Imagine a self-styled patriarch coming up with an idea to
gather around him devoted followers in a cult that says you are so special
being a member of this group, you will be singled out to represent absolute goodness
when goodness is talked about, and considered a common member of the human
collective even when you single-handedly commit a horrible crime.
Perhaps a real Moses or perhaps an imaginary figure, the
patriarch assembles a group of people that roams the Earth recruiting members
of all races and all ethnicities whose common philosophy of life will rest on
the belief that humanity owes them a living as well as the respect that is due
to them by virtue of being always perfect and never less than that.
Over time, the habit of singling themselves in when good
things happen, and singling themselves out when bad things happen, mutates into
several derivatives, one of which being the motivational fuel that drives
everything they do to retain the special status they have forged for themselves
in the eyes of others. And for a reason that remains obscure to this day, they
continue to call themselves Semitic Jews when, in fact, they are neither
Semitic nor Jews but a bunch of parasitic riffraffs always on the lookout for a
new host on which to feed.
When they find one, they open a toolbox that is full of
techniques on how to deceive the host and make him believe he is receiving
divine advice for free when in fact, he would be losing blood and treasure to
the parasitic riffraff while getting nothing in return. One of the most
effective techniques they use is to begin the conversation by attributing to
others the evil they see in themselves, and to themselves the virtues they see
in others. This has the effect of confusing the interlocutors so badly that
they absorb what the riffraff are throwing at them without giving the matter
any critical thought.
You see the use of this technique in a column that begins
like this: “There's a sucker born every minute” which, for a moment, makes you
think that the author who is Bret Stephens, is going to fess up to the fact
that he has been deceiving his readers all these years, that he is gripped with
remorse and that he is about to ask for forgiveness. But no, he does not do that,
and you realize this much because you see that the title of the column is: “A
'Pragmatic' Mullah” and the subtitle is: “Iran 's new president Hassan Rohani
is no moderate.” The column was published in the Wall Street Journal on June
18, 2013.
After that introduction, Stephens dismisses all the good
things that were said about the Mullah he identifies as Hasan Rohani , Iran
You also see in the Stephens column the full flowering of
the technique I call the “checkaroo” game. It consists of assembling all that
is wrong about a situation into one basket and throwing the basket at the
target of the day. For example, the Jewish organizations open a file on
everyone they believe has the potential to become important someday. They
gather information on him which they spin in such a way as to make him look
good or look bad depending on where he stands with regards to their causes. But
that's not all they do because if they really hate someone, they will bring
what they can spin into dirt from all the files they have into the file of that
one person. And they start to play the checkaroo game.
Look how Bret Stephens does that. Having noted what his
colleague had said about the Mullah, he now attributes to him the 1994 bombing
in Buenos Aires , the 1996 bombing in Saudi Arabia , the construction of nuclear
facilities in Iran , the
increase in the number of centrifuges and the further development of software
and hardware for Iran 's
nuclear program. Furthermore, being the negotiator for Iran in all
such matters, Rohani accomplished a great deal for his country on the
diplomatic front despite what people say about the destructive attitude of the
incendiary Ahmadinejad who managed to undo much of Rohani's good work.
Well, other people say that but Stephens who used to say the
same thing for years now says this: “That's true only up to a point.” He makes
this sentimental switcharoo because now that Ahmadinejad is gone, he wants to
transfer into the Rohani file all the checkaroos that used to be in the
Ahmadinejad file. And there is plenty of that.
Look at this treasure trove of checks: “Supply IEDs to Iraqi
insurgents to kill American GIs? Check. Enrich uranium to near-bomb grade
level? Check. Steal an election and imprison the opposition? Check. Take Royal
Marines and American backpackers hostage? Check. Fight to save Bashar Assad's
regime in Syria ?
Check that too.” That's one hell of a basket of checks to transfer from one
file to another. The checkaroo game is about to heat up again.
And then comes the big surprise. The way that Stephens ends
the column should baffle the readers because it sounds like he has just
realized something he wants to keep hidden from them. Here is what he says:
“The capacity for self-deception is a coping mechanism in both life and
diplomacy, but it comes at a price. As the West cheers … it will come to
discover how high a price it will pay.”
You know what this means, my friend? It means that because
he is too young to remember, he either read history or someone told him about
the warnings that were sounded when the Israelis started playing what they
thought was the cute game of: “Guess if we have the bomb because we're not
telling. We'll remain ambiguous, you'll scratch your head and we'll all laugh
about it.”
Those who did not think it was a cute game developed what came to be
known as the poor man's bomb, which is the arsenal of chemical and biological
weapons said to be in the possession of Syria at this time. And this is
what makes the situation in the Middle East
neither cute nor funny because the price being paid is already high and
promises to go even higher.
Yes, Israel
must be singled out as the most evil thing that happened to Planet Earth, and
Bret Stephens has just realized it on his own and by himself.