The Political World

 

The Political World

Peter Schultz

 

                  In the political world, a person can conduct assassinations of people whose identities are unknown to her, including civilians and women and children, and still be described as “a person of genuine moral rectitude.” And, more generally, in the political world “vindication [comes] through combat and devastation.” Combat and devastation, savagery so to speak, are consistent with “genuine moral rectitude.” Indeed, they are seen as the result of genuine moral rectitude and are rewarded. That’s a strange world.

 

                  And, so, the only way to sustain belief in one’s cause is “by resorting to the imaginary and the hypothetical.” [75] War narratives are always be dominated by “mythical figures … shaping fictional events.” Similarly, political narratives are also dominated by such mythical figures shaping fictional events. The only way to sustain belief in the redemptive character of the political is “by resorting to the imaginary and the hypothetical.” And those who expose such narratives must be silenced, “assassinated” one way or another.

 

[Quotes are from The Destructive War: William Tecumseh Sherman, Stonewall Jackson, and the Americans, Charles Royster and Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield, Jeremy Scahill]