The Coalition of the Killing

Church State vs. Mosque State

Regular readers know that we consider the concept of the "meme" from time to time (e.g. The Mother of All Memes, Comparing a Meme Complex to a Cultural Amygdala, Death & Resurrection Of Memetics, False Climate Change Meme Infects The President).

A meme is just another way of saying "an idea that seems to have a life of its own."

It seems strange to think that what seems like something, and at the same time nothing, a "meme" made out of "thin air," could last longer than a tangible person or a tangible nation.

Nevertheless, after all the warnings from science, all the warnings that war and pollution really do endanger civilization, nothing seems to get through the growing thickness of the skull wrapped around the national cultural amygdala (Civilization Is Now On Suicide Watch, 2, 3).

On closer examination we find that some memes really do last longer than individuals do:

"And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation."

(Bible, 2 Peter 3:4, KJV, emphasis added). Those who perpetuate that meme for the most part have a lot of support for their argument.

Even though it is a dangerously deadly way to think.

Because there is also the notion of a "rut," implying that some force like gravity keeps things from "kicking over the traces," a "what's the use" ideology can emerge.

Or has emerged.

Add to that the fact that institutionalized trances occur:

Polls taken almost exactly one year apart show a remarkable reversal in US opinion regarding the prospect of air strikes on Syria. Last year, in a poll conducted September 6-8, (pdf) there were a number of questions regarding action in Syria. By a margin of 59% to 39%, Americans overwhelmingly said they thought Congress should not pass the then pending resolution authorizing “military action for 60 to 90 days” that also banned use of US troops in a combat role. Further, 55% of those polled stated that even if Congress passed the resolution, they opposed US air strikes in Syria while only 43% favored them. In the hypothetical of no Congressional authorization, opposition to the air strikes rose to 71% with only 27% favoring them. Just one year later, those numbers have reversed. In a poll conducted September 4-7, 65% of Americans now say they support expanding US air strikes against the Sunni insurgents into Syria, while only 28% oppose them. Checking the crosstabs, support for the strikes jumps to 74% for Republicans but still is 60% for Democrats.

So why is this year’s Drum-Up-War week working, when last year’s failed?

Despite the heinous nature of last year’s sarin attack, it seems to me that most Americans did a good job of recognizing that what is underway in Syria is a civil war in which the US has no vital interest other than humanitarian concern for widespread death and displacement of citizens. Having failed to paint Bashar al-Assad as an evil-doer on the level of Saddam Hussein (or perhaps after Americans rejected such an obvious campaign to do so) Obama and his fellow war hawks now consider ISIS “the focus of evil in the modern world“.

(Empty Wheel, Jim White). Hopium is a meme that has staying power and will not consider anything other than possibility, yes, utterly ignoring probability.

Hopium is a realm that exists in rebellion to probability, yes, one is science but the other is fantasy:

Probability is used to quantify an attitude of mind towards some proposition of whose truth we are not certain. The proposition of interest is usually of the form "Will a specific event occur?" The attitude of mind is of the form "How certain are we that the event will occur?" The certainty we adopt can be described in terms of a numerical measure and this number, between 0 and 1 (where 0 indicates impossibility and 1 indicates certainty), we call probability. Thus the higher the probability of an event, the more certain we are that the event will occur. A simple example would be the toss of a fair coin. Since the 2 outcomes are deemed equiprobable, the probability of "heads" equals the probability of "tails" and each probability is 1/2 or equivalently a 50% chance of either "heads" or "tails".

(Wikipedia, "Probability"). The lines between trust and faith become more and more blurred as the media again go into a propaganda frenzy (The Pillars of Knowledge: Faith and Trust?).

The current media frenzy is a perfect example of the dynamics of the coalition of the meme:

The enemy aggressor is always pursuing a course of larceny, murder, rapine and barbarism. We are always moving forward with high mission, a destiny imposed by the Deity to regenerate our victims, while incidentally capturing their markets; to civilise savage and senile and paranoid peoples, while blundering accidentally into their oil wells.

(Myth Addiction Is Establishment's LSD - 3, quoting a 1944 book). "Stay tuned" because more of the same is coming to a more of the same station near you.

Hey, "high ho high ho it's off to kill we go" ... is the song of both sides as The Coalition of The Killing rides off into the spin set after becoming incited ad nauseum to kill some barbarians.

"It will be the same difference this time."

Civilization these days daze is so feudal (American Feudalism, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10).

---

---