Applications (of Decept anal.)

2. Application

(of Decept analysis to S* in the current historical context)

A. Texted: By Scott McClellan.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/05/28/scott-mcclellan-hits-1-on_n_103933.html

McClellan's revealing new book, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception, has gone through the roof, hitting #1 on Amazon less than a day after The Politico broke the news of its "explosive revelations," including McClellan's assertions that the Bush administration used "propaganda" to sell the Iraq war; that the Bush administration had not operated with "candor and honesty" about "rushing to war with inadequate planning and preparation for its aftermath"; that Karl Rove and Scooter Libby met to "get their stories straight" about PlameGate, and "had at best misled" McClellan about those stories;

Decept terms: (further specifying the grammar)

Propaganda -- "used 'propaganda' to sell the Iraq war" Any instance of that, such as fabricating, exaggerating, or not vetting evidence of threat from Saddam Hussein's regime, would be a decept.

Dissembling -- "..had not operated with "candor and honesty'" "Operating with" is a psychosemiotic metaphor. It implies a general mental attitude, orientation or 'mind-set', in colloquial terms. These correlate with the factors of positionality of (individual) consciousness and 'place' (locale) in TokenSpace. They are conditions not squared* in particular "look, now he's doing it!" decept- moments, but are part of the on-going process you have to deal with in talking to them. Expressions like "There he goes again," said by Reagan of Carter, capture typicalities, rather than instances..

Misleading -- euphamism for lying; implying a scale "at best; at worst" of decept- potency. Cf "Plamegate" as a big media instance,

Chief elements: intent to deceive; motive: to 'get over', remove abstruction, avoid punishment


B. On The Token side

1. Polling the predicate.

What do poll numbers communicate when the predicate is disambiguated by dis/approbations?

Ex. Actual poll reported 7.16 "on the candidates patriotism": "Who do you think is the most patriotic, McCain or Obama?" (70 -27%) (MSN)

One who had seen the CBS poll numbers showing virtually the reverse on a number of issues would be naive not to see this as an almost reduction ad absurdum instance of a question designed to produce the numbers, rather than the numbers responding to any important electoral difference. Another example of the same sort came along minutes later. "Who do you most trust to handle the war in Iraq?" This was narrower, McCain 65%, Obama 30's.

What stands out here is that the predicates "patriotic" and "handling the war in Iraq" are dis/approbatives, eliciting pro and con impulses. Since 'patriotism' is approbative, going in, the contrast "more" or "less" calls for ranking in terms of approbation, or goodness, on the part of the one responding. Yet the grammar of the question, assuming 'patriotism' stands for a quasi-objective scale, like "more" or "less" athletic (or reasonable, etc.), disguizes this subjective response as an 'opinion'. Such subjective identification is, in fact, included in the second example lead in: "Who do you trust...?" This form of sign use addresses the soul-brain directly. The palm-upheld hand of the Egyptian Goddess Ma'at conveys this mode of address also. The predicate/referent, "...(to) handle the war in Iraq" again has only approbative, not descriptive meaning. Like "change", it will befall whoever the next president is willy nilly, so the question "who you trust most" asks for nothing but who you approve, or "Who would you vote for? -- the psychosemiotic tautology tacit in the subtext of all approbatives. The point of the grammar is to try to make them appear objective, not individual and subjective, thus imprisoning the person(s) in their own group-looped pseudo-objectivity shared by others on the same basis (mutually agreed metaphysical titilation).

There is a Brain 3- Brain 1 factor affecting Decepts. It is becoming clearer that, as essentially involving the good-bad Brain 2 functions, their essence is to substitute the approbative -- what is desired -- for textualized Perceptual content, whereever possible (the pleasure principle). The meme for this is "having your cake and eating it too." The 'evidence' for a proposition judged to be true, 'holding' for a segment of reality it is about, will tend to be disambiguated in favor of the desired. Otherwise put: people will tend to seek and accept evidences that support what they want to see as real, and tend to avoid and object to evidences pointing in the other direction. This Freudian metaphysic is even rational for the case of believing in God, according to Wm. James famous argument in The Will To Believe. The main problem Brain 2 has with this unrestrained Brain 3 (Id) dominance of conceptual consciousness however is that it does not sublimation. There is a kind of oxygen the soul-brain requires to differentiate and coat the higher being body growing within it. When the signs attached to completion of the soul function in the group substitute for the higher level signs of the individual's completing totality; and when, in addition, the signs of unity for the completing totality of the group -- America, in this case -- have been falsified, text for token for text...; then: two intersecting Decepts* have been installed in the processing schema, affecting the soul of the nation and the nation's citizen's souls. These act as kundabuffers to re-loop the sacred energy striving to reblend into a whole.

This the psychosemiotic effect of the surge of polls. First 'focus groups', featuring hand-held devices that register shock reactions to words and phrases in advertisements. On top of these, effectively narrowing the psychic bandwidth of media communications, come polling results, further defining the terms of agreement and disagreement. Taken in as information, the percentages align the Brain
3-2 reactions through the intellectual (Brain 1) level as 'opinions', directed by Brain 3 interests by group-synchronic approbation. Adaptation to this as flow of group-process sustained by the human psychic apparatus merges personal psychic identity with national psychic identity. This is Jung's analysis of the psychic "inflation" of Nazi Germany.

It is a closed metaphysical loop of snake brain reality.

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JUDAS VALUE CONSERVATIVES

What stayed in the Jungles of Colombia and Vietnam?

Value is the noun form of the good-bad distinction;that is, the square of the dis/approbative per se. It is grammatized as if it were a 'something', an 'it' manifested in whatever was contrast as good or bad, as an objective basis, like white or black color. Economist speak of "the value of corn (oil, commodities and services)", tacitly adding 'in today's marketplace', or some other disambigating standard. Without such an addition, implying an objective standard to which judgments are explicitly or tacitly referred, it becomes a pure approval/disapproval indicator. Since the phrase "good values" is a psychosemiotic tautology, the second term texting what the first tokens, and "good" is the token particularizing approbation itself, the introduction and use of the word "values" in discourse, by itself, will disambiguate textual content (under the sway of the pleasure principle) according to what the user subjectively approves. The phrase "bad values" is not a logical self contradiction, as long as 'values' is used as a neutral term for opposites; but it is is a conjunction of brain-processing opposites that tends to collapse an untenable and self-refuting "not: good is a value" content.

It is well known that many who call themselves "conservatives", politically, also often refer to themselves as "values voters." When it comes to politics, they vote (on, for) values. That's it. They are also wont to speak of 'principles', deciding issues on a generalized rational basis, as opposed to ad hoc, temporary inclinations or 'pragmatism' (not taking the easy way out, regarded by conservatives as favored by 'liberals'). This gives them token alignment as "conservatives" for the MSM. (compleat with "bases": Bush's, neoconservatives, McCain's).
Conservatives tend to be values voters. This is a political fact; it was verified by exit polls in Ohio 2004 election, which tilted Republican and gave G.W. Bush capital to bomb Falluja. The metaphysical question to be raised is "what's the standard?" And the degenerate case of converting a situation in which there is none, only a feigned objectivity, into one worshipped FOR THE SAKE OF its duplicitous falsehood. This is what "conservatives" have come to mean by "values vote" Unprincipled use of "principle"; reversal of the approbative-disapprobative polarities by "values", rounded out by an array of Theological Decepts (see* section) designed to crystalize particles of false soul -- their values, text, are just the reverse of the objective value tokens that gave the sign-uses meaning. And that is why they are used.

A glittering example of this degenerate case duplicity occurred during the staged rescue of Ingrid Betancourt, and other hostages, held captive by anti-government Colombian guerillas. This 'story' is a major DECEPT event, mirrored (as in another brain consciousness) a classical
token of itself: using the RED CROSS sign to disguize partisan intent. This was not announced until a week later then only on BBC, quoting the President who was no doubt pressured into admitting it, then did so in terms impossible not to construe as intendedly deceptive. ("Just one did it, in violation of strict orders."). This 'sting' strategy, in which lethal opponents "dress up like", or pretend to be, members of a militant group in order to betray it, was evident, again, in a second behind the scenes firgure referred to as "the turncoat" who hooked up the pro- and anti-government arrangements at the highest levels. This would surely have included contact with John McCain who was serendipitously present during the July 4, Birthday Of Our Nation commemoration. Both she and he, of course, are globally famous for having survived 6 years in enemy* (*key anti- 'values' ambiguater) hands.

The Archetype of these tokens is unmistakably Judas Iscariot, old New Testament version (before the recently announced discovery of a 'Gospel of Judas'). He was "13th" disciple, of a different cosmic order than the 12, according to the recent text. But the scriptures always speak of him as standing apart, different, not one of them as a circle, but associated. The new text counts him related to Jesus as friend-like, or colleague. The new version of the sell-out is, Judas was doing Jesus a favor, helping him shuffle off the mortal coil to pander some neoplatonic obsession he picked up as a Nazarene. One can see how some might want to keep the spirit of a guy like that knocking about.

The old Judas was the essence of the disapprobative, as psychological opposite of group of group-approbation in general. Jesus and the 12 disciples is the Archytype of the Completing Totality "as above", the Soul-unit constellating content in the Upper Triad (S*7,6,5). The New Testament Judas attached himself to this circle, was counted by others as one of them, shared their experiences, secrets, and ceremonies ... but always as one who would betrayed them. When the time came to take advantage of knowing both sides of the situation, he would be the one to act. "Go do what thou must." In the event, Gethsemane, where the DECEPT went down, he betrayed him with a kiss.

The kiss is a token of love, a Good on the scale of Christian Values disambiguated to the qualia of Brain 2 flow-of-process. The Archetypal conjunction is unmistakable: The Judas kiss uses a token of physical love, eros, as a Decept, to mask, and redirect the metaphysical flow-of-process toward the Token of higher love, agape,

To take advantage of the approbation the Red Cross spontaneously elicits for the care it brings, deceives like a Judas kiss.


The process as a whole unfolding historically in these fields-within-fields-within ...of TokenSpace can also be thought of as: subversion of the Being-Agenda of the Completing Totality ("God's plan for humankind", in Christianity)