Welcome to The Conservative Cave©!Join in the discussion! Click HERE to register.
0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.
August 13, 2013Benghazi and the Banality of EvilBy Daren JonescuIs it just me, or is the string of distractions that seem to pop up right on cue every time new light is about to be shed on the Benghazi story getting a little old?Months late, CNN has gotten around to "breaking" a story that might help to complete the disturbing puzzle for the mainstream public, namely the allegation that Benghazi was the hub of a CIA weapons-running operation. Within hours, this was washed from the headlines by the "chatter" indicating an imminent terror plot that required the United States to close numerous diplomatic facilities. (Hurray, NSA!) And then, within days, the mainstream media was "breaking" the news that the first charges had been laid in connection with the Benghazi attack. (How convenient.) True to pattern, a mainstream media outlet will get its "honest journalism" points, lifting the lid on the facts just long enough to release a little pressure before the pot explodes, but guaranteeing that by Sunday morning Benghazi will once again have been buried by supposedly more urgent issues.As many of us have been observing since the fall of 2012, the Benghazi outrage -- an attack that, due to the Obama administration's aggressive passivity, became a massacre -- is the "scandal" that will never go away. And yet the story never achieves the fever pitch of many past, far lesser abuses of power, because the administration, in cahoots with its propaganda wing in the American news media, always finds a way to tamp down the big questions at the very moment those questions threaten to break loose in the American consciousness.{snip}The question is, will mainstream America ever start to care enough to do something about it? In this regard, Benghazi is a symbol of the current predicament of Western civilization. The fact that Obama was re-elected president of the United States while this story was still fresh, and that Clinton is casually presumed to be the presidential frontrunner for 2016, elevates Hannah Arendt's famous concept, the banality of evil, almost to the point of being definitive of this final stage of modernity's decay. Millions of ordinary people close their eyes and walk "forward" on demand -- without evil intent, perhaps, but without the reason and judgment that men must possess if they are to discern and avoid evil outcomes. In such an era, evil outcomes are guaranteed.
