Duplicity: How It Works

 

Duplicity: How It Works

Peter Schultz

 

                  So, here’s an illustration of how duplicity works in order to disguise the injustices of any political order.

 

                  George W. Bush had managed to acquire a place in the Texas National Air Guard, obviously in order to avoid having to go to war in Vietnam and just as obviously through his connections, family and otherwise. But then, acting duplicitously, Bush and others claimed that his family connections had nothing to do with his admission to the Guard. And there followed news articles from journalists questioning whether in fact the Bushes were telling the truth about the family connections. The controversy was quite impressive as far as controversies go.

 

                  Take note, though, that this controversy displaced another possible controversy, viz., a controversy over the justice of having such alternative “military” places that allowed a few select people to avoid going to war in Vietnam, or in other wars. Such places for a select few, however chosen, would appear to be unjust to the vast majority of Americans who were subject to the draft and to having to serve, involuntarily as it was, in the war in Vietnam.

 

                  So, duplicity hides this justice question and Bush’s sense of justice is never questioned. The “justice question” is replaced by a “conspiracy question,” you might say. The question whether George W. Bush was just is displaced by the question whether he “conspired” via his connections to avoid the war in Vietnam, a war by the way he supported. And even the justice of his alleged conspiratorial behavior is not debated.

 

                  As a result of the duplicity, which was facilitated by Bush’s defenders, the justice of providing a select few with a way out of fighting the nation’s wars is never raised. The established order, even though it seems to unjustly favor the select few as the expense of the many, is fortified, even legitimized because it was never questioned. Duplicity, by hiding the injustice of favoring the select few over the many, serves the status quo and its attendant injustices.