We know that French diplomats and social circles were fixated with the four-month pretrial and eight-day trial of Madam Caillaux. The press whether right or left wing was consumed with details of the trial and continuing investigation. So while there were pages in the press about the trial, there was scant information about the whole of Europe spinning into war. As a point, French newspapers did not even report Austria's declaration to Serbia which was widely reported through leaks and finally official statements.
While the French government was about as disfunctional as our current administration, the French military was well trained and led. Ever since France lost the Franco-Prussian war and lost Alsace and Lorraine, the French military drafted plans to recover both with a huge offensive known as Plan 17. They actually initiated it after the declaration of war by Germany. (Just hours after Germany declared war on France and Russia, France responded with a declaration of their own against Germany.) The French military were brave and well led but they weren't supplied to current trends. They were behind many nations as far as military technology was concerned and most of their supply chain and technology was aimed at one and done offensive campaigns. Had the government offices responsible for military build up, training and supply not been completely distracted, there is a chance that they wouldn't have lost four months of time to prepare for the impending war. Also, they might have been able to evaluate the situation with a more balanced perspective. Once attacked, everything was reactionary and reaction limits options. But we will never really know. The French government officials were as good at avoiding responsibility as any American office holder or diplomat.
Our military does not havve limited resources. We have the best trained, best equipped and best supported military in the world. Bravery and leadership are traits that show up during conflict. It's impossible to know how people will react until some conflict places them in situation that test their mettle. There is every reason to believe that the French were as brave as the current American military and that the leadership was as well trained, motivated and capable as ours. So, on a military basis, we can only say that soldiers serve as commanded. The military does not make policy but does carry out policy. Without political will, military might is directionless and useless.
The Law of Distraction or Golly Was That Really A UFO?!?
Times weren't any simpler in 1914. There was less media and information as well as all aspects of life moved more slowly. But people were pretty much the same as now. (I have travelled all over the world and have found that technology aside, the average person is pretty much the same everywhere. All have somewhat similar desires and goals. Some are greedy and some are giving but all want prosperity and opportunity to grow.) While the French were distracted by an incredible trial, we are as or more distracted by a number of factors. Where do I start identifying the myriad of information sources facing the average American with a television and a car radio? Let's start with the simple distraction built into the mass of sources.
We live in a carefully crafted world of distraction. News isn't designed to inform, it's designed to entertain and keep you watching or listening. How many times have you watched a news program only to be touted by one story while being fed a diet of nonsense. All the while, you are teased with the "hard" or "interesting" segment to come. This can go on for up to one hour. Basically, though, we are so distracted and overwhelmed by information that we can't discern issues of importance. We are led to believe that national issues are more important than local issues which is exactly the opposite of reality. In essence, local issues that immediately affect one's life are far more important than any national issue unless it imposes on basic freedoms. (Interesting that we have had quite a lot of that lately.) The French were overwhelmed by the tragedy and drama of a single trial. That trial affected political and social circles. We are overwhelmed by a plethora of information about a myriad of nonsense of which we have absolutely no control. Of what value this?
The Powerlessness of The Information Junkie or I Want My Candy NOW!
Because the French became fixated by the pretrial press and the trial proper, they lost power of action. While our society isn't quite as stratified as the Belle Epoch, our elected officials have cast themselves into an elite as strong as that of movie stars and sports heroes. We keep telling ourselves that we are all equal but in America, some are more equal than others. Elected people have become their own "clique of importance" and we have knowingly elevated them to this status by constant reportage. One of the biggest sins a politician can make is to go uninterviewed by some news organization. The more they are interviewed, the more important they are. They develop such hubris that they feel quite good about ignoring a request from a constituent unless that request comes with a large check. While the average office holder has joined an elite, there is a special elite for those who have long spans in office. The job these people have is to keep you interested in "them" as office holders so they opine on all kinds of issues as if they have more than an opinion. In reality, opinion is all they have. The more news programs focus on these people, the more important they become. They craft their pitch to keep you following them the same as a drug dealer gives free drugs to newcomers to develop addicts. Once they have attained the position of information bearer, we follow them and develop the mindset that we too are informed and involved. Nothing could be further from the truth. We have become deluded to the point that we think that if we know about something, somehow we are participating in the outcome. We have become information junkies who feel self important because we have the latest news about a number of topics. There's a difference between knowing of a field and knowing about a field. Because of the way the news is crafted and sold, we think we know about something when we really know of the thing.
Real action is not covered because if people are out acting, they aren't watching and the goal of the networks is to keep people watching not doing. This is one of the reasons that the Tea Parties are such a threat; people are acting in ways uncontrolled by newscasts. So the movement is attacked by a substantial portion of the networks and defended by a few. But attack or defense makes no difference, the idea is to get people away from action and get them back to the illusion of action through information gathering via watching. The more one acts, the more a person develops different ideas about what they are doing. They develop different ideas because their experience is based on action not on waiting for input from any source. The more one acts, the more one realizes that there is power in action and the last thing the media wants is for people to develop power from action outside of their influence. What is ideal for the media is powerlessness of inaction based on the illusion that knowing of something is the same as knowing about something.
Being filmed or written about is flattering. But few are strong enough to keep moving forward in what they are doing and ignore media coverage. When they look to see themselves, the mind does a strange thing: it self criticizes. Self criticism is the quickest way to stop doing anything. If you are looking at yourself doing something, you aren't doing that thing. Soon, you fall back into the trap of waiting to see what the commentators or opinion makers say about your action and you become stifled. This happens to people newly protesting or organizing and that is one of the reasons it's so hard to keep momentum. We become junkies for our own junk or users of our own supply. When we don't get that coverage, our spirit wanes and our energy to act is diminished. This is similar to what happened to the French government during the Caillaux affair. Attention was diverted and no action was taken. We have turned this process into an institution and we call it 24/7 news.
The Exercise of Will or Wallpapering One's Mind
One of the consequences of fixation or addiction (It is interesting that the brain seems to react to drug or alcohol addiction in a similar manner as it does to a fixation with a soap opera or any other diversion that takes a dominant place in a person's life.) is a reduction of will. The more fixated, the less will to change and act differently. Of interest is the inability to formulate long range plans. (Remember the Lotus eaters in the Odyssey? They frittered their time away under the illusion that they really were doing something profound. The illusion of the Lotus created an ongoing dependency. Along with the dependency was the illusion of accomplishment.) This trend has been identified in alcohol, drug and other addictions. Addiction seems to be a process that transcends obvious and easily identified abuses. Addiction is fixation to the point of disruption of normal activities. While a person pursues the object of his fixation, his entire life can fall into disrepair and his life becomes one of complete inaction.
We have become so fractionalized and disassociated that we are losing diplomatic and political will. In other words, we don't have the will to act in our own interest. This is interesting. Someone once commented that it took Playboy magazine just a few years to change man's primary sexual interest from the hips to the breasts. We are under the same influence. Things and events we should be concerned with are bypassed for the illusion that knowing about something is the same as action. Action takes energy and is often painful where watching someone from the media is a process of inaction and it is safe. The two are not the same thing. We are being led to believe that the inaction of observation, in the sense of watching a newscast, is the same as developing information from one's own work and effort.
If we apply this to our military, we get a situation where we want results but don't want to pay the price it takes to get those results. We deploy our troops but we handcuff them with restrictions that have nothing to do with how a military operates. We develop operations centered around zero casualties rather than the attainment of an objective. Had General Patton operated like this, we would all be speaking German. If General Macarthur had operated like this, we would be speaking Japanese. Military operations mean casualties. Sometimes, they are the result of accidents that occur when a large number of people are moved quickly but if you are facing any kind of opponent, the deployed force will suffer deaths and wounded. It cannot be avoided unless you so restrict operations to minimize casualties that you render your forces impotent to complete any kind of mission. This lack of political will to use the military as it should be used hamstrings even the most effective fighting force. In this sense, our government has become exactly like the French government of 1914. Both have lost will and the media was at the heart of the problem. Why does Obama rely so heavily on the Predators? There are minimal casualties from operation of a drone. A "pilot" sitting miles away or even on a different continent is far less likely to suffer from enemy actions than a pilot in the arena of action. The President can say he's taking it to the enemy but in reality, it's a little like a pyrrhic victory where we get kills but the unintended consequences will lead to far more damage than success in the overall campaign. It's similar to the German bombing of London during WWII. Yes damage was done but the bombing campaign gelled the British resolve and instead of being of benefit, the bombing campaign turned out to be a disaster for Germany.
It isn't like people haven't warned about this and there are a lot of books describing exactly what is going on. But outside of a few "interested" parties, these warnings go unheeded. Even if one of the authors gets interviewed on a news show, the reality of what he says is unappreciated. The statement fit into the nonactive, passive information gathering mode of the rest of the newscast. So nothing gets done. People think they know because they have heard but what they have heard is a microcosm of reality. Think of it like trying to read a book if you can only see a section of a letter at a time. First you have to identify the letter, then other associated letters, then find the word, then find all the other words using the same process, then identify sentences, then identify concepts in the sentence, then fit the sentence into a paragraph and then associate paragraphs. It simply can't be done. However, the illusion is that from the part of the letter you can see, you understand the whole book.
In a strange sense, media extravagances were and are behind tremendous failures. We are simply not more capable of dealing with media bias and excess than the French were in dealing with the scandal of the Trial of Madam Caillaux. While the French military did recover to a degree, the distractions caused a number of problems and upped the casualty count significantly. The governmental will wasn't there even though every indication was available that the war was eminent. We suffer similarly in that our government is distracted just as the citizens are by masses of nonsense. Our government has lost will to act in matters that are threatening us from both inside and outside. In essence, our will has become as wallpaper; endlessly repeating patterns going nowhere.
As long as this political ennui is in force, we might as well call our troops home, put everyone on some sort of welfare and wait for the world to overwhelm us. If we are unwilling to fight to preserve the essence of what allowed our country to rise to the position it currently occupies, we don't deserve to keep it. We need will to assert our authority when challenged or attacked. We don't need to talk about it or rationalize it or understand the reason we are attacked. We need to strike and strike hard and keep striking until the threat does not exist. If that means a one-hundred year occupation of a country supporting hostilities, so be it. Better we occupy someone else than be held hostage by actions formulated inside those borders. But this takes the will to exert force against people who are equally driven to destroy our country for whatever reasons they may have. Historically, there is no right or wrong. There are only winners and losers. We have so lost our will that it is doubtful that we can defeat even the smallest of threats. A threat cannot be contained, it must be eliminated. It takes will to do that. Sitting around watching the world envelop us on 24/7 news, news excesses and the manufacturing of newstainment programs almost ensure that America will not survive.
So the next time you sit down and watch your favorite newscaster or commentator, think about what they are doing to keep you watching and doing nothing.
FB
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