Wrapping oneself snugly in the garments of a particular ideology allows one to be uncritical of their own assumptions. While a person, group, or nation may be enviably efficient and rational about process and instrumental, technical knowledge and methods, they could simultaneously be blind and unreasoning about inhuman ideological methods and goals. Witness the holocaust, witness Israeli apartheid against Palestinians, witness the neo-con pursuit of hegemonic ambition through mis-information and through sowing fear and hatred of others, witness the erosion of civil liberties, witness suicide-bombings against civilians….the list goes on and on.
By politicizing, codifying, and elevating the ambiguous assumptions, uncritical inferences, and narrow viewpoints that define and shape one’s outlook and actions, ideology is elevated to a position of almost idolatrous importance. A combination of ideology, propaganda, and diversion has the potential to make people apathetic, cold, indifferent, or even pleased at the plight of others - those others who hold conflicting viewpoints. No longer able to see each other’s humanity, we instead see ideological ciphers. This allows a state or group to undertake unsavory or repugnant actions - economic looting, brutal conquest, suppression, massacres, bombings, torture, pre-emptive aggression, killing of civilians etc. - in order to accomplish that which they desire to accomplish, to carry out their business with a minimal amount of internal domestic resistance.
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