectually" inclined, through Hollywood films such as 'True Lies' (1994) and 'The Siege' (1998) and what contribution did those "masterpieces" make to the genocidal jingoism that followed 9/11?

And so, on to the daily drivel which the manufactures of consent  feed us with. In today's hard copy of the 'Süddeutsche Zeitung' the picture on the front page shows Arab youths in keffiyehs throwing stones but not IDF soldiers acting and reacting with the utmost brutality. Par for the course, and it is difficult to visualise the dead of Gaza when you very likely never saw any images of them, and my mind turns to Strauss, Lewis, Huntigton and their ilk and, once again, I am reminded that a Social Scientist's brain and a dung heap are similar in that if you leave both of them alone for some time, then something will grow and while, what exactly will grow, depends on the "Weltanschauung" of the "intellectual", looking at the picture above, the evidence would seem to suggest that Strauss, Lewis and Huntington have done their jobs "well" in preparing the ground for Arne, Denzel, Dershowitz and the  daily drivel and if the death and destruction that rages from Gaza to Khandahar, isn't enough to force us onto the barricades, we might at least show some concern as the very freedom of speech and thought, which we so value here in the West,  is under assault and we already find ourselves in an Orwellian world, of newspeak and nonsense.