The Case For Duplicity
Obama and Ban Ki Moon poster at Wimal’s fast unto saline
I was going to say hypocrisy’s not a sin, but perhaps that’s not the right word. Let’s say duplicity. Duplicity is not necessarily a sin. Sometimes ideals need to be out there as a matter of faith before they can be made real. Sometimes you can’t do what you say but it’s important to say it anyways. Though only sometimes. Human ideals have always outstripped our means. The religious faiths we claim to follow, the family values we claim to uphold, no one really follows them. If, however, we limit our words to describing what we do, we don’t create another world (however illusory) that is better. In a strange way, simply saying these things and reinforcing them socially does have a way of making them a reality over time.
The United States was founded on lofty principles of freedom, but they had slaves for hundreds of years and only fully gave rights to minorities in the last century. Those words, however, formed the backbone of not necessarily what they were, but what they were in the process of becoming. Now the US is all over the news for its somewhat domineering and dismissive international relations which are focused mostly on their own self-interest. There are dealings with rather dictatorial types, spying on UN officials and deals to move possibly illegally held prisoners around in exchange for Presidential face time. Not exactly the face the US wants to show the world.
In my main experience, that diplomatic face is generally boring. I’ve been to press conferences at the US Embassy and they say absolutely nothing. In private, however, the same people do have rather firm opinions. This is duplicity, of a sort, but such is diplomacy. Part of it is telling people what they want, part of it is deception, but the greater part is just caution and respect. Soon, however, that will be out in the open here, just as it is in the Arab world. Is that bad for the US? Yeah. Probably unfair? Yeah, but they also tortured a bunch of random Muslims and attacked two countries so, er, sorry.
The broader point I’m getting at is that duplicity does have its place. There are different standards for public and private behavior and that is OK. I say things in private I wouldn’t want out as a quasi-public blogger, and that’s important. Where this point collides with technology, however, is that the public and private are rapidly merging into one space. Celebrities have known that for years, random kids on Facebook have found out, and now American diplomats. In an era when everything is recorded, everything could be on the record. What is going to change, I think, is not this behavior, but I think that our concept of privacy will entirely change.
At some point we’ll have to reconcile with the fact that we talk shit about our friends, we take naked pictures of each other and this is all potentially public. At some point there may be so much of it in public that we no longer care. That is, we’ll never get back to simplicity, but multiplicity may have a similar effect.
While I am enjoying reading about the leaks, specifically Prince Andrew’s candid remarks and the Middle East duplicity (cut the head off the snake indeed), some of this stuff could seriously effect countries outside of the US and might push some closer to war. It’s dangerous.
The UK coalition’s slowly being proved right about their general economic policy, but there are a lot of undermining comments in these leaks about senior UK politicians at a time when confidence that they know what they’re doing is key to avoid more Irish, Spanish, Portuguese situations. Were there cables offering a different, more favourable viewpoint? It’s tricky for the US to now deliberately leak those. This sort of thing is said by diplomats about other nations’ politicians all the time. Only the US has been caught out.
Much more important than this, though, is the North Korea situation. The North Korean leadership are highly provocative and have nuclear weapons. The comments released include a lot of strategy from the Chinese, including revelations that they see North Korea as acting like a spoilt child, that they have little influence over the North Koreans, that the only country which does have an influence is the US and that they would be willing to see North Korea unify with South Korea. In the current climate, there’s the possibility this might calm things down, but just as much chance it brings them closer to war. Also confirms that the much-respected Chinese influence isn’t quite what they’d have us believe.
Then there’s the other side to the coin, with Saudi, the UAE, Qatar, Israel and other Middle East states heavily arguing that the US should strike first and strike hard against Iran. Yet it has not. The US still viewed as the regional aggressor, Iran’s neighbours benign friends. The Qatari PM on Iran: “They lie to us and we lie to them.” Embarrassing for them more than the US? Ahmadinejad’s response was typically legendary: “http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11860435″
Uh-oh! Are we seeing the birth of WW3 then? Doesn’t the world economy appear ripe for it too ? :0
We take naked pictures of each other? HEY, I don’t.