The smirk and sneer are trademarks of Neocon culture. Very distinctive – you’ll almost never see a CEO or other business leader sneer or smirk in public.
The point of CEOs is to keep the profit rolling, and to increase the profit. They’d be happy to sneer if it helped, but sneering makes people angry. Angry people do things like boycott product or publicize problems with the company.
Why then do the Neocons, who supposedly are far-rightists similar to a CEO, act so very differently? It’s as if it takes a monumental effort for them to not show some sign of obvious disdain for the world around them.
I’m not sure George W. Bush has managed to give a press conference without some act of obvious condescension.
Justice Roberts during his confirmation hearing (I think that’s what it was) gave the trademarked sneer.
For people who would ostensibly like to run their government like a business, they sure don’t act like it.
CEOs don’t sneer because it makes people angry. Neocons do sneer because it makes people angry.
The Neocons go out of their way to make people angry, for obvious reasons according to my stated understanding of them.
CEOs are all smiles, genuine smiles, when the money is flowing. They are happy – and according to them they should be.
Billions upon billions are flowing from taxpayers into private contractors in alliance with the Neocons. The Neocons have been wildly successful by any business measure. Yet the condescension, smirks, and sneers have only grown deeper and more frequent with every additional blow to the American people.
CEOs want to distract you from the problems they cause. They want to minimize the effect on you. They want to draw as little attention to themselves as possible. CEOs don’t shoot their hunting partners in the face. CEOs don’t say “go fuck yourself”.
What’s the point of saying that? CEOs just want to get with the business of rape. Why antagonize the victim?
The American taxpayers are a cash cow that keep on giving to private firms and contractors – but they only keep on giving (to such a large extent) while the Neocons are in control. Why do the Neocons go out of their way to antagonize the very people enabling them to keep milking the cow?
There are other theories besides my own to account for Neocon peculiarities:
One theory states that the Neocons are authoritarians, and this whole process of condescension, smirking, sneering, abusing, etc. is about beating down the American people into submission, into a lack of resistance, which the Neocons can then follow up with a one-party national system, fascism, and even more abuse. In other words, they believe the Neocons want to knock Rocky out instead of making him explode. The process by which one knocks out Rocky appears nearly identical to the process by which one beats Rocky to a pulp, except near the end.
My argument against this theory examines the Neocon progression. Does someone whose goal is a knockout get progressively more violent over time, almost linearly? Furthermore, does someone with that goal begin operating in secret, and then at a certain point behave so foolishly as to draw vast amounts of attention to themselves?
The Reagan administration, for example, shared some aspects of the Bush II administration but it lacked all of its extremes. There was no sneering. There were more moderate tax cuts. There was less military spending, and no global military goals. There was much less crazy legislation, and nothing like the various eliminations of civil liberties Bush II has presented. There was much less secrecy inside the executive branch.
Someone who wants Rocky to be knocked out doesn’t care about Rocky’s status. He just keeps pounding and pounding until finally Rocky goes down. That is the way of the CEO who literally cares about nothing else than his profits. The CEO smiles even more broadly after Rocky is laying on the ground.
Someone who wants Rocky to explode carefully monitors Rocky’s status, and when Rocky is beaten to a certain point he changes tactics. Now he starts taunting Rocky, trash talking, mocking him, trying to enrage him without doing further physical damage. Of course since he can’t give the game away he needs to keep punching, but his punches become softer, less threatening. Rocky meanwhile is beaten into such a state that he barely notices the physical change. This is the do-or-die point for the Neocons according to my theory… Rocky needs to respond or the jig is up. By “the jig is up” I mean either Rocky is finished off and knocked out or the fighter needs to be stopped from throwing additional punches (such as by the referee stopping the fight). The referee is, ostensibly, congress and the judiciary.
The third theory of the Neocons is easier to defeat: they are incompetent monstrous fools out of control and drunk on power. That theory likes “Bush as frat boy”, “Cheney as evil overlord”, “Wolfowitz as naive idealist”. This theory loves to paint the American war in Iraq as a “mistake” instead of as successful in its goal of generating regional instability.
The first thing any propagandist does is propagandizes himself. That DOES NOT MEAN the propagandist believes his own propaganda. Rush Limbaugh does not believe in the concept “feminazis”, but the term is useful for him. He believes he believes in the concept, he just actually doesn’t believe in it.
Many supposed “experts” on the American war in Iraq talk about “regime change” as the American goal in Iraq. Actually, regime change was the pretext in Iraq… the actual goal in Iraq was to foment regional instability, with the long-term idea of weakening and controlling the entire region. America (its government) is the Snake who wants to poison and weaken the Middle East.
