Imperial Social Systems Engineering and the Illusion of “Soft Power”
by Jim Craven/Omahkohkiaaiipooyii
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Imperial Social Systems Engineering and the Illusion of “Soft Power”
Imperial Social Systems Engineering and the Illusion of “Soft Power”
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Copyright 2008 By James M. Craven/Omahkohkiaaiipooyii
Copyright 2008 By James M. Craven/Omahkohkiaaiipooyii
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For systems and that are not predatory and expansionist, and seek no domination of others, the possibility of “soft power” (the power of a system or ideology to attract and cause a desire of others to emulate it based on the favorable qualities and performance of that system outweighing unfavorable qualities) not being coupled with, and guided by, hard power (violent and coercive force) is possible. But for imperial systems, no such de-coupling of soft power and hard power—or even soft power dominating hard power—is possible.
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In the case of imperial systems, past and present, any forms of soft power that have been employed, have been conducted, and designed to hide, the reality of forms of “hard power” guiding and backing them up. The U.S., for example, as in the case of other imperial systems, has never tolerated free, open, fair and principled competition between contending ideologies or systems–neither internally nor globally. That is what “manufactured consent”, “social systems engineering”, “and public diplomacy” are all about.
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The U.S. “Neocons” noted, a long time ago, that World War IV is a supposed “war” [undeclared, perpetual and against amorphous enemies] against global terrorism. According to them, World War III, has actually been underway for a long time. It is about a “war” [again, undeclared, perpetual and sometimes against amorphous enemies] for “hearts and minds”–between systems and ideologies. World War III, it is simply asserted, will never end, until the “final triumph” of capitalism over socialism and capitalist ideology over socialist ideology.
How to “market” capitalism over socialism and capitalist ideology over socialist ideology? The same way all marketing of anything under capitalism is done: hype and exaggerate purported and asserted positives and benefits, while hiding and understating, actual or likely negatives and costs. An example is the drug ads on TV aimed directly at consumers (to cause them to push their physicians) that show the purported benefits of a drug, backed often with bogus statistics (13 seconds out of 1 minute commercial average), while very quickly (in small print) passing over the possible side-effects they are required by law to cover, other negatives and costs (47 seconds average). Or, take the so-called “Justice” (“Just-Us”–Plutocrats) System where each adversary cherry-picks and hypes the positives in his own case while hiding his negatives, while attempting to cherry-pick and hype the negatives and hide any positives in the case of the opposing counsel. This results in a lot of innocent people in jail and guilty ones running lose because the law, like anything else under capitalism, is a commodity–something produced specifically for profitable sale not immediate use.
