Can sheep ever become more than just fodder for wolves? — and not tangentially, U.S. Special Forces in Niger

© 2017 Peter Free

 

19 October 2017

 

 

Caveat

 

Today's topic is "distraction for profit".

 

I approach it circuitously, so as to demonstrate how distracting trivialization works.

 

 

Is the following proposition true?

 

From John Whitehead:

 

 

We are being ruled by a government of scoundrels, spies, thugs, thieves, gangsters, ruffians, rapists, extortionists, bounty hunters, battle-ready warriors and cold-blooded killers who communicate using a language of force and oppression.

 

[T]he American people seem content to sit back and watch the reality TV programming that passes for politics today.

 

It’s the modern-day equivalent of bread and circuses, a carefully calibrated exercise in how to manipulate, polarize, propagandize and control a population.

 

Our nation of sheep has . . . given rise to a government of wolves.

 

© 2017 John W. Whitehead, The Experiment in Freedom is Failing, CounterPunch (19 October 2017) (reverse sequenced extracts)

 

 

For the interested

 

Paul Street's "Behind the Matador's Cape" illustrates how the distraction process works.

 

 

In light of those observations — a conundrum

 

Some of the more public-spirited people in American society join the military. Either as an escape from economic repression, or as a way to serve a supposedly larger purpose — or both.

 

These usually decent, frequently courageous folk ironically become the unwitting enforcement arm of the governing Plutocrat Cabal.

 

As a result, their personal and organizational uprightness is structurally twisted to (debatably) do humanity more harm than good.

 

We can infer that these warriors' generally shared illusion (regarding doing good) is fostered by:

 

 

(a) Americans' shared abysmal ignorance of History

 

(b) our inability to unemotionally reason with rationally gathered facts

 

and

 

(c) the Plutocrat Cabal's determined effort to distract us from engaging in sustained analytical thought.

 

 

If true, what does this mean?

 

Let's approach that question with a recent example of societal distraction, as Paul Street's Behind the Matador's Cape would have us do.

 

 

Recall the current back-and-forth —

 

. . . over President Trump's arguably flawed condolence to Sergeant La David Johnson's wife?

 

The background to that telephone call were these:

 

 

Twelve U.S. soldiers from the Army’s 3rd Special Forces Group were accompanying about 30 Nigerien troops on a mission near Tongo Tongo. After meeting with local leaders, they were ambushed by about 50 militants.

 

A firefight ensued, and within roughly 30 minutes French military aircraft were on the scene, but the planes did not fire on the attackers.

 

After the fight broke up, aircraft retrieved the remains of three U.S. soldiers: staff sergeants Bryan Black, Jeremiah Johnson, and Dustin Wright. Somehow Sergeant La David Johnson was separated from the rest of the group, and it took 48 hours to recover his body.

 

© 2017 Margaret Hartmann, What We Know About the Niger Attack That Left 4 U.S. Soldiers Dead, New York Magazine (19 October 2017) (paragraph split)

 

 

And what became the most publicized issue afterward?

 

President Trump's transparently rotten character.

 

 

Not the substance of Sgt. Johnson's death.

 

Nor that of the deaths of his 3 Special Forces companions — Sgt. Bryan C. Black, Sgt. Jeremiah W. Johnson, and Sgt. Dustin M. Wright.

 

Not the tactical wisdom of the 12-person military group's geographic location.

 

Not their purported mission.

 

Not that mission's supposed strategic necessity.

 

Not Africa Command's mostly secret (evidently vast) doings.

 

Not American foreign policy's overall purpose.

 

Nor the United States' historically widespread, usually inflammatory muddlings abroad.

 

Nada.

 

 

The temporary tumult over President Trump's phone call to Sgt. Johnson's wife had predominantly to do with the Commander in Chief's questionable choice of well-intended words.

 

The media (for the most part) distractingly personalized the issues surrounding these deaths, down to a level of conflict that human sheep can reflexively relate to.

 

 

What should have been highlighted?

 

What were the Special Ops troops doing where they were?

 

Why were they surprised by the ambush — given that African "militants" have been successful in fearlessly attacking armed positions in the past?

 

How did Sgt. Johnson get separated from his presumed squad?

 

Why did it take 48 hours to find him?

 

Do American troops have a realistically defensible purpose in Niger at all?

 

Is American troop presence in Africa more beneficial useful than harmfully provocative?

 

Why is all this AFRICOM stuff almost always secret?

 

And why is Congress quiescent, while one American Commander in Chief after another bombs 7 nations with no declarations of war and only vague and often untrue statements of purpose?

 

What is the American military's most fundamental (and arguably constitutionally confined) societal purpose?

 

 

The moral? — Dumbed down distraction works well with sheep

 

It is difficult to draw the conclusion that these "matador cape" distractions are random.

 

What implication does that have for forming and maintaining an allegedly "just" society?

 

Can sheep ever become more than just fodder for wolves?