Black And White Hats

Bush's warning to the world was "if you're not with us, you're with the terrorists," when he warmed up the world for an illegal war in Iraq. George Lucas played beautifully on this line and binary world-view in the last of the Star Wars prequels when Anakin Skywalker says to Obi-Wan Kenobi "if you're not with me, then you're my enemy," in a modern day display of the black and white hats from old western movies.

_{Image by Glavo - source: Pixabay}

This might sound harsh or unfair, but I believe it's not unreasonable to think that the American people may be the most propagandized people to have ever roamed the Earth, maybe even more so than the people from Mao's China or current day inhabitants from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea; it's worthwhile to keep in mind that whatever we think we know about those countries and leaders, we know from that very same propaganda machine. When I saw popular right-wing commentator Ben Shapiro cheering on Trump's assassination of Iran's top military figure Soleimani in his article Trump Taking Out Soleimani Just Made The World A Better, Safer Place, two thoughts crossed my mind: 1) what a delusional hack Ben Shapiro really is, and 2) how his misguided opinion is a perfect illustration of a strictly binary mindset, the "us" against "them" attitude that has been in the making for decades.

I mentioned film in the opening of this post because the strict and immediately recognizable separation of good and evil in western culture was used in old western movies:

In United States films of the Western genre between the 1920s and the 1940s, white hats were often worn by heroes and black hats by villains to symbolize the contrast in good versus evil. [...] The book Investigating Information Society said the convention was arbitrarily imposed by filmmakers in the genre with the expectation that audiences would understand the categorizations. It said whiteness was associated with "purity, cleanliness, and moral righteousness"
_{source: Wikipedia}

This specific reference to black and white hats representing evil and good respectively, survives to this day in the convention that hackers are labeled "black hats" when they do it for malicious reasons or personal gains, and "white hats" when they violate computer security for testing purposes in order to aid in the fight against the black hats. Just to quickly address the question that's sure to come up; no, I do not believe this black and white distinction has a lot to do with anything racial. I believe there's a much older and much more plausible explanation for black being associated with evil, which is light versus absence of light; when we can't see, when we're in the darkness, we feel unsure, afraid and start imagining the worse things, all negative emotions. Being able to see in the light is the opposite of that, and thus associated with positive emotions.

_{Anthrax: The Forgotten Iraq War Lie}

Darth Vader in Star Wars wears black. Mordor in The Lord Of The Rings is a dark place and Gandalf the Grey becomes Gandalf the White. The American president doesn't reside in The Black House, instead American Exceptionalism is subconsciously entangled with a White House in a Shining City Upon A Hill. I kid you not when I say that I don't know if I myself wouldn't have become a staunch flag waving patriot with all the audiovisual messaging that repeats the same over and over again: we're special and the peoples of the world should be grateful to have us, the white hats, defending their freedom at the cost of the lifes of our knights in shining armor. When I see the likes of Ben Shapiro cheering on Trump's latest war-crime, possibly starting a whole new chapter in the 100 year war over Middle Eastern oil, and daring to spout blatant nonsense as if the world is a safer place now, I'm truly baffled by their ignorance. Or malice. People who support this assassination better be victims of ignorance by the endless propaganda, for pure malice is the only other explanation for holding that position.

For me, even the ones (Democratic party elite, mainstream press and others) that question the sanity of this move, but feel the need to preface their doubts with saying what a bad, evil man Soleimani was, are infected with the same black versus white propaganda, let alone the countless cheering voices on the internet that a week ago didn't even know this man existed. Now they're suddenly sure he was evil and deserved to die, regardless of the legitimacy or sanity of Trump's targeted attack; the world is better off without him and no one should shed tears over his loss. Based on what, I ask. How do you know he was an evil man? Who's opinion on the man do you trust? Everybody in the region accuses everybody else in the region of being terrorists, and America labels them all terrorists, while executing terrorist attacks of their own. Is there no grey in this quagmire the west has created over greed for oil? Why are people listening to Ben Shapiro or Fox News? How come so many have already forgotten the news about us being lied to by three administrations, Bush, Obama and Trump for two decades about everything that's happened in Afghanistan? Two decades of lies, and you still believe without hesitation what "intelligence" agencies and government departments say about a man you didn't even know last week? All the talking heads say he's bad, so he must be? Think again please. And again.

Anthrax, anybody? I can still see before my eyes Colin Powell holding up a small bottle of what was supposed to be anthrax in a testimony that later proved to have been all lies, to not only put a black hat on Saddam Hussein's head, but a white one on his own; watch the first linked video to be reminded of these people's capacity of telling hard faced lies in order to get the wars they want so bad. What's scary, is that some people are still falling for the lies, when almost everything told to us in the war against terrorism has been half truths on occasion and blatant lies in general. Now, I want to close on a slightly more positive note here, after reminding you all, and myself, that this post is not intended as a critique of my American brothers and sisters; they're victims in all this too, and it will be their sons, daughters, sisters and brothers who will be most directly affected, as well as all the innocent people from the Middle East, their lifes are literally at stake here. Ben Shapiro's kids are as safe as Trump's kids are; they won't have to sacrifice anything to get their grubby little hands on what they want. For some positive vibes in disguise watch this video: if even Geraldo Rivera can have this unexpected moment of clarity, maybe all hope is not lost ;-)

_{Geraldo Rivera Fights Fox Hosts Over Trump's Iran Attack}

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