Before Sept. 11, 2001, the military considered the places where the lights are to be the most strategically important on the globe, said Navy Adm. Eric T. Olson, commander of U.S. Special Operations Command.
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“I’ve come to think of this as … representative of how the world has changed,” Olson said, indicating the photograph. The swath of light stretching in a narrow band across the Northern Hemisphere represents industrialized nations with “developed societies, … things and money,” Olson said, and during most of the 20th century, he added, the U.S. military focused on that area. “But the world changed over the last decade,” he said, explaining that Socom now considers 51 countries to be of high-priority interest in the global campaign against the extremist threat. For the most part, “there’s not a great deal of overlap” between those countries’ locations and where the lights are, Olson said. “Our strategic focus has shifted largely to the south, … certainly within the special operations community, as we deal with the emerging threats from the places where the lights aren’t,” he said.
This "News" article put out on The U.S. Armed Services own internal organ discusses the shift in focus of "Special Forces" away from the "lit-up" parts of the world to those that remain dark. With a straight face and that trim matter-of-fact air of the pathologically self-assured, it lays out tactical adjustments to face the continued threat of Terror.
If we read this with any sort of psychological acuity, what we see is chilling. The attack cells of the global pathology singling out the last remnants of resistance to their hegemony – not the narrow hegemony of a particular state, least of all one whose best strutting days are behind it; but the hegemony of civilization itself.
The projections and displacements are painfully obvious. The recurrent conflation of lack of "legitimate" government with existential danger shows us the same mask of paranoia any sleazy abuser uses to justify his hold over his victim. The same complete blindness to real and pressing dangers that are clearly existential while hyperventilating over a narrow threat that has been largely self-induced and maintained by the insanity of their so-called "defense."
This is a war on, and of, terror. It's the result of a pathology that blocks all but our reactions to fear and then generates, and escalates, fear responses in everyone until the whole world is swept-up in its mania.
"Dr. is the patient dangerous?"
"Yes, Sir, I believe so. He's a danger to himself and to others."
"What should we do?"
"Ah, that's a tough one. You see he's armed. Not just armed, but heavily armed. Not just heavily armed, but he has us by the throat."
Is that as far as we can take this realization? I don't know. I really don't know.
This example from the military can be matched by examples from every branch of the civilized camp. They have means, they have power, they have "resources;" and they are hell-bent on destroying anything that isn't already in their own image. They have "Right" on their side. They have no idea, at least none that has penetrated the fog of their fear induced psychosis, that lets them see that their efforts are self-destructive as much as they also destroy their "enemies."
That list of enemies keeps getting longer, now they are waging war on the dark. Waging war on the absence of electric lights to light up faces that look just like theirs, not faces, uniforms. They don't see people, just "forces." And these scare them.
Caligula set off to conquer Britain. When he was thwarted by the Channel, he set his troops to fight Neptune and brought back the spoils of his victory; casks of sea-shells strewn in sea-weed.
"That will show him!" He must have thought.
No god is above Caligula's own sense of his own power.
This was pitiful, but then again he was ill, mentally ill. The Senate in its lizardly worldliness played their part and tried not to get caught sniggering. They too must have thought, "We can afford this!" "Rome is Eternal!" "No single crazy Emperor can bring her down!"
No "we" is eternal. No "we" can afford this today, at this scale, and after all that's been lost. "We" don't have the luxury of their lack of hindsight.