Like a giant dose of salts to a bloated and constipated patient, "Cablegate" has scoured its way through the post-9/11 United States empire, exposing its internal workings to merciless scrutiny: In Iraq, U.S. forces and their Iraqi subordinates kill civilians and journalists while their commanders turn a blind eye to sickening acts of torture and murder; in Pakistan, U.S. special forces patrol "secretly" inside tribal areas as military leaders from both sides discuss the possibility of a coup; in Yemen and Pakistan, U.S. drones covertly bomb "terrorist" targets; at the United Nations, American diplomats are ordered to spy on officials from China, Russia, France and the U.K.
Perhaps, as Slavoj Zizek recently wrote, the only surprising thing about the revelations is that they contain no surprises. "Didn't we learn exactly what we expected to learn?" asks the Slovenian philosopher, who compares WikiLeaks organizer Julian Assange to the Joker in Christopher Nolan's movie "The Dark Knight," pulling at the mask of power in the belief that this will destroy the social order.
In the end, says Zizek, WikiLeaks' service is to publicize shame — "the shameless cynicism of a global order whose agents only imagine that they believe in their ideas of democracy, human rights and so on; and our shame for tolerating such power over us." And shame is a weapon, he reminds us.