COUNTING HEADS: THE HORROR OF THE LOOKING GLASS WAR

Throughout modern literature there have been plenty of metaphors generated from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. One of the more recent metaphor’s is the one where we make the choice to see just how far the rabbit hole goes in reference to the true reality that Morpheus tries to explain to Neo in the Matrix movies.

What is truly being expressed is that the further down you go into the rabbit hole, you find that there are several realities competing for your approval. The reality you choose to live is based on Cognitive resonance and what resonated with what can be called your personal prejudice. Whatever challenges that reality becomes the impossible, the improbable, and the hypothetical.

In “Through the Looking Glass,” Alice says that she is unable to believe the White Queen’s claim to be 101 years old. The Queen responds, “Try again: draw a long breath, and shut your eyes.” Alice then sighs, “There’s no use trying, one can’t believe impossible things.” The queen responds by telling Alice, “Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

In what we consider to be reality, we have developed as a collective many prejudices and we are triggered into action or reaction by various things. The easiest way to be triggered into action is through trauma.

Trauma does not really have to hurt you; it can simply jolt you and shake you up a bit. When the trauma happens your brain slows down the process of intake and the reaction only takes seconds to register, but seems like a long time to finally sink in.

When trauma is unexplained or horrific the mind starts to believe in impossible things. These things are part of the paranormal or supernatural experience. They are very real to the experiencers, and there others who are affected by the trauma as well. The result is group think or crowd think and when this happens there is a risk of crowd reaction which can lead to destructive behaviors.

The United States today is most certainly being controlled by Hegelian thinking.

The Hegelian model of “Wonderland” affects our entire social and political structure. The Hegelian dialectic is the framework for guiding our thoughts and actions into conflicts that lead us to a predetermined solution. If we do not understand how the Hegelian dialectic shapes our perceptions of the world, then we do not know how we are helping to implement the vision. When we remain locked into dialectical thinking, we cannot see out of the rabbit hole.

Our leaders have shown us the nightmare of what is happening in the Middle East and have twisted words and their meanings to give us an idea of how serious our situation has become. Even though it may be that the situation has not worsened, it has simply become more horrific as the new policy is to now show the blood, the trauma and the beheadings of journalists and others.

Our leaders have also described the visual images as Satanic and they most certainly know he power of words like “evil” and “hell.” There are other words like Jihad and holy war which trigger ideas of apocalypse and the war that will end all wars.

We can draw another metaphor from The Looking Glass when Alice speaks to Humpty Dumpty. Alice speaks with Humpty Dumpty about his choice of words and his ability to twist them so that he can appear intelligent:

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you CAN make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master — that’s all.”

Remember the words of Humpty Dumpty because we all know his fate.

In the real world we can see that the Humpty Dumpty meme can be seen in someone like John McCain. He and other Humpty Dumpty’s like him have been using words to breed the actions of war and they have not addressed the fact that they have been courting the violence that we are seeing now by associating with the knaves that have placed us in the position we are in now.

McCain can deny and twist his words to avoid being among the guilty but the truth is that the more he speaks the more he finds that the wall that is under him will give way and what is left of his shattered reputation will not be repaired.

There have been slips of the tongue from the Arizona Senator about knowing intimately the machinations of ISIS, he accidentally let it slip as he spoke with Sean Hannity about allegations that he met with ISIS during his trip to Syria last year.

There are photos making the rounds of him meeting with what appear to be Middle Eastern rebels some of them are now part of the ISIS leadership.

It has been reported now that McCain actually is photographed with a group known as the Northern Strom Brigade a rebel group that was supplied weapons by the United States. Some have called them the Northern Storm, a group within the Free Syrian Army and it was reported that this group was the same group that handed United States Journalist Steven Sotloff over to ISIS. It has been reported that these so called “rebels” met with ISIS and sold Sotloff to them for a sum that is estimated to be “between $25,000 and $50,000 dollars.

The videos of the brutal beheadings of James Foley, Steven Sotloff and David Haines helped rally global opinion against the extremist Islamic State, however now it may be triggering copycat crimes and the opinion that Muslims across the United States are ready to present a Queen of Hearts strategy by beheading non believers.

However we must understand that the videos of the beheading are meant to be seen, they were meant to create a feeling that we must all step up and demand that something be done.

It was something that the Queen of hearts in Through the Looking glass knew would cause her subjects to have grave thoughts and feel anxious. It would be something that every one of them would dread. No one wants to be the victim of a beheading , however the queen and the king believed that if enough are beheaded then someone will finally admit to wanting the guilty to be punished or the culprits to be exposed to be the terrorists they are.

From the Lewis Carroll book we read:

“The executioner’s argument was, that you couldn’t cut off a head unless there was a body to cut it off from; that he had never had to do such a thing before, and he wasn’t going to begin at HIS time of life.

The King’s argument was, that anything that had a head could be beheaded, and that you weren’t to talk nonsense.

The Queen’s argument was that, if something wasn’t done about it in no time, she’d have everybody executed, all around. (It was this last remark that had made the whole party look so grave and anxious).”

How grave and anxious have we become since we have seen the horror of the beheadings that have been performed by ISIS?

Well the answer came this morning in Oklahoma.

A man fired from an Oklahoma food processing plant beheaded a woman with a knife and was attacking another worker when he was shot and wounded by a company official.

Alton Nolen, had just been fired from the business, and for anyone this would be a classic trigger for the sort of rampage people typically go on if they are about to lose their nerve. It used to be that the euphemism for this sort of thing would be “going postal.” However everything changed when police officials decided to leak to the press that Nolen recently converted to Islam.

This sent social media into a frenzy as the grave and anxious Americans remembered that U.S. Intelligence officials indicated to the media that reprisals at home for bombing ISIS are likely to come from “lone wolves.”

Beheadings and Islam are now the fire and gasoline needed to set off an explosion of fear based prejudice and it is interesting that the police leaked this to the press so early in the investigation.

To simplify what has happened an enraged man seeking revenge for his termination arrived at his former place of employment and started a rampage.

However most Americans fell into what can be called Conspiratorial thinking—was he just there for revenge or was there something more?

Of course the police had determined that this incident was simply a matter of “workplace violence” but a cynical court of public opinion are already thinking that perhaps he is connected with ISIS or is a lone wolf that has crossed the border or some other nightmare that they can conjure.

His being a so called lone wolf or a possible terrorist has clouded the important part of the story and that is how the suspect was stopped.

He was shot. Nolen was not killed but shot by an American citizen who knows of his second amendment rights. The chief operating officer of Vaughn Foods is also a reserve sheriff’s deputy and had his gun with him at work. He shot Nolen, which ended the attack.

This victory has been clouded with the disinformation that Nolen is a terrorist and that this was an act of a lone wolf terrorist.

Apparently, Nolen’s rampage began while he was “in the process of being terminated.” They had called to the building that houses the human resources department to give him the news, whereupon he jumped in his car, drove to another building near the front entrance, and started stabbing people. The religion of Nolen was totally irrelevant until someone mentioned that he had in the past had conversations with employees about Islam. When this was mentioned the FBI was called in to investigate Nolen’s intent especially with a beheading involved.

The circumstances of Nolen’s firing weren’t made public. Some co-workers told police that he had recently converted to Islam and had been trying to convert them. Law enforcement officials told NBC News that his conversion took place during his recent stint in prison, which ended in March 2013, records show.

A search of his home and car didn’t immediately yield any connection to radical fundamentalism and there’s no indication he had been in contact with terrorists groups such as ISIS, sources said.

However other information was made public about Nolen. The suspect does have an extensive rap sheet, including assault and battery on a police officer and an escape from detention.

What we are seeing here is an enraged man who is mentally unstable and decided to somehow send a message of his anger by creating a copycat scenario of beheading a co-worker.

So far there is no evidence to support that Nolen was acting on behalf of a fundamentalist group of Islam or even ISIS. However this will not matter in the United States. The violent natures of many sects of Islam have hardened the resolve of most Americans and I am sure the cry will go out to the President and others to rise up against all Islamic factions.

Now is the time for Muslims to stand up and condemn these actions. It must be made clear that this is an act of a desperate man who happens to be Muslim.

There are Jews in the world and Christians who also commit crimes of this nature. Their religions are never spoken of in the media and the question is, was the leaking of the suspect’s religious affiliation done on purpose to spur this type of anger?

Especially when we have been warned to be vigilant against possible terrorists crossing the borders to start their terror campaigns?

Who is to blame here?

We are seeing a mixture of blowback, fear and outrage in America. This type of anger and fear is far greater than that which was felt after 9/11. It is now a time where we can no longer trust what we hear from the media. We can no longer trust our government and we are more than happy to create a daily scapegoat that can trigger actions and words that can eventually kill and destroy everything we have fought for and enjoy as Americans.