It’s not nice to fool with mother nature, especially when she comes armed with a bad-ass 28′ high robot named GORT.

Such is the lesson of the remake of the classic 1951 sci-fi film, The Day the Earth Stood Still. The original was set in the context of the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union, when nuclear weapons and nascent space travel and humanity’s war-like nature posed a future threat to the rest of the civilized galaxy.

Here, the issue is one of planetary ecocide.

Seems that Earth is one of a very few planets whose complexity of life forms makes it a candidate for galactic intervention, even if it means annihilating its human inhabitants who seem hell bent on its destruction. This ownership/stewardship issue is dramatized in the confrontation between Klatu (Keanu Reeves), a special envoy sent by a federation of civilizations to render a final judgment on the situation; and the US Secretary of Defense, played by a Palin-esque bee-hive coiffed Kathy Bates, who demands to know what Klatu’s intentions are towards “our planet.”  To which Klatu responds: “YOUR planet?”

Unfortunately, the movie does little to dramatize its premise, the ongoing planetary ecological crisis. There’s plenty of stock film that could have been used to drive the point home. But never let something cheap and illustrative like that get in the way of expensive special effects…

In the original, Klatu is played by a stern but ultimately warm and charming Michael Rennie whose relationship with a single working mom, Helen Benson (Patricia Neil) and her curious and good natured son Bobby (Billy Gray) lead him to a favorable judgment of human character. Reeves‘ ever glowering and never charming Klatu comes to the same judgment vis a vis his interactions with Helen  (Jennifer Connely), updated and promoted from a mere secretary in the original to a high achieving government biologist; and her troubled step-son, renamed Jacob (Jaden Smith).

The climax of the original movie is a dramatic, though compassionate, demonstration of the federation’s power—  all the world’s electricity suddenly goes dead except for things like hospitals and planes in flight. Its resolution occurs when Klatu issues a final warning to a group of assembled scientists, after which he takes off in his space ship (to the accompaniment of Strauss‘ Thus Spake Zarathustra, also used as the main theme in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001).

The remake pushes the clock forward by issuing judgment that earthlings are beyond redemption, and the destruct sequence is begun. Gort unleashes a plague of metal insects that begin to consume everything man-made in their path, growing larger as they do so. But before they reach critical mass, Klatu shuts them down, persuaded by his interactions with Helen and Jacob and from the argument from her mentor, Nobel laureate Professor Barnhardt (John Kleese reprising the Sam Jaffe role) that humans are worth saving, after all.

(Barnhardt politiely points out that by Klatu’s own admission, his own world had reached a similar “tipping point,” yet they were able to pull themselves back from the brink. Why Klatu needs Barnhart to remind us of this is the biggest weakness in the story line for me. Perhaps not coincidentally, the same “humans are at their best when things are at their worst” observation was made by the visiting alien (Jeff Bridges) in John Carpenter’s movie Starman.)

There are no real surprises in the remake except for the number of Biblical allusions salted throughout.  (Attributable perhaps to Hollywood’s attempt to square the circle between maintaining its secular cool while simultaneously appealing to the large American religious market, evident in the huge commercial  success of Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ.)  Biblical analogues include the whole notion of an end times Judgment and apocalypse, highlighted by all-consuming hoards of metal locust-like insects;  the attempted murder of the messenger/prophet who warns that humans will be punished for their failed stewardship;  a Noah-esque removal of vital species via spaceships that the SecDef specifically identifies as “arks”;  changing Bobby’s name to a biblical one, Jacob, who like the Jacob of old, contends with a messenger/angel sent from a higher power; and of course, redemption.

Urantia Book readers will notice a number of parallels, both in the original story and the remake. The idea of a single emissary representing  a multitude of galactic civilizations, highlighted by the “YOUR planet” line that could have been delivered to the possessive Planetary Prince, Caligastia,  the self-proclaimed “God of Urantia”;  the executionary power of “the agents of the Uversa Ancients of Days” refelcted more in the original GORT;  the idea that the earth is unique for its complex life forms finds resonance in the book’s description of Urantia being designated  as a one-in-ten “life modification sphere, as is the idea that wholesale planetary evacuations can occur in times of crisis (but unlike the movie includes a “no human left behind” policy);  and for those of us still dealing with planetary abandonment issues, we can relate to Jacob’s struggle to forgive his dead father for leaving him to face a hostile world alone, notwithstanding the compensatory presence of his loving step-mom who puts her own life and career on the line in an apostolic-like attempt to save Klatu so that he can exploit the cosmic “time lag of justice” loophole, exercise a little mercy, and save the world. [Read more →]

A house built by slaves…

Well, there goes the neighborhood.

Huffpo reports that:

Obama Plans To Invite Artists, Scientists, Poets To White House To Inspire “National Character”

It cites a Politico.com article that reads:

President-elect Obama says he and Michelle Obama plan to open the White House to local pupils as a “bully pulpit” to inspire youth to reach for the stars in science, education, music and poetry.

“Part of what we want to do is to open up the White House and remind people this is the people’s house,” Obama told NBC’s Tom Brokaw during a “Meet the Press” interview taped Saturday in Chicago.

“There is an incredible bully pulpit to be used when it comes to, for example, education: Yes, we’re going to have an education policy; yes, we’re going to be putting more money into school construction. But ultimately we want to talk about parents reading to their kids. We want to invite kids from local schools into the White House.”

The president-elect said his administration is interested in “elevating science once again, and having lectures in the White House where people are talking about traveling to the stars or breaking down atoms, inspiring our youth to get a sense of what discovery is all about.”

“Thinking about the diversity of our culture and inviting jazz musicians and classical musicians and poetry readings in the White House so that once again we appreciate this incredible tapestry that’s America,” he said.

“Historically, what has always brought us through hard times is that national character, that sense of optimism, that willingness to look forward, that sense that better days are ahead,” Obama said. “I think that our art and our culture, our science–you know, that’s the essence of what makes America special, and we want to project that as much as possible in the White House.”

Guess that means that the Obamas won’t be using the White House and the Lincoln Bedroom as a K-Street Deal Or No Deal Grand Prize.

History, it seems, has come full circle. A house that was built by slaves is now occupied by a black family that pays homage to the larger family of God.

And then said Peter, “But, Master, we have left everything to follow you, what then shall we have?” And Jesus spoke to all of the twelve: “Verily, verily, I say to you, there is no man who has left wealth, home, wife, brethren, parents, or children for my sake and for the sake of the kingdom of heaven who shall not receive manifold more in this world, perhaps with some persecutions, and in the world to come eternal life. But many who are first shall be last, while the last shall often be first. The Father deals with his creatures in accordance with their needs and in obedience to his just laws of merciful and loving consideration for the welfare of a universe.
• • • • • •—The Urantia Book

President Bush getting in touch with his inner chimp

George W. Bush can’t quite figure out why his presidency is proving to be the greatest failure in modern history. In an an interview with ABC’s Charlie Gibson the other day, he was his usual clueless and inarticulate self.

GIBSON: Do you feel in any way responsible for what’s happening?

BUSH: You know, I’m the President during this period of time, but I think when the history of this period is written, people will realize a lot of the decisions that were made on Wall Street took place over a decade or so, before I arrived in President, during I arrived in President.

(Inarticulate is perhaps too kind. Sounds more like he’s doing a Linda Blair impression.)

Yeah, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley legislation that repealed the Glass-Steagall Act was passed in 1999, and the Commodities Futures Modernization Act (CFMA) that produced a speculative frenzy in oil and other commodities was passed in 2000, to the everlasting shame of Bill Clinton and Democratic senators like Joe Biden and Chris Dodd.  Just goes to show what happens when you let the inmates run the asylum.

But as the AP reported Monday, Bush paid no more attention to warnings that the housing market was set to explode than he paid to that infamous August 6, 2001 presidential daily briefing titled: “Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US.”

They warned us, but US eased loan rules

By MATT APUZZO, Associated Press Writer. Dec 1,

WASHINGTON – The Bush administration backed off proposed crackdowns on no-money-down, interest-only mortgages years before the economy collapsed, buckling to pressure from some of the same banks that have now failed. It ignored remarkably prescient warnings that foretold the financial meltdown, according to an Associated Press review of regulatory documents.

“Expect fallout, expect foreclosures, expect horror stories,” California mortgage lender Paris Welch wrote to U.S. regulators in January 2006, about one year before the housing implosion cost her a job.

Bowing to aggressive lobbying — along with assurances from banks that the troubled mortgages were OK — regulators delayed action for nearly one year. By the time new rules were released late in 2006, the toughest of the proposed provisions were gone and the meltdown was under way.

It’s bad enough that we’ll be spending the next few years, if not decades, trying to recover from Bush’s Great Recession. But I hope the mainstream media will spare us from the worst of the Republican revisionism and denial that is sure to follow.

But life will become a burden of existence unless you learn how to fail gracefully. There is an art in defeat which noble souls always acquire; you must know how to lose cheerfully; you must be less of disappointment. Never hesitate to admit failure. Make no attempt to hide failure under deceptive smiles and beaming optimism. It sounds well always to claim success, but the end results are appalling. Such a technique leads directly to the creation of a world of unreality and to the inevitable crash of ultimate disillusionment.
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••—The Urantia Book

Children are born believers in God, academic claims

By Martin Beckford, Religious Affairs Correspondent, Telegraph.co.uk

24 Nov 2008

Dr Justin Barrett, a senior researcher at the University of Oxford’s Centre for Anthropology and Mind, claims that young people have a predisposition to believe in a supreme being because they assume that everything in the world was created with a purpose.

He says that young children have faith even when they have not been taught about it by family or at school, and argues that even those raised alone on a desert island would come to believe in God.

“The preponderance of scientific evidence for the past 10 years or so has shown that a lot more seems to be built into the natural development of children’s minds than we once thought, including a predisposition to see the natural world as designed and purposeful and that some kind of intelligent being is behind that purpose,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

“If we threw a handful on an island and they raised themselves I think they would believe in God.”

In a lecture to be given at the University of Cambridge’s Faraday Institute on Tuesday, Dr Barrett will cite psychological experiments carried out on children that he says show they instinctively believe that almost everything has been designed with a specific purpose.

In one study, six and seven-year-olds who were asked why the first bird existed replied “to make nice music” and “because it makes the world look nice.”

Another experiment on 12-month-old babies suggested that they were surprised by a film in which a rolling ball apparently created a neat stack of blocks from a disordered heap.

Dr Barrett said there is evidence that even by the age of four, children understand that although some objects are made by humans, the natural world is different.

He added that this means children are more likely to believe in creationism rather than evolution, despite what they may be told by parents or teachers.

Dr Barrett claimed anthropologists have found that in some cultures children believe in God even when religious teachings are withheld from them.

“Children’s normally and naturally developing minds make them prone to believe in divine creation and intelligent design. In contrast, evolution is unnatural for human minds; relatively difficult to believe.”

That evening Jesus’ message regarding marriage and the blessedness of children spread all over Jericho, so that the next morning, long before Jesus and the apostles prepared to leave, even before breakfast time, scores of mothers came to where Jesus lodged, bringing their children in their arms and leading them by their hands, and desired that he bless the little ones. When the apostles went out to view this assemblage of mothers with their children, they endeavored to send them away, but these women refused to depart until the Master laid his hands on their children and blessed them. And when the apostles loudly rebuked these mothers, Jesus, hearing the tumult, came out and indignantly reproved them, saying: “Suffer little children to come to me; forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven. Verily, verily, I say to you, whosoever receives not the kingdom of God as a little child shall hardly enter therein to grow up to the full stature of spiritual manhood.”

And when the Master had spoken to his apostles, he received all of the children, laying his hands on them, while he spoke words of courage and hope to their mothers.
—The Urantia Book

President Chimpy cries out for help

The term “free market” seems to be code for a Darwinian, survival of the fittest FU mentality. The “greed is good” mantram of the Reagan years has, under George W. Bush, gone into overdrive, precipitating  a worldwide economic meltdown.

Here is what the most incompetent and reviled president in US history had to say about the matter this week before the conservative clowns at the Manhattan Institute:

“The crisis was not a failure of the free-market system, and the answer is not to try to reinvent that system…Free-market capitalism is far more than an economic theory. It is the engine of social mobility, the highway to the American dream.”

Make that the American nightmare.

Tasini over at Daily Kos has identified the real culprit– Bozo the Clown.

Now, I get it. The fact that wages have not kept pace with productivity for the past 30 years–and, if they had, the minimum wage would be $19.12, not $6.55–because profits and CEO pay were more important than in fact putting people on the “highway to the American Dream”, is not the fault of the “free market”.

It’s the fault of Bozo The Clown.

The fact that actually our country’s economy did better when it was a “closed economy” from 1946 to 1973, in terms of raising living standards, then, it has in the past three decades under the mania to have an “open economy” is not the fault of the “free market.”

It’s the fault of Bozo The Clown

Yeah. That guy behind Boosh has got it covered.

Read the whole thing here.

Though capital has tended to liberate man, it has greatly complicated his social and industrial organization. The abuse of capital by unfair capitalists does not destroy the fact that it is the basis of modern industrial society. Through capital and invention the present generation enjoys a higher degree of freedom than any that ever preceded it on earth. This is placed on record as a fact and not in justification of the many misuses of capital by thoughtless and selfish custodians.
—The Urantia Book

Update 1: Former NY state Attorney General Elliot Spitzer, the scourge of Wall Street criminals, offers some penetrating insights into the corruption of the “free market” in today’s Washington Post. It begins thusly:
[Read more →]

“We leave you now to your own devices.  Choose your leaders wisely.  For if you continue to disregard the dangers of this age by choosing base and ignorant rulers, you may soon find yourselves on the receiving end of interstellar justice, and I can assure you— I’m talkin’ total annihilation, homies.”

It was fifty-seven years ago this past month that “The Day the Earth Stood Still” rocked America.  We have mused here about Obama selecting Gort for his vice-president, which reflects a longing for the kind of robot-like prime directive and platinum-coated will that would simplify global relations with friend and foe alike;  in other words:  step out of line and Gort will kick your asses into another dimension.

In an Obama administration, Gort’s actions would speak
many times louder than his words ever could.

The movie chronicles fifty-ish America’s harsh treatment of a representative of our alien galactic overlords, (not the first time that’s happened…) come to warn us that if we continue phucking around with nuclear weapons, they will be turning our planet into low quality interstellar dust. Sort of a prophylactic pest removal plan to keep us from harming any of the peace-loving worlds full of D. F. Hippies that have long since given up killing each other over multifarious acts of stupidity.

This clip from the original film still makes me glad Klaatu didn’t land on the Bush White House lawn.

Keanu as Klaatu?? This doesn’t bode well for planet earth.

It wasn’t hard for many ’50s dullards to grok the reasoning behind Klaatu’s ruthless act of service, and the film reverberated through a country already feverish about alien invasions, thanks to the Roswell incident.  But it was still just science fiction. No one could presume to be the boss of us, especially those dirty red devils from the U.S.S.R.

Our global bed-wetting neuroses aside for the moment, we still haven’t learned that nationalism is not a desirable philosophy, but a potentially fatal disease. We cannot prevent other nations from going to war as long as they— like the US— remain infected with the delusional virus of national sovereignty. Besides, America can no longer afford to act like an international police force; we’re flat-assed broke.  Here’s the reality check.

The Urantia Book:

As the number of truly sovereign nations (great powers) decreases, so do both opportunity and need for mankind government increase. When there are only a few really sovereign (great) powers, either they must embark on the life and death struggle for national (imperial) supremacy, or else, by voluntary surrender of certain prerogatives of sovereignty, they must create the essential nucleus of supernational power which will serve as the beginning of the real sovereignty of all mankind.

This “sovereignty of all mankind” they speak of is the ultimate goal of planetary governments, but our current geopolitical menagerie is apparently not capable of the requisite foresight and vision needed for such wise cooperation.  Until then, and beyond, it is the “Most Highs” who will be calling the shots in the “kingdoms of men.”

The who? you say?

The Most Highs.

The “Most Highs” rule;  and they rule in a way that is designed to “foster the greatest good to the greatest number of all men and for the greatest length of time.”

Grok. this.

The spiritual sovereignty of God overrides all intervening and intermediate spiritual loyalties. Someday civil rulers will learn that the Most Highs rule in the kingdoms of men.  This rule of the Most Highs in the kingdoms of men is not for the especial benefit of any especially favored group of mortals. There is no such thing as a “chosen people.” The rule of the Most Highs, the overcontrollers of political evolution, is a rule designed to foster the greatest good to the greatest number of all men and for the greatest length of time.

Overcontrollers of political evolution.  Hmm.
Witness the meteoric rise of a brilliant bi-racial black man to the most powerful political office on the planet. Hmm.

A Most High observer is empowered, at his discretion, to seize the planetary government in times of grave planetary crises, and it is of record that this has happened thirty-three times in the history of Urantia. At such times the Most High observer functions as the Most High regent, exercising unquestioned authority over all ministers and administrators resident on the planet…

So how does he actually roll?

The angels of nation life, the “angels of the trumpets,” are the directors of the political performances of Urantia national life.  It is particularly through the ministry of this seraphic division that “the Most Highs rule in the kingdoms of men.”

So much to learn, so little time to learn it.
Maybe The Obama Years are a good time to start.

A number of significant economic statistics were announced yesterday: inflation hit a 71/2 year high; consumer earning power declined 3 1/2% from last year; and home foreclosures rose 55%.

Fueling these economic fires has been the soaring cost of the Iraq war and occupation.

Using credit cards, American taxpayers bought huge amounts of stock in Corporate America’s colonization of Iraq. After 5/12 years, the stock has depreciated dramatically, the cards’ principal, interest, and penalties have been reset to infinity, and margin calls are expected shortly.

Analysts following the company say the stock’s collapse is due to a number of factors: deterioration of good will in the American brand; soaring energy and consumer prices; the devaluation of the American dollar and the attendant difficulties of securing future financing; and, looming down the road, the forced sell-off of private and national American assets.

It’s like watching an economic train wreck in slow motion. But there is a silver lining. Given the huge toll that Iraq and Afghanistan has had on the Pentagon’s military readiness and the attendant deterioration of the American dollar, there’s simply insufficient political, military or financial or resources available to support the necons’ future imperial expansion plans. (Said with fingers crossed.)

The karma principle of causality continuity is…very close to the truth of the repercussional synthesis of all time-space actions in the Deity presence of the Supreme. -The Urantia Book

[UPDATE to Supremes Slap Jr. Over Habeus Violations]

Now we know where our Frat Brat in Chief got the inspiration for his assertion that the US Constitution gives him unlimited power to pursue his grandiose fantasy as the uber unitary executive.

Twenty three seconds into the video clip below, we learn that the secret is out:

“There’s a little known codicil in the…Constitution which gives the dean unlimited power to preserve order in time of…emergency.

If men would maintain their freedom, they must, after having chosen their charter of liberty, provide for its wise, intelligent, and fearless interpretation to the end that there may be prevented:

1. Usurpation of unwarranted power by either the executive or legislative branches… -The Urantia Book

Hillary Clinton missed the zeitgeist, while Barack Obama not only recognized and embraced it, but due in large part to his diverse cultural and racial background, actually embodies it.

Barack’s message of Hope and Change found greater resonance in the Democratic electorate than Hillary’s message of Experience and Leadership. The latter no doubt polled well in Mark Penn’s focus groups, but that was the past talking, not the future. Clinton’s adoption of Bob Shrum’s “I will fight for you” trope was subsumed and transcended by Barack’s appeal to “we the people” as the agency of change, to thee versus me.

That, I suggest, is a key part of the post-Bush era zeitgeist, a German word generally translated as “spirit of the age,” taken from the Latin genius seculi— literally, “the guardian spirit of the century.”

The notion of a guiding hand in history finds expression in The Urantia Book in a Paper titled “The Seraphic Planetary Government,” a council comprised of twelve divisions of “angels” (none of whom have wings, but some of whom have “friction shields”!).  At least two of the divisions are relevant here. They are:

The epochal angels. These are the angels of the current age, the dispensational group. These celestial ministers are intrusted with the oversight and direction of the affairs of each generation as they are designed to fit into the mosaic of the age in which they occur. The present corps of epochal angels serving on Urantia is the third group assigned to the planet during the current dispensation.

The angels of nation life. These are the ” angels of the trumpets, ” directors of the political performances of Urantia national life. The group now functioning in the overcontrol of international relations is the fourth corps to serve on the planet. It is particularly through the ministry of this seraphic division that ” the Most Highs rule in the kingdoms of men. “

Believing such a narrative is, of course, a leap of faith. But if political Hope has a spiritual component, this may be it.

One can be forgiven for asking, however:  Where the hell have they been for the last few years?!?  Why would they allow an incompetent, messianically deluded, malignant narcissist like George W. Bush to occupy the most powerful office on the planet, to take a wrecking ball to the world?

I assume the answer is found in a spiritual mandate requiring them to walk a fine line between human free will and celestial overcontrol. On their way to ruling in “the kingdoms of men,” the Most Highs must funambulate their way across a vast canyon separating spirit and matter.

Hope is thinking that the historical pendulum is now swinging away from the selfishness of the past and towards the more inclusive, spiritual pole of the future. In the end, Hillary was the candidate of ideas, Barack the candidate of ideals:

Ideas may take origin in the stimuli of the outer world, but ideals are born only in the creative realms of the inner world. Today the nations of the world are directed by men who have a superabundance of ideas, but they are poverty-stricken in ideals. That is the explanation of poverty, divorce, war, and racial hatreds. (ibid)

So be it.

Today, Jay Rosen over at Huffington Post uses a slightly different analysis to come to the same conclusion as moi last Saturday re what I’ll call here The McClellan Mushroom Strategy: Keep him in the dark and feed him loads of shit:

One of Bush’s strengths is his eye for human weakness. The towel-snapping humor is based on this. It was that eye that spotted in McClellan a White House spokesman who could be pushed further into propaganda use than prior press secretaries would have tolerated. In order to get someone that pliable, you have to give up a lot in experience, talent, charm, agility, depth. But for various reasons— which I will explain— Bush and Cheney saw these defects as an advantage. They actually wanted the executive branch to become more opaque, and he was the perfect man for that.

For my original post of the cognitive aspects of deception, click here.

Former Bush Administration Press Secretary Scott McClellan’s new tell-all book, What Happened:Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception, hasn’t even officially hit the bookshelves yet and there is already a ton of reviews and political analyses, thanks to advance copies provided to the well-connected. My local Borders is not among the elite, however, so I’m going to have to rely on others for the accuracy of the quotes provided herein.

The emerging consensus is that the book contains little, if any, in the way of new revelations. What’s being emphasized is that judgments about same are coming from a once loyal Bushie insider. McClellan was one of the Administration’ chief propaganda mouthpieces, a go-to guy responsible for bamboozling the public and what he describes as the “complicit enablers” of the Fourth Estate.

The latter is probably the real public policy meat of the book. And the one guaranteed to receive the least amount of analysis by that self-same media, if the controversy over the Pentagon’s reverse embed “message force multipliers” is any precedent. This makes it ripe for evisceration by the liberal blogosphere. (See, for instance, the perspectives of the relentless Glenzilla, and Editor and Publisher’s Glenn Mitchell .)

Meanwhile, the right wing blogosphere and their counterparts in the MSM will do what they do best–ignore the message and attack the messenger, especially since they haven’t found any actual factual content to take issue with.

Given that the MSM and the blogosphere are our virtual agora (where just about everything has been said but not everyone has had a chance to say it), I’ll direct my comments to a dimension of the story that I haven’t seen addressed yet– what Scottie’s little morality tale tells about the ingenious ability of the human mind to deceive itself and others. And how that, in turn, can be used to appraise Scottie’s own truthfulness.

————

Deception, in both human and non-human primates, was selected early on by evolution for its obvious survival advantages. Tossing a rock into the brush to fool a rival sentinel, or distracting a fellow tribal member from a piece ripe fruit (or a ripe female) would help insure an individual’s genes would be propagated down the evolutionary time tunnel to thee and me.

Naturally, conspecifics developed such that the ability to detect deception in others was also selected, precipitating an evolutionary arms race of sorts. Effective deception detection, especially since the inception of human language, requires the ability to read a variety of neurolinguistc “tells.” These include facial expression, parlance, prosody, voice quality, eye movements, small movements of extremities, and emotional microexpressions. (Stevens, et al. (2007). Deception, Evolution , and the Brain. Evolutionary Cognitive Neuroscience. MIT Press, 18, 517-540)

What, then, is the adaptive response, the counter to the counter? How does the deceiver mask all these powerful yet subtle electro/chemical/somatic clues, working so insidiously behind conscious awareness to betray our true, i.e false, intentions?

In a word, self-deception. By convincing ourselves of our own lies, we can more effectively deceive others. Thus are deliberate falsehoods consigned to the unconscious, which requires fewer metabolic resources to maintain.

(Further refinements in the evolution of self-deception involves the use of the narrative and autobiographical parts of the brain to construct false but plausible versions of a given reality. Other psychological phenomena that testify to the power of human deception include confabulation, delusion misidentification syndrome, delusion redupliciation syndrome, false memories, and false recognition; ibid.)

—————

Fast forward to the Chimpocentric Universe, whose present coordinates in the time-space manifold are found at 1600 Pennslyvania Ave, Washington, D.C., USA, Urantia.

Imagine, if you will, a master manipulator— call him Darth Cheney— has taken control of the White House. In order to mask his true intentions, he removes himself from public scrutiny as much as possible, setting up a redundant, deception detection deflection machine composed of people convinced of their own integrity and idealistic correctness, all the better to propagate his desired falsehoods with a patina of complete sincerity.

The first brick in the firewall was, of course, our easily manipulatable, intellectually incurious president. A self-described CEO who doesn’t even bother to follow the news. An undoubting, unreflective, man born to privilege who doesn’t understand the meaning of the word “accountability.” For instance, when he was asked by Timmeh on MTP whether in retrospect he saw Iraq as a war of choice or of necessity, W. [told Scottie] that he was “puzzled” by the question, and indeed he was. “Puzzled” was also word used initially by Administration hacks to describe their reaction to McClellan’s book.

Here was a president, the very personification of self-deception, who immediately surrounded himself with eager sycophants only willing to feed his malignant narcissism and delusions of messianic grandeur, carefully insulating him from anything that might cause him even a moment of cognitive dissonance (if for no other reason than to not be on the receiving end of one of his legendary outbursts of rage). A president who, according to McClellan, invaded Iraq because he saw an “opportunity to create a legacy of greatness.”

By his own account, McClellan has finally seen through the years of spin and propaganda— he can’t quite bring himself to call them “lies.” He decries the replacement of public policy with the Bushie mindset of the permanent political campaign, so relentlessly overseen by Karl Rove who lied to his face about his own treasonous role in the Plame-Wilson outing.

Scottie says he still admires Bush, but realizes now that Bush is deluded, clinging to the hope that he will somehow be vindicated by history for what the rest of us outside the “White House bubble” see as his monumental, strategic and operational blunders. Scottie’s disillusionment with the Great Man began when in 1999, at a hotel “somewhere in the Midwest,” Bush replied to rumors that he had once been a cocaine user by telling him:

“The media won’t let go of these ridiculous cocaine rumors. You know, the truth is I honestly don’t remember whether I tried it or not. We had some pretty wild parties back in the day, and I just don’t remember.’

Says McClellan:

“I think he meant what he said in that conversation about cocaine. It’s the first time when I felt I was witnessing Bush convincing himself to believe something that probably was not true, and that, deep down, he knew was not true. And his reason for doing so is fairly obvious— political convenience. . .”

I hate to tell you this, Scottie, but “political convenience” is only the tip of the cognitive iceberg. But do go on.

“[Bush] has a way of falling back on the hazy memory to protect himself from potential political embarrassment. In other words, being evasive is not the same as lying in Bush’s mind…It would not be the last time Bush mishandled potential controversy. But the cases to come would involve the public trust, and the failure to deal with them early, directly and head-on would lead to far greater suspicion and far more destructive partisan warfare.”

Perhaps ten years from now Bush won’t remember ordering the invasion and destruction of Iraq. Or that he wasn’t greeted as a liberator in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina stopped by for a visit. . .

The authors of The Urantia Book write:

Never hesitate to admit failure. Make no attempt to hide failure under deceptive smiles and beaming optimism. It sounds well always to claim success, but the end results are appalling. Such a technique leads directly to the creation of a world of unreality and to the inevitable crash of ultimate disillusionment.

Young Scottie seems to have gotten the message. But I sincerely doubt that old man Bush ever will. He has been culturing deception for far too long.