There has been, I notice, another and severe outbreak of 4-dimensional chess attribution among political commentary in relation to the current US President's foreign policy.
I would suggest that politics when it is Good is actually very simple.
Whenever politics actually is, or aspires to be, complex, nuanced, multi-faceted - then we should know that we are confronted with our old friend the Boromir Strategy.
Under all the rationalizations it's just another case of: Hey lads, let's use the One Ring to fight Sauron!
It's not that the US President and his gang couldn't or wouldn't play some kind of 4-D chess game; but that insofar as they do operate thus - then they objectively are on the side of evil.
And those political commentators and analysts who approve such modes of operation are part of the pseudo-alternative, but in fact totalitarian Establishment-allied, "Boromirosphere"...
They are doing the work of Satan; however they may self-identify or self-present as one of the Good Guys.
5 comments:
Whether or not the use of '4D chess' in politics or foreign affairs is evil or not depends on the objective you are trying to achieve via the deception, no? If you are trying to defeat an evil adversary via deception, then this (plainly) does not make you evil (the argument is then only over whether or not the deception was tactically necessary, which is an efficiency argument).
The moral value of the objectives the achievement of which the deception was deployed to facilitate, and whether those objectives could have been achieved without deception, are both critical. These are case specific considerations that render your post prima facie false. Otherwise, there are a host of dads who wear red suits and white beards on Christmas Eve who'll need to have a good hard look at where they stand on the Bruce Charlton Axis of Evil :)
A lot of actions have multiple and layered motivations, so it is often difficult to judge by inferred motivations.
In an ultimate sense, evil is by affiliation to one or other side in the spiritual war, and not from "evil actions" - i.e. evil actions are symptomatic of affiliation.
I agree with you in principle. But if the messes have their roots thousands of years ago and everything is a big mess and tangle of blackmailed politicians and bureaucrats there may not be much choice. I mean if the choice is to just lose or outwit satan's minions I think I would see the later as preferable.
@WT - My point is that we lose both ways.
One of the standard ways that Satan works, is by encouraging those who are on the side of God to fight Satan using strategically evil tactics; with the self-justifying rationale that after "we" have won, then we shall drop the evil-methods, and revert to good-compatible practices...
In other words, by analogy; the idea is that I will use the One Ring to defeat Sauron, and then I shall destroy the One Ring!
Yes...
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