(Written during the period of the George W. Bush Administration and the heyday of neo-conservatism, this entry has by no means lost its incisive currency, as the “changing of the guard” from the Republicans to the Democrats in 2009, from Mr. Bush to Mr. Obama, has apparently changed nothing in the strategic thinking at the top, while the same people as before are still in charge elsewhere. For this reason, this is not a “dated” entry of the Scrapbook kind, but a general entry, which clearly belongs to the American section.)
For anybody who cares about the future of America and the fate of the world it must be seen as a tragedy of historical proportions that this great country has been taken over by a dastardly clique of agenda-pushing ideologues, none of whom is even a tolerable scholar, but all charlatans and cheats. But then, who is to judge their qualifications, when both the judges and the jury are equally deficient in competence? Take note of the following insightful passage from the 30th Chapter of Hobbes’s Leviathan, and observe how perspicaciously relevant it sounds in the context of our modern times:
"The ablest counselors are they that have least hope of benefit by giving evil counsel, and most knowledge of things that conduce to the peace and defense of the Commonwealth. It is a hard matter to know who expects benefit from public troubles, but to know who has most knowledge of public affairs is yet harder; and they who know them need them a great deal less. For to know who knows the rules of any art requires knowledge of that same art, because no man can be assured of the truth of another’s rules, but he who is first taught to understand them. But the best signs of knowledge of any art are much conversing in it and constant good effects of it. Good counsel comes not by lot, nor by inheritance; and, thus, there is no more reason to expect good advice from the rich or noble in matter of state, than in delineating the dimensions of a fortress; unless we think there needs to be no method in the study of politics, as there does in the study of geometry, but only to be lookers on; which is not so. For the politics is the harder study of the two."
Alas, everything we can figure out about the ideologues of the so-called neoconservatism clashes with the wisdom of this Hobbesian passage. Each and every “counselor,” grazing on Washington’s fat pastures, has not just hoped to benefit, but has actually benefited from his or her counsel, tremendously and shamelessly. Their knowledge of things that conduce to the peace and defense of the Commonwealth is not just little or perhaps purposely concealed, it is trivialized in its uselessness, as they do not require any of it, to promote their ideological agenda; and their utter incompetence, even when glaringly exposed, does not serve as an immediately disqualifying factor, as their lack of knowledge is shielded behind the brazen presumption of unknowability: yes, they do not know, but nor does anybody, because what they do not know is unknowable, which, of course, is a lie, but they are getting away with it by means of brainwashing the public, as Hobbes explains well in the same passage: "But to know who has most knowledge of public affairs is yet harder, for to know who knows the rules of any art requires knowledge of that same art, as no man can be assured of the truth of another's rules but he who is first taught to understand them.. and politics is the harder study."
The public, accordingly, has been brainwashed into believing that the skills of politics are a product of the special scientific learning and classified access, and it grudgingly bows to the authority of politicians, and the political experts, presumably, behind them, and, should the latter’s nonsense clash with common sense, the discrepancy is, then, attributed rather to an insufficiency of public knowledge than to a conspiracy of the so-called experts, for the truth of the matter is that while the real knowledgeable persons have been removed from the public debate, the charlatans at the helm are applauded by the charlatans of the jury of their "peers" and at all times judged by that jury not on the merits of their knowledge and understanding, but solely on their forcefulness in promoting the common agenda of the conspirators.
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