Free speech has long been a cornerstone of Western society. However, within the past few years the situation has completely changed. Recently, one of the Western`s oldest public figures – the legendary leader of the Western Civil Liberties Union Ira Glasser, who for many years fought against racism, violation of the rights of workers and employees, and government corruption, spoke about a discussion that took place at one of the leading Western universities following a lecture he had delivered there. Young people, from student to professor, argued that freedom of speech is incompatible with social justice because it cannot fully guarantee the rights of LGBT people, migrants and non-white minorities. Glasser, who had fought for the equal rights in Western society for many years, was frightened to see Western democracy dying right before his eyes.
In a modern society freedom of speech cannot be absolute. Defamation, personal, racial, gender and other insults are inadmissible. There are courts that are supposed to protect the rights of those offended, but no one can deprive a person of the right to express his or her opinion on such issues as illegal migration, the destruction of the education system, the tax system or when heterosexuals serve in the army alongside representatives of sexual minorities. Or maybe already can? In the midst of the pandemic, freedom of speech has become lopsided – the “cancellation culture” has led to calls for violence against members of the successful middle class, who in turn are no longer able to raise their voice in defense of their rights. What is even more outrageous is that this was done to please the old political elites … mostly white and very wealthy.
However, while previously high-profile cases such as Watergate, the Bill Clinton sex scandal and others got in the media spotlight leading to the conviction and often impeachment of politicians, in the course of the past five years the situation has changed. Facts are no longer needed. Investigative journalism has been replaced by fakes and unfounded statements. Certain political forces clearly benefit from this new reality. Democrats support BLM, LGBT people and migrants. Therefore, any accusation against them is a lie, a manifestation of racism and intolerance. Any evidence presented was fabricated in Moscow and Beijing and handed over to Trump. All media outlets that do not support Democrats are lying.
As a result, Joe Biden’s supporters got a powerful trump card – almost complete impunity. Supporting corporations such as Amazon can exploit their employees any way they like, but any complaints about their inhuman work schedule is a provocation by the Trumpists, because Amazon is a company where gender equality is respected and they have diversity directors. The situation at the largest startups in Silicon Valley, the main sponsors of the Democratic Party, is the same.
Accordingly, any accusations against the party of the current President cannot be considered objectively – after all, these are all lies told by the enemies of minorities. Consider, for example, the 2016 scandal with $84 million, which, thanks to Hillary Clinton, replenished the Democrats’ election coffers, in violation of the law on maximum party funding. Trump has long tried to initiate an official investigation of all this, but without success. The same with the scandal surrounding Biden Jr., for whom his father secured a cushy job on the board of Ukraine’s Burisma Company with a monthly salary of a hefty $50,000. When the Ukrainian opposition tried to initiate an investigation into this, Joe Biden simply replaced the country’s disloyal Prosecutor General. Moreover, he brags about it in his public speeches. And brag he certainly can, because changing the prosecutor in a semi-colony is a truly democratic way to go. Attempts by Trump supporters to prove that the Bidens’ activities were illegal have failed despite all the evidence corroborating the charge. The “Democrats” simply said it was a fake.
The same about the Clintons, whose lobbying structures worked hard defending the Bangladeshi banker Muhammad Yunus accused of corruption. Hillary Clinton personally threatened the Prime Minister of Bangladesh. The news about this appeared in the media, but there were no investigations either. Biden, just like the Clintons and other leading Democrats are all hereditary politicians representing the top tier of American society. Most of the Democratic party leaders came to power from Ivy League universities, not from street protests or black neighborhoods. However, it was they who initiated and spearheaded the LGBT and BLM protests, launched the “cancellation culture” and are now enjoying the fruits of their labors. Getting into their closed club is no easy matter. It is easier to leave it, as did Bernie Sanders, a popular politician but a bit too independent for the taste of the Democratic Party bosses. As a result, he was forced to pull out of the presidential race.
At first glance it may seem that Western’s Big Business has nothing to gain from protests and new cultural codes, which theoretically make it possible to declare a boycott of any company. However, while stores in many cities were being burglarized and calls were being made to abolish the “white privileges,” Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Instacart, Postmates and other corporations spent more than $200 million to push new and tighter labor legislation through the courts, thus dealing another blow to the middle class, which now pays for everything. By the way, this whole process was set in motion by Tony West, the son-in-law of the new Vice-President Kamala Harris, the first woman of color in this post, who comes out as a champion of minority rights.
So, let the protests and all the noise being made about the “oppressed minorities” not fool you. This only makes the “Democratic Party” inviolable, so welcome to the beautiful new West – a one-party system with “right” freedom of speech. If you want more evidence and examples to arrive to the same conclusions as did the author of this article, spend a few minutes watching a good video that is going viral every day:
Batko Milacic is an independent analyst who lives in Podgorica (capital of Montenegro), he is 30 years old. He graduated history at University of Montenegro and his graduate thesis was: “Foreign Policy of Russia from 1905 to 1917”. He has been doing analytics for years, writing in English and Serbian about the situation in the Balkans and Europe. He participated in several seminars for young journalists, organized in the Balkans.
CNN’s recent report that the US’ security services are considering contracting the services of so-called “researchers” as a legal workaround for spying on average Americans confirms that Biden’s dystopian hellhole is rapidly moving in the direction of establishing a “Cyber Stasi” for suppressing all digital dissent against the Democrats as they continuing consolidating their de facto one-party rule of the country.
The dystopian hellhole that I predicted would become a fait accompli following Biden’s confirmation as President by the Electoral College is quickly becoming a reality after CNN’s recent report that the US’ security services are considering contracting the services of so-called “researchers” as a legal workaround for spying on average Americans. According to the outlet, these ostensibly independent contractors would be charged with infiltrating the social media circles of white supremacists and other supposedly terrorist-inclined domestic forces within the country. The report claims that the intent is to “help provide a broad picture of who was perpetuating the ‘narratives’ of concern”, after which “the FBI could theoretically use that pool of information to focus on specific individuals if there is enough evidence of a potential crime to legally do so”.
In other words, the US’ security services essentially want to establish a “Cyber Stasi” of “fellow” citizens who spy on one another and produce purported “evidence” of “potential crimes” for “justifying” the FBI’s “legal” investigations. CNN quoted an unnamed senior intelligence official who asked, “What do you do about ideology that’s leading to violence? Do you have to wait until it leads to violence?”, thereby hinting that this initiative might likely be exploited to stop so-called “pre-crime”, or crimes before they occur. Put another way, even those average Americans who practice their constitutionally enshrined right to the freedom of speech to peacefully dissent against the Democrats’ consolidation of their de facto one-party rule of the country might find themselves targeted by the security services depending on how the contracted “researchers” spin their words.
It should be remembered that even Americans’ constitutionally enshrined right to the freedom of assembly is nowadays under scrutiny depending on the stated reason behind their planned peaceful protests if they dare to propose gathering in opposition to last year’s alleged voter fraud for example. The events of 6 January were exploited as a game-changer by the security services in order to restrict Americans’ freedoms. It’s neither here nor there whether one sincerely believes that the election was stolen since the purpose in pointing these double standards out is to prove that average Americans are being politically discriminated against with the implied threat of legal intimidation when it comes to exercising their constitutional rights about “politically incorrect” issues of concern to them.
Although the reported purpose of the “Cyber Stasi” is to preemptively thwart emerging domestic terrorist plots, it can’t be discounted that the combination of political Russophobia and “mission creep” will combine to create additional objectives such as stopping the spread of so-called “Russian disinformation” throughout society. That phrase is actually just a euphemism for “politically incorrect” facts and interpretations thereof that contradict the Democrats’ official narrative of events, being intentionally vague enough to function as an umbrella under which to cover practically every alternative understanding possible. With this in mind, those average Americans who dare to share something “politically incorrect” – even in private chats amidst the presence of “deep state” infiltrators (“researchers” employed as “Cyber Stasi”) – might be targeted by the FBI.
The end effect is that the US’ security services might succeed in suppressing most expressions of digital dissent in the coming future. They’re inspired to do so by the ruling administration which wants to impose a syncretic system of economic leftism and social fascism onto the country. It’s not “communist” in the sense that the economic vision is more akin to state capitalism than traditional Marxism, but the social impact will certainly mirror that of East Germany during its darkest days of Stasi rule, though that’s precisely why many critics casually describe it as “communist” despite that not being economically correct (at least not yet). The US’ “researcher”-contracted “Cyber Stasi” will have a chilling effect how Americans interact with one another from here on out, all in order for Biden’s dystopian hellhole to avoid the fate of its predecessor, East Germany.
It may have been President Bill Clinton who once justified his wrecking of the Balkans by observing that liberal interventionism to bring about regime change is a good thing because “Democracies don’t start wars with other democracies.” Or it might have been George W. Bush talking about Iraq or even Barack Obama justifying his destruction of Libya or his interventions relating to Syria and Ukraine. The principle is the same when the world’s only superpower decides to throw its weight around.
The idea that pluralistic democracies are somehow less inclined to go to war has in fact been around for a couple of hundred years and was first elaborated by Immanuel Kant in an essay entitled “Perpetual Peace” that was published in 1795. Kant may have been engaging in some tongue in cheek as the French relatively liberal republic, the “Directory,” was at that time preparing to invade Italy to spread the revolution. The presumption that “democracies” are somehow more pacific than other forms of government is based on the principle that it is in theory more difficult to convince an entire nation of the desirability of initiating armed conflict compared to what happens in a monarchy where only one man or woman has to be persuaded.
The American Revolution, which preceded Kant, was clearly not fought on the principle that kings are prone to start wars while republics are not, and, indeed, the “republican” United States has nearly always been engaged in what most observers would consider to be wars throughout its history. And a review of the history of the European wars of the past two hundred years suggests that it is also overly simple to suggest that democracies eschew fighting each other. There are, after all, many different kinds of governments, most with constitutions, many of which are quite politically liberal even if they are headed by a monarch or oligarchy. They have found themselves on different sides in the conflicts that have troubled Europe since the time of Napoleon.
And wars are often popular, witness the lines of enthusiastic young men lining up to enlist when the Triple Entente took on the Germans and Austrians to begin the First World War. So, war might be less likely among established democracies, but it should be conceded that the same national interests that drive a dictatorship can equally impact on a more pluralistic form of government, particularly if the media “the territory of lies” is in on the game. One recalls how the Hearst newspaper chain created the false narrative that resulted in the U.S.’s first great overseas imperial venture, the Spanish-American War. More recently, the mainstream media in the United States has supported the disastrous invasion of Iraq, the destabilization of Syria, and the regime change in Ukraine, Afghanistan and Libya.
So now we Americans have the ultimate liberal democratic regime about to resume power, possibly with a majority in both houses of Congress to back up the presidency. But something is missing in that the campaigning Democrats never talked about a peace dividend, and now that they are returning the airwaves are notable for Senators like Mark Warner asking if the alleged Russian hacking of U.S. computers is an “act of war?” Senator Dick Durbin has no doubts on the issue, having declared it “virtually a declaration of war.” And Joe Biden appears to be on board, considering punishment for Moscow. Are we about to experience Russiagate all over? In fact, belligerency is not unique to Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo. War is in the air, and large majority of the Democratic Party recently voted for the pork-bloated National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), endorsing a policy of U.S. global military dominance for the foreseeable future. If you are an American who would like to see national health insurance, a large majority among Democrats, forget about it!
But more to the point, the Democrats have a worse track record than do the Republicans when it comes to starting unnecessary wars. Donald Trump made the point of denouncing “stupid wars” when he was running for office and has returned to that theme also in the past several weeks, though he did little enough to practice what he preached until it was too late and too little. Clinton notoriously intervened in the Balkans and bombed a pharmaceuticals factory in Sudan and a cluster of tents in Afghanistan to draw attention away from his affair with Monica Lewinsky. His secretary of State Madeleine Albright thought the death of 500,000 Iraqi children due to U.S. sanctions was “worth it.” Barack Obama tried to destroy Syria, interfered in Ukraine and succeeded in turning Libya into an ungovernable mess while compiling a “kill list” and assassinating U.S. citizens overseas using drones.
If you want to go back farther, Woodrow Wilson involved the U.S. in World War One while Franklin D. Roosevelt connived at America’s entry into the Second World War. FDR’s successor Harry Truman dropped two atomic bombs on civilian targets in Japan, killing as many as 200,000. Japan was preparing to surrender, which was known to the White House and Pentagon, making the first use of nuclear weapons completely unnecessary and one might call it a “war crime.” Truman also got involved in Korea and John F. Kennedy started the intervention in Vietnam, though there are indications that he was planning to withdraw from it when he was killed. The only Democratic president who failed to start one or more wars was the much-denigrated Jimmy Carter.
So, it is Joe Biden’s turn at the wheel. One has to question the philosophy of government that he brings with him as he has never found a war that he didn’t support and several of his cabinet choices are undeniably hardliners on what they refer to as national security. The lobbies are also putting pressure on Biden to do the “right thing,” which for them is to continue an interventionist foreign policy. The Israeli connected Foundation for the Defense Democracies (FDD) has not surprisingly issued a collection of essays that carries the title “Defending Forward: Securing America by Projecting Military Power Abroad.” If one had to bet at this point “defending forward” will be what the Biden Administration is all about. And oh, by the way, as democracies don’t go to war with democracies, it will only be the designated bad guys who will be on the receiving end of America’s military might. Or at least that is how the tale will be told.
TEHRAN – An American professor says that Electoral College, which is partly rooted in slavery, is a completely undemocratic institution.
“The electoral college, which is partly rooted in slavery, is a thoroughly undemocratic institution and makes a mockery of democracy in America,” Robert C. Smith, a professor of political science at San Francisco State University, tells the Tehran Times.
Despite its long history of denying people the right to vote based on race and gender, today America portrays itself as the world’s leading democracy.
Americans voted on Tuesday for the presidential election. The incumbent president, Donald Trump from the Republican Party, faced Democratic rival vice president Joe Biden. But it seems that the elections would not run smoothly this time given the potential threat to the smooth running of the vote.
Some Americans believe that antiquated and outdated constitutional institutions like the Electoral College can undermine the voices of ordinary people.
In the 2016 presidential election, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton garnered more national votes; however, she lost to Trump due to Electoral College.
Professor Smith believes that such an electoral system should have been abolished before.
“It should have long ago been abolished, but it takes an amendment to the Constitution which it makes virtually impossible to abolish, given the supermajorities required in Congress and the states,” Smith says, adding, “It may, along with the unrepresentative Senate, pose a major threat to the legitimacy of the democracy and a system crisis in America.”
“The Electoral College, which is partly rooted in slavery, makes a mockery of democracy in America.”
Asked about some factors that call into question whether America is a democracy, the San Francisco State University professor notes that the election does not call into question democracy in America, “but the issues of voter suppression, Trump’s unwillingness to say he will accept the outcome of the election if he loses, his unwillingness to assure a peaceful transfer of power, the possibility the outcome will not be known on election night, the prospect of Supreme Court intervention all make this an unusual, controversial and messy election, but the American-such as it is- is not in question.”
Describing the Supreme Court lawyers as “politicians in robes,” Smith argues that the court has a role in U.S. elections inconsistent with democratic principles, and more so than the historical normal, is highly partisan.
Some restrictions were put on voters in Texas, a move which got some experts to say that battle playing across America is, in some ways, a continuation of a centuries-long fight over access to the franchise.
Last month, Texas’s governor, Greg Abbott, a Republican, abruptly issued an order that limited each county in the state to offer one ballot drop box.
In this regard, the American academic believes that “what happens in Texas and elsewhere in the nation is part of a long, sordid history of vote denial and suppression in the U.S., which has become increasingly blatant in recent elections.”
Overall, it seems that the Tuesday election did not proceed as was predicted, and no one knows what will happen.
However, Smith emphasizes that “the polls are generally accurate and trustworthy; they accurately predicted the popular vote outcome in 2016.”
Underneath it all, many see a Machiavellian approach by the ruling party. It wants to preserve power by making it harder for certain groups like minorities, young people, and the poor to vote.
“Whenever the government of the United States shall break up, it will probably be in consequence of a false direction having been given to public opinion. This is the weak point of our defenses, and the part to which the enemies of the system will direct all their attacks. Opinion can be so perverted as to cause the false to seem true; the enemy, a friend, and the friend, an enemy; the best interests of the nation to appear insignificant, and the trifles of moment; in a word, the right the wrong, the wrong the right. In a country where opinion has sway, to seize upon it, is to seize upon power. As it is a rule of humanity that the upright and well-intentioned are comparatively passive, while the designing, dishonest, and selfish are the most untiring in their efforts, the danger of public opinion’s getting a false direction is four-fold, since few men think for themselves.”
-James Fenimore Cooper
Democracy is something that has been completely taken for granted here in the West. There is an ongoing triumph over past laurels, without paying heed to the road we have strayed from. We criticize others for failing to uphold a standard we consider ourselves the leaders of, but democracy is not something simply “acquired” and subsequently “retained,” it is not a “possession.” This is because a system of democracy is at every moment of its existence defined by the character of its citizenry. Democracy only exists if it is upheld, and if a citizenry fails to do so, it renders itself defenseless to an ever-creeping tyranny.
For such a “creeping tyranny,” control is conditional to whether the citizenry is satisfied with an ever-growing “illusion of democracy.” Such a construct needs to give its subjects the impression that they have “free choice” in what shapes their future and their way of life, including: who will be their “friends” and who will be their “foes.”
And thus, War has always depended on a reliable system to spread its propaganda.
The Arthashastra written by Chankya (350-283 BCE) who was chief advisor to the Emperor Chandragupta (the first ruler of the Mauryan Empire) discusses propaganda and how to disperse and apply it in warfare. It is one of the oldest accounts of the essentialism of propaganda in warfare.
Propaganda is vital in times of war because it is absolutely imperative that the people, who often need to make the greatest sacrifices and suffer the most, believe that such a war is justified and that such a war will provide them security. To the degree that they believe this to be true, the greater the degree of sacrifice and suffering they are willing to submit themselves for said “promised security”.
It is crucial that when the people look at the “enemy” they see something sub-human, for if they recognise that said “enemy” has in fact humanity, the jig is up so to speak.
And thus we are bombarded day after day, hour after hour of reminders as to why the “enemy” is not human like us, not compassionate like us, not patient, just and wise like us.
No doubt, war has been a necessary response when tyranny has formed an army to fight for its cause, but I would put forth that most wars have been rather unnecessary and downright manipulated for the design of a small group of people.
During WWI, on Dec 25th 1914, something rather unexpected occurred and a series of widespread unofficial ceasefires along the Western Front took place between the French/British soldiers and the German soldiers. Some even ventured into “no man’s land”, given its name since none left it alive, to mingle with the “enemy” and exchange food and souvenirs. There were joint burial ceremonies and prisoner swaps. A game of football took place as well. It is said that these truces were not unique to the Christmas period but that they were much more widespread during the holiday season.
These fraternisations would understandably make it quite difficult to return to combat against one another…for no apparently good reason. Some units needed to be relocated since they had developed friendships with the opposing side and now refused to fight them.
The lesson was quickly learned and propaganda was heavily pumped down the throats of the Allied countries, and by the course of just a few years, they no longer viewed the Germans as human.
The Battle For Your Mind
“Politicians, Priests, and psychiatrists often face the same problem: how to find the most rapid and permanent means of changing a man’s belief…The problem of the doctor and his nervously ill patient, and that of the religious leader who sets out to gain and hold new converts, has now become the problem of whole groups of nations, who wish not only to confirm certain political beliefs within their boundaries, but to proselytize the outside world.”
– William Sargant “Battle of the Mind”
Mass propaganda is the very reason why in this so-called “age of information”, we are more confused and divided from each other than ever…
It had been commonly thought in the past, and not without basis, that tyranny could only exist on the condition that the people were kept illiterate and ignorant of their oppression. To recognise that one was “oppressed” meant they must first have an idea of what was “freedom”, and if one were allowed the “privilege” to learn how to read, this discovery was inevitable.
If education of the masses could turn the majority of a population literate, it was thought that the higher ideas, the sort of “dangerous ideas” that Mustapha Mond for instance expresses in “The Brave New World”, would quickly organise the masses and revolution against their “controllers” would be inevitable. In other words, knowledge is freedom, and you cannot enslave those who learn how to “think”.
However, it hasn’t exactly played out that way has it?
The greater majority of us are free to read whatever we wish to, in terms of the once “forbidden books”, such as those listed by The Index Librorum Prohibitorum (1). We can read any of the writings that were banned in “The Brave New World”, notably the works of Shakespeare which were named as absolutely dangerous forms of “knowledge”.
We are now very much free to “educate” ourselves on the very “ideas” that were recognised by tyrants of the past as the “antidote” to a life of slavery. And yet, today, there is a fear of that very thing, that to “know” will label you an outcast from a “healthy” society. That the simple desire to know is the beginning of rebellion.
It is recognised, albeit superficially, that who controls the past, controls the present and thereby the future. George Orwell’s book “1984”, hammers this as the essential feature that allows the Big Brother apparatus to maintain absolute control over fear, perception and loyalty to the Party cause, and yet despite its popularity, there still remains today a lack of interest in actually informing oneself about the past.
What does it matter anyway, if the past is controlled and rewritten to suit the present? As the Big Brother interrogator O’Brien states to Winston, “We, the Party, control all records, and we control all memories. Then we control the past, do we not? [And thus, are free to rewrite it as we choose…]”
Of course, we are not in the same situation as Winston…we are much better off. We can study and learn about the “past” if we so desire, unfortunately, it is a choice that many take for granted. And thus, by our failure to ask the right questions and seek the appropriate answers, we find ourselves increasingly in the unsettling position of a Winston…we are enslaved by the very lack of our own will.
In Orwell’s “1984”, there are three main super states in the world: Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia that are in one combination or another constantly at war with each other and have been so for the last 25 years.
In the case of Winston, he has only known Oceania (the British commonwealths and U.S.), he knows essentially nothing of either Eurasia or Eastasia, except that sometimes Oceania is at war with Eurasia and sometimes it is at war with Eastasia. In fact, even this memory, that the enemy is not constant, is not something Winston is supposed to recollect or acknowledge. Just by doing this very thing, he is committing a “thoughtcrime”.
Winston’s experience begs the questions, if one were born into a fascist, totalitarian state would they know it? Of course, the state itself would not describe itself as such. How would you be able to compare your “freedom” with the “oppression” of the enemy, when all you were given was what the state chose to give to you?
How do you know that what has come to shape your convictions, your beliefs, your fears really belong to you, and were not placed there by another?
We are all very sensitive to this unsettling question because ironically, that has also been placed in us. It was what started this whole business of “mind control”, you see, it had to be done…for our “protection”.
Warfare in the 21st Century
For to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the pinnacle of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the pinnacle of skill.
– Sun Tzu
There a many different forms of warfare, but namely there is warfare that exists in the physical domain of aggression vs defense and warfare that exists in the mental domain of ideas.
The majority of tyrants from the ancient times to present day, have always had a network of powerful people behind them (whether they were aware of it or not) that opened up a path for them to sit on the throne so to speak. For example, we now know that there was a very direct support of Hitler coming from the Bank of England amongst other very influential institutions. That is, Hitler did not arise to power ‘naturally’ or by his mere merit.
The desperation of that economic environment in Germany was predictably formulated as a direct consequence of the Treaty of Versailles which was essentially a death sentence to the German people. And Hitler who had started to make a small name for himself was selected and endorsed as the ‘face’ of what had already been decided would be the fate of Germany.
Wars have almost always been the result of funding and organising from powerful groups with geopolitical interests, often of empire, who create an environment of disinformation and desperation amongst the people through economic and military warfare along with color revolutions.
However, once there was the creation of nuclear bombs, geopolitical warfare was changed forever.
Though we still use much of the same old strategies today, war is ever more located on the plane of ideas, and along with this the ever increasing focus on the manipulation of information and the populace’s perspective of who is good and who is bad.
The war that needs to be fought against the present tyranny is thus increasingly a mental war. In the case of the populace, all together they hold more power than they realise. The real crisis of today’s western thinking is that the people have forgotten how to think. Attention spans have gone down drastically along with a functional vocabulary. People are becoming more and more dominated by image based messages rather than content that requires more than a 10 minute attention span. Articles in the news keep getting shorter and shorter because people seemingly cannot be bothered with too much reading. Along with the serious decline in reading in replacement for quick entertainment (more successful than any book burning in history), people no longer bother to work for a comprehensive viewpoint. Information becomes an annoying barrage of ad campaigns, each yelling louder and more frequently than the other.
The solutions to our problems such as the oncoming economic collapse (in case you haven’t noticed we are doing everything the same as pre-2008), have their solutions in what Russia and China are presenting.
The initiation of war has almost always been presented as a false ‘necessity’, that is in response to the dominating geopolitical ‘balance’, which is basically meant to service the present system of empire, and the erroneous belief in zero sum game.
However, the idea that humans exist in a zero sum game, doomed to battle forever over a diminishing return of resources, was disproven time and again in modern history through the application of successful principles of national political economy. Notable examples of which include Colbert’s dirigisme of France’s 17th century (later revived during the presidency of Charles De Gaulle), the Hamiltonian system of America as exemplified by Abraham Lincoln’s Greenbacks, FDR’s New Deal, and JFK’s space program as well as its most recent expression of China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
This system understands that fast money is parasitical and acts in direct opposition to the long-term investments required for projects that will revolutionise a nation’s infrastructure, including science-driver programs.
That debt for such long-term projects is not qualitatively the same as the present debt we see accruing today, and that debt towards investing for the future will always yield a higher return than the cost over time. This is why debt towards long-term investment on infrastructure and science driver projects, such as space exploration, will always be sustainable with a massive return quantitatively and qualitatively. Whereas, the gambling of fast money will very predictably lead to a collapse as was clearly indicated by the 2008 financial crisis, and which insanely has yet to be addressed with a serious bank reform.
The higher battle ground is being fought on the plane of ideas and which proposed ‘new system’ will replace the current collapsing one we are presently in. On the one side the hegemonic rule of a one world government who thinks that they can use force and oppression to rule and on the other side a multi-polar system of cooperating nation states committed to progress that will offer a real qualitative return for the future.
The Art of Doublethink
“WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH”
George Orwell’s “1984” (Big Brother Mantra)
A truly immersive system of propaganda, which necessarily will be full of contradictions to the truth, absolutely requires that its subjects are compliant with “doublethink,” that is, the ability to accept two contradictory thoughts in your mind without acknowledging that they are in fact opposites.
Orwell identifies this under two forms of “doublethink”, which are “crimestop” and “blackwhite”. “Crimestop” meaning the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of a dangerous thought.
Orwell further states “It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments…and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. Crimestop in short, means protective stupidity.”
“Blackwhite”, is the act of contradiction of plain facts, applied to an opponent. And when applied to the Party, it is the willingness to say black is white when the Party discipline demands it so.
As Orwell describes it “it means the ability to believe that black is white, and more, to know that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary. This demands a continuous alteration of the past…The alteration of the past is necessary for two reasons…The subsidiary reason is that…he must be cut off from the past, just as he must be cut off from foreign countries, because it is necessary for him to believe that he is better off… [the precautionary reason] by far the more important reason for the readjustment of the past is the need to safeguard the infallibility of the Party.”
Orwell continues “The splitting of the intelligence which the Party requires of its members, and which is more easily achieved in an atmosphere of war, is now almost universal, but the higher up the ranks one goes, the more marked it becomes. It is precisely in the Inner Party that war hysteria and hatred of the enemy are strongest.”
That is, it is the Inner Party members who are the most indoctrinated, the best at inducing “mind control” or “doublethink” on themselves, and at the same time believe that it is the best and right thing to do.
Orwell describes “doublethink” thus: “The process has to be conscious , or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence guilt…To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies – all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink.”
What many fail to grasp when reading “1984” is that Orwell is not only the character Winston, he is also the character O’Brien. He is the Outer Party member-turned-revolutionary, and he is the Inner Party disciplinarian.
He is simultaneously the tormentor-programmer as well as the tormented-programmed.
Winston eventually breaks and releases the one thing that kept him human, his love and loyalty to Julia. In the end, an announcement is made that Oceania is ever nearer to winning the war and Winston looks up at a large poster of Big Brother and cries gin-filled tears of joy and relief, for he had finally come to love Big Brother.
He had become O’Brien.
So Who is the Said “Enemy”?
The enemy is our lesser selves.
Our most base fears, desires and obsessions. The voice that whispers in our ears telling us not to believe in anything genuine or honest, that the world we live in will ultimately destroy itself and thus it is all about looking out for number one. That it is our fate to be the playthings of higher powers.
This is the voice of a prisoner of Plato’s cave, neck shackled and looking at only shadows on a wall. This is not reality. This is the voice of someone who has been enslaved for most of their life. The voice of someone who has become so disempowered that they wholly accept whatever ugly condition is imposed upon them and will even work to defend it as necessary.
There is a way out of all of this, but you will have to become an optimist in order to see the solution.
“We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
– Abraham Lincoln
Footnote:
The Index Librorum Prohibitorum was a list of forbidden books, which were judged to be dangerous to the faith and morals of Roman Catholics, and had a suspicious gravitation towards works by platonic humanists. Among the banned works would include those of Dante, Erasmus and all of Machiavelli’s books. For more refer to my paper on this subject.
The author can be reached at cynthiachung@tutanota.com
The Venezuelan Social Program launched in 2011 by late President Hugo Chavez and continued by Nicolas Maduro has achieved its 2019 goal by delivering 3 million units.
¡Hermoso Momento! Hoy #26Dic cumplimos con la meta fijada por nuestro Comandante Chávez: construir 3 millones de viviendas para la alegría y la felicidad del pueblo venezolano. Bendito sea el día en que nació la #GMVV que va rumbo a las 5 millones de viviendas y mucho más.
“What a beautiful moment! On Dec. 26 we met the goal set by our Commander Chavez: to build 3 million dwellings for the joy and happiness of the Venezuelan people. Blessed is the day the Venezuelan Great Housing Mission (GMVV) was born, which aims to deliver 5 million homes and much more.”
Besides the oil reserves, Venezuela has that makes the US interested in exporting its ‘export version of democracy’, the social policies of this country are what makes the junta in the decision making positions of the USA and their puppet politicians mad. And now they have a real estate developer to manipulate in the White House.
The 2020 goal of the Venezuelan social program is to deliver an additional 500,000 units and by 2025 to complete 5 million units. Meanwhile, the US-installed fake president puppet Guido is pushing for the privatization of the state’s assets, in other words, to sell the properties of the Venezuelan people cheap to the same ever greedy junta in control of the West.
Imagine the country under the severe blockade and sanctions by the US and its stooges is building for its people affordable housing, what is the excuse for the super-rich and superpower countries not to do so? Ask your politicians.
Syria is another example, I’ve shared here a couple of times updates on the affordable housing program by the Syrian government, even under the vicious war of terror waged by the US and stooges all over the country, the Syrian Housing Program built 40,000 units during the war!
Housing is a basic human need for every human being, and it comes immediately after food, health, security, and electrical power and these are the main sectors the US and its stooges target in their economic and cross-border terrorism and wars. They’re helped in these wars by the corrupt officials in neighboring countries who fail to deliver the basics to their people.
El informe en español:
El Programa Social Venezolano lanzado en 2011 por el fallecido presidente Hugo Chávez y continuado por Nicolás Maduro ha logrado su objetivo para 2019 al entregar 3 millones de unidades.
Además de las reservas de petróleo, Venezuela tiene que hace que los Estados Unidos estén interesados en exportar su “versión de exportación de la democracia”, las políticas sociales de este país son lo que enloquece a la junta en la toma de decisiones de los Estados Unidos y sus políticos títeres. Y ahora tienen un desarrollador de bienes raíces para manipular en la Casa Blanca.
El objetivo para 2020 del programa social venezolano es entregar 500,000 unidades adicionales y para 2025 completar 5 millones de unidades. Mientras tanto, el falso presidente títere instalado por Estados Unidos, Guido, está presionando para la privatización de los activos del estado, en otras palabras, para vender las propiedades del pueblo venezolano a bajo precio a la misma junta codiciosa que controla Occidente.
Imagínese que el país bajo el severo bloqueo y las sanciones de los EE. UU. Y sus secuaces está construyendo viviendas asequibles para su pueblo, ¿cuál es la excusa para que los países súper ricos y superpotencias no lo hagan? Pregúntale a tus políticos.
Siria es otro ejemplo, he compartido aquí un par de actualizaciones sobre el programa de vivienda asequible del gobierno sirio, incluso bajo la cruel guerra de terror librada por los EE. UU. Y los títeres en todo el país, el Programa de Vivienda Sirio construyó 40,000 unidades ¡durante la guerra!
La vivienda es una necesidad humana básica para todos los seres humanos, y viene inmediatamente después de la alimentación, la salud, la seguridad y la energía eléctrica, y estos son los principales sectores a los que se dirigen los EE. UU. Y sus secuaces en su terrorismo y guerras económicas y transfronterizas. Son ayudados en estas guerras por los funcionarios corruptos en los países vecinos que no pueden entregar lo básico a su pueblo.
Notice something important about the hoopla regarding President’s Trump withholding of U.S. foreign aid to Ukraine while he was requesting Ukrainian officials to investigate Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden for possible corruption: Nobody in Washington, D.C., or within the establishment press is questioning the concept of foreign aid itself. Foreign aid has become such an established and accepted way of inducing foreign regimes to comply with the dictates of U.S. officials that the thought of ending it entirely doesn’t even enter the minds of Republicans, Democrats, or member of the mainstream media.
But questioning foreign aid itself is precisely what the American people should be doing. Not only does foreign aid contribute to the out-of-control federal spending and debt that is hanging over the American people (with the debt now at $22.6 trillion and climbing), it also constitutes one of the most evil and immoral practices of the U.S. government.
Case in point: Egypt. Notwithstanding the fact that the country is governed by one of the most brutal military dictatorships in the world, the U.S. government delivers $1.3 billion in military aid to Egypt’s military dictatorship every year.
Like the United States, Egypt’s government is based on the concept of a national-security state, which is a type of governmental system in which a vast and permanent military-intelligence establishment plays a major role in society. In Egypt, that role is much more pronounced and predominant than it is here in the United States. Here in the United States, the power and influence that the Pentagon, CIA, and NSA wield are indirect and often hidden. In Egypt the military-intelligence establishment wields direct control of the government and the economy.
To get a sense of how Egypt’s national-security state operates, think back to the national-security state system of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, who U.S. national-security state officials helped install into power in 1973. Pinochet was an unelected military dictator who ruled Chile with an iron fist. His forces rounded up tens of thousands of people who were considered to be threats to “national security” and tortured, raped, or killed them.
Egypt’s military dictator, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who, like Pinochet, took power in a coup, holds a presidential election, but everyone knows that it is a sham. For all practical purposes, el-Sisi stands in the same position as Pinochet — as an unelected dictator.
Moreover, el-Sisi is every bit as brutal as Pinochet was. For example, in the past couple of weeks demonstrations have broken out in Egypt against the corruption within el-Sisi’s dictatorial regime. El-Sisi’s forces have immediately gone into action to ensure that things do not get out of hand. So far, they have arrested some 2,000 protestors. According to an article in Aljazeera,
In Cairo, security forces closed off entrances to Tahrir Square, the hub of the 2011 uprising that toppled former leader Hosni Mubarak. There was a heavy police presence around the square and at some junctions in the city centre…. At Cairo’s Al-Fateh mosque, a starting point for protests in 2011, dozens of police, some in uniform and others in plain clothes with masks and large guns, stood near the exit as prayers finished. At least 20 security vehicles were stationed around the mosque or patrolling nearby. Security forces also stepped up their presence in main squares in major cities and plainclothes police have been checking motorists’ and pedestrians’ mobile phones for political content…. In a brief statement on Thursday, Egypt’s Ministry of Interior warned it would “confront any attempt to destabilise social peace in a firm and decisive way.”
Moreover, Egypt’s criminal-justice system mirrors that of the Pentagon and the CIA in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba — indefinite detention, torture, denial of due process of law, denial of effective assistance of counsel, and denial of trial by jury.
There is also the economic aspect of Egypt’s national-security state. The economic system is based on the concept of socialist central planning, with the military-intelligence establishment doing the planning. Not surprisingly, this socialist system has brought economic impoverishment to Egyptian citizens, while enriching the regime’s military-intelligence personnel. Dismal economic conditions and corruption within the regime are partly what is motivating the protesters.
Guess who is enabling this tyranny and socialism. Yes, the U.S. government, with its $1.3 billion in annual delivery of military armaments, which, like all U.S. foreign aid, is nothing more than a bribe to ensure that el-Sisi remains loyal to the U.S. government. At the risk of belaboring the obvious, those military armaments provide Egypt’s tyrants with the ability to suppress or deter dissent within the country. They also provide a means by which the military-intelligence establishment is able to use domestic tax revenues to feather their own nests.
The U.S. government’s partnership with and support of Egypt’s regime should not surprise us. Since the U.S. government was converted from a limited-government republic to a national-security state after World War II, U.S. officials have demonstrated an affinity for foreign national-security states. That’s why they installed Pinochet, a military general, into power. Twenty years before their Chilean regime-change operation, U.S. national-security state officials destroyed democratic systems in Iran and Guatemala and replaced them with national-security states and tyrants. Before the Persian Gulf War, the U.S. government partnered and allied with Saddam Hussein and his national-security state in Iraq. In the 2003 Iraq war, the U.S. government made certain that Iraq continued with a national-security state type of governmental system, albeit one with an elected pro-U.S. dictator. It did the same in Afghanistan after it invaded that country.
Just a few days ago, President Trump expressed the sentiment of America’s national-security state when he called el-Sisi a “great leader.” Trump, of course, has also expressed a love for the brutal, unelected communist dictator of North Korea’s national-security state.
Americans who are looking to Washington, D.C., to put America on the right track are looking in the wrong direction. The American people need to look inward, into themselves, into their consciences. That is the only way for people to recognize the moral and economic debauchery of foreign aid and, for that matter, the entire national-security state form of governmental structure. Once a critical mass of Americans comes to that realization, we will be on our way toward restoring sound moral, political, and economic principles to our land.
– يصحّ القول في نتائج الانتخابات النصفية للكونغرس الأميركي بمجلسيه، إن الرئيس الأميركي دونالد ترامب من الزاوية الإجرائية وقع بنصف خسارة، بفقدانه السيطرة على مطبخ التشريع الذي يمثله مجلس النواب، وقد بات بعهدة خصومه، والسيطرة على مجلس الشيوخ تمنح الفيتو على القوانين، كما هي الرئاسة، لكنها لا تمنح صلاحيات إطلاق مسار قانوني لولادة القوانين، ويمكن القول إن التسويات والمقايضات ستكون الطريق الإلزامي أمام الرئيس للتشريع، وكذلك يصحّ القول إن لهذا التغيير تأثيرات على السياسات الداخلية للرئيس ترامب أكثر مما يقيده في السياسات الخارجية، التي يشكل مجلس الشيوخ الجهة الوحيدة التي تشارك الرئيس نسبياً في رسم ضوابطها، لكن هذا كله وصف للحال الإجرائية بعيداً عن جوهر المعنى السياسي للانتخابات، في قلب الدينامية التي تمثلها الانتخابات في ترسيم توازنات وحركة اتجاهات الرأي العام، خصوصاً في الانتخابات النصفية، وبصورة أخصّ في مجلس النواب الذي يشهد إعادة تشكيله بالكامل، وقبل سنتين من المعركة الرئاسية.
– في المعنى السياسي للانتخابات، التي تمثّل أداة قياس للتوازنات الحاكمة بين الحزبين المتنافسين استعداداً للانتخابات الرئاسية، تكون العين دائماً على مجلس النواب، أولاً لأنه يُعاد انتخاب كامل أعضائه وليس مجرد ثلثه كما هو حال مجلس الشيوخ، وثانياً أن عدد النواب محدّد بالتناسب مع عدد الناخبين وليس مع عدد الولايات كحال مجلس الشيوخ، وثالثاً لأن الاستقرار سمة تقليدية في العديد من مواقع الشيوخ، والتحرك والتبدل ميدانهما الحيوي مواقع النواب، ورابعاً لأن طبيعة مهام كل من المجلسين مختلفة لجهة كون مجلس النواب هو مطبخ التشريع، وأغلب التشريع يتصل بالشأن الداخلي والحياتي للأميركيين، والتصويت لكل من مرشحي الحزبين يتربط غالباً بقضايا مثل التأمين الصحي، والإعفاء الضريبي، وسياسات الهجرة، والتمييز العنصري، وسواها من القضايا اليومية التي ترتسم وفق الأداء السياسي لكل من الحزبين تجاهها، صورة رمزية لكل منهما.
– الفوارق الكبيرة في عدد المقاعد التي حصدها الديمقراطيون في مجلس النواب عن تلك التي نالها الجمهوريون، والأهم نجاحهم بانتزاع هذه المقاعد من الجمهوريين وهم في سدّة الحكم، أمر تقليدي له سوابق الحدوث في الانتخابات الأميركية، لكن في الولاية الرئاسية الثانية لرئيس جمهوري، ومن المفارقات أن ذلك حدث عام 2006 على يد الديمقراطيين في الولاية الثانية للرئيس جورج بوش بزعامة نانسي بيلوسي للأغلبية الديمقراطية بمثل ما حدث في هذه الانتخابات، كما حصل بالمقابل أن كان عهد الرئيس السابق باراك اوباما مصحوباً بنتائج سلبية في الانتخابات النصفية في الولايتين الرئاسيتين، حيث كانت السيطرة لأغلبية جمهورية في المجلسين، لكن اللافت أنه منذ عهد الرئيس الأسبق الجمهوري رونالد ريغان والانتخابات النصفية التي تحمل خسارة لحزب الرئيس تتم في ظل تبلور زعامتين متنافستين على الرئاسة يقدّمهما كل من الحزبين، وهذا ليس هو الحال هذه المرة لتصير الانتخابات برمزيتها الرئاسية تصويتاً ضد الرئيس ترامب، كما أنّها تتم عموماً في ظل نسبة مشاركة لا تتعدى الـ 30 في المئة بينما تخطت الـ 47 في المئة هذه المرة، وقد حملت النتائج مؤشرات رمزية إضافية لكونها تحولاً في مزاج شعبي هام يتّصل بالانتخابات الرئاسية المقبلة، من نوع نسبة المشاركة النسائية العالية في الترشيح والاقتراع. وهي مشاركة احتجاجية على مواقف ترامب وسلوكه تجاه النساء، ولعله ذو مغزى كبير أن عدد النساء في المجلسين ارتفع قرابة 20 لكن الأهم أنه من بين 112 سيدة في مجلسي الكونغرس فاز الديمقراطيون بـ 95 وكانت حصة الجمهوريين 17 فقط، هذا إضافة لزيادة عدد الفائزين من أصول غير بيضاء في صفوف الديمقراطيين من لاتينيين وشرق أوسطيين ومسلمين وسود.
– يدرك الرئيس ترامب بعيداً عن المكابرة، أن نتائج الانتخابات في مجلس النواب كانت تعبيراً عن تحول هام يمثل ما وصفه الإعلام الأميركي، ولعب دوراً في صناعته، كموجة زرقاء ترفع بوجهه البطاقة الحمراء، ولعل يبلوسي التي تستعدّ لرئاسة مجلس النواب تنجح بإعادة رصّ صفوف حزبها لتقوده كمرشحة رئاسية بعد عامين، وهي ليست من جماعات المتّهمين بالفساد كحال هيلاري كلينتون، ولا من جماعات المشتبه بعلاقاتهم بحكام الخليج التي تتفتح عليها عيون الأميركيين اليوم، ومشهود لها قتالها لاعتماد سياسات عاقلة خارجياً من جهة، وسياسات اجتماعية معتدلة ومتزنة ووسطية تجاه قضايا الداخل الأميركي من جهة مقابلة.
The disturbing reality is when things change electorally in America, they remain the same.
Dirty business as usual always wins, the underlying reality of Tuesday’s midterm voting like all earlier “elections.”
Mark Twain was right saying: “If voting made a difference, they wouldn’t let us do it.”
Social justice champion Emma Goldman explained US “elections” the same way, saying: “If voting changed anything, it would be illegal.”
Ordinary people have no say over how they’re governed. America is a democracy in name only, the nation’s founders assuring things would be run by and for privileged interests exclusively.
The first US Supreme Court chief justice John Jay arrogantly said America should be run by the people who own it. The nation’s second president John Adams said the rich, well born and able alone should rule.
The notion of “Equal Justice Under Law” adorning the Supreme Court’s west facade is just a meaningless figure of speech – the way things have been in America from inception.
Political and judicial fairness don’t exist. Things are polar opposite under one-party rule with two money-controlled extremist right wings.
Independents are shut out. Dominant media are in cahoots with a hugely debauched system – self-serving governance by America’s privileged class, pretending to be otherwise.
The rights, needs, and welfare of ordinary people don’t matter. They’re consistently disserved and betrayed by Republicans and undemocratic Dems alike.
Democratic values and egalitarian principles exist in name only.
Executive, congressional, and judicial officials systematically lie, connive, and pretty much do what they please for their own self-interest.
With rare exceptions, they’re unprincipled, unethical, immoral and amoral, deferential to powerful monied interests alone.
It’s the longstanding American way. A previous article explained the results of Tuesday election as follows:
The only thing possibly positive about the outcome is if Dems retake one or both houses, they could block some of Trump’s most extremist policies – for political, not ideological, reasons only.
Both extremist wings of US duopoly governance are in lockstep on issues mattering most – notably the nation’s imperial agenda, its endless preemptive wars of aggression, supporting corporate empowerment, and cracking down hard on legitimate resistance for equity and justice denied ordinary people.
The main difference between Republicans and undemocratic Dems is rhetorical, not ideological.
No matter how often ordinary Americans are manipulated and betrayed, they’re easy marks to be duped again because they’re ill-informed and dis-informed by major media.
They’re victims of the fabricated official narrative and state-sponsored propaganda fed them by dominant print and electronic media.
They reflect what the late Gore Vidal and Studs Terkel called the United States of amnesia, public betrayal on vital issues passing through their collective consciousness like water through a sieve – understanding something today, erased from their memory later on.
For what it’s worth, below are the likely results of Tuesday “elections,” some races too close to call:
Undemocratic Dems are projected to retake control of the House with a 229 – 206 majority. (CNN estimated Dems winning 238 seats.)
Republicans are projected to retain Senate control by a 53 – 47 margin, gaining two seats over their pre-election 51 – 49 advantage. (CNN estimated a 52 – 48 GOP margin of victory.)
The only certainty about what’s ahead once the 116th Congress is sworn into office on January 3, 2019 is no change whatever in how America is governed on issues mattering most.
Same old, same old will continue like it always does. Americans believing otherwise will learn soon enough how they were duped again – like every time before.
Today’s America is the United States of I Don’t Care for its least privileged citizens and residents.
Federal, state, and local governance dismissively ignores what they care about most.
That’s what governance in America is all about – a fantasy democracy, not the real thing.
The only solution is nonviolent revolution for constructive change – achievable no other way, never through the ballot box assuring continuity, the way it’s been throughout US history.
A Final Comment
Former Massachusetts governor, GOP 2012 presidential aspirant Mitt Romney defeated Dem Jenny Wilson to succeed retiring Senator Orrin Hatch in Utah.
Some observers believe he’ll be more a Trump antagonist than supporter, during the 2016 campaign, saying:
“I’m going to do everything within the normal political bounds to make sure we don’t nominate Donald Trump. I think he’d be terribly unfit for office. He doesn’t have the temperament to be president.”
Based on his record as Massachusetts governor and alliance with GOP politics, he’ll surely go along with the dirty system like the vast majority in Congress.
US elections most often reflect no more than rearranging deck chairs on America’s deeply debauched ship of state – conditions for ordinary people worsening over time, not improving, things heading for totalitarian rule with bipartisan support.
America is governed under one-party rule – by what the late Gore Vidal called the “money party” or the “property party.”
Its two extremist right wings take turns controlling Congress and the White House, not a dime’s worth of difference between them on issues mattering most.
They govern by Washington rules, ignoring the rule of law, waging endless wars on humanity at home and abroad, serving privileged interests exclusively, rejecting the general welfare, and cracking down hard on nonbelievers.
Undemocratic Dems are as militantly hostile to peace, equity, justice, rule of law principles, and democratic values as Republicans – notions both wings of US duopoly governance abhor.
America’s money-controlled electoral process is too corrupted to fix, a fantasy democracy from inception, not the real thing.
Ordinary people have no say over how they’re governed – why voting is a waste of time. Elections when held improve nothing for the vast majority of voters. Dirty business as usual wins every time.
NYT editors laughably said: “The best way to protect democracy is to practice it.” How when government of, by, and for everyone equitably doesn’t exist in America.
Gandhi when asked what he thought of Western civilization responded, saying “I think it would be a good idea.”
The same goes for democracy, a “good idea” absent in America, the West, and most everywhere else, a notion abhorrent to most societies, serving the interests of business and high net-worth individuals exclusively, at the expense of most others.
The Times saying “(t)here’s no good excuse for not voting,” ignored all of the above. Calling “millions of eligible voters (opting out) their own worst enemies” pretends that elections in America matter.
How can they under one-party rule, independents shut out, democracy the way it should be absent in the country. Outcomes most often are determined by which major party candidates raise the most money.
The Times turned truth on its head, claiming “every vote really can make a difference” – not when Wall Street, America’s military/industrial/security/media complex, and other monied interests determine outcomes.
It’s not so when secrecy and back room deals substitute for a free, fair and open process, when candidates are pre-selected, when big money owns them.
It’s not so when millions of Americans are disenfranchised, when election rigging often occurs, when horse race “journalism,” he said, she said, who’s ahead and who’s behind dominate political reporting, vital issues left undiscussed, the electorate left uninformed about what’s most important to know.
A truth emergency exists because of major media managed news, reporting what powerful interests want people to know, suppressing what they need to know.
America’s electoral process was constitutionally flawed by design – to assure powerful interests owning the country run it for their own self-interest, while the general welfare increasingly goes begging.
America’s deplorable state is why half or more of the electorate often opts out.
November 6 midterms are the first federal elections since Trump took office. Undemocratic Dems hope to regain control of the House and/or Senate.
The notion that they represent progressive ideas and policies is pure fantasy. The Dems’ 2016 party platform largely reflected dirty business as usual interests.
Lofty mumbo jumbo rhetoric pretending otherwise couldn’t conceal it.
Proposals for the following were rejected: universal healthcare, a $15 minimum wage indexed to inflation, ending wars of aggression, support for Palestinian liberation, a carbon tax, opposition to corporate coup d’etat trade deals, destructive offshore drilling and fracking, as well as prioritizing world peace, equity and justice for everyone.
Next Tuesday, Americans should either vote independent or stay home.
Either way, they have no say over how the country is run, no way to change who’s served exclusively at their expense.
The only thing possibly positive about Tuesday is if Dems retake one or both houses, they could block some of Trump’s most extremist policies – for political, not ideological, reasons.
The problem is they support most policies harming ordinary people everywhere. They abhor world peace, stability, equity and justice for all. They go along with things they rhetorically oppose while campaigning.
Voters supporting candidates from either major party disenfranchise themselves for not opposing dirty business as usual – what duopoly governance and what it stands for is all about.
In his 1928 landmark book Propaganda, public relations pioneer and Goebbelsian trailblazer Eddie Bernays offered what amounts to a disingenuous assertion at best:
“It is important that any effort to influence or effect the American public that is not in the public interest be killed by the light of pitiless publicity and analysis.”
Immediately, the statement begs two questions:
What if the American public decides at the ballot box that what passes for the prevailing public interest (really a manufactured imposition) runs counter to its own version of said interest?
Who orchestrates the “pitiless publicity” aimed at killing competing visions of the “public interest” and by what authority do they undertake this mission?
Bernays references the ‘who’ elsewhere, albeit vaguely as, “…invisible rulers who control the destinies of millions… and shrewd persons operating behind the scenes.”
Conceivably a tug of war could ensue between two competing visions of the public interest; one vision expressed at the ballot box in the manner of direct democracy and the other emanating top-down from managed democracy’s “invisible rulers”.
For Bernays such a conflict would not represent an intractable impasse so much as a cue for redoubling the, “conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses”. After all, only intensified propagandizing efforts can correct the People’s ill-informed sense of the public interest. Undemocratic manipulation is, “an important element in democratic society” under Bernays’ weirdly circular formulation.
Of course self-determination is neither a path to infallibility nor a vaccine against public policy blunders. Direct Democracy merely makes the People the masters of their own fate, which is equally to say the captains of their own errors.
Bernays would have been better to say manipulation is a vital facet of a smoothly running Republic or Oligarchy, not so much a Democracy. His paternalistic subtext clearly reflects the former. Indeed another name for Managed Democracy is Republicanism (not to be confused with the political party of the same name).
A rough but effective analogy can be drawn from what serve normally as macroeconomic terms used to describe two varieties of inflation: Cost-Push and Demand-Pull. For an explanation of the traditional economic context of the terms, see here.
Applied to political narrative formation, Push is the bottom-up, propulsive force of the Will of the People. While Pull is the manipulative, diversionary desires of the Elite. Push is hard knocks and demonstrable scrapes. Pull is consciously engineered wishfulness harnessed to oligarchic solipsism, Empire objectives and atrophying noblesse oblige.
Popular consent should be organically derived and not subject to extrinsic manufacturing at all. Nor should its germination process be invaded by an externally fashioned agenda. The People should be the authors of their own consciousness. That’s the ideal anyway.
The Culture Industry’s mandate is steeped, from the outset, in inauthenticity and misdirection; or, as Theodor Adorno insisted, structurally inescapable insincerity. Through the endless propagation of false consciousness, Media is charged with convincing the People that the Pull is actually the Push. Sustaining this inversion has become a difficult task.
The Pull techniques are many and varied. Here are but a few:
The last chart addresses Russophobia. Anyone who’s walked past an American TV over the last two years can attest to a media obsession bordering on the manic; an intensity not shared by (nor successfully seeded within) the American public as evidenced by a July 2018 Gallup poll showing concern about Russia to be immeasurably unimportant (the issue garnered an * meaning less than 1%).
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein fed the sui generis racialist fires when he referred with casual malice to The Russians (wink-wink-nudge-nudge) in his February 16th indictment press conference for Concord Management officials who happened to be Russian nationals with no discernible state actor affiliation.
The farcical social media trolling charges relate to “spread[ing] distrust towards the candidates and the political system in general”, as if the American populace wasn’t already immersed in boatloads of domestically-inspired skepticism. Chances are slim the politically-motivated indictments (announced on a Friday in part to the get the Parkland, Florida shootings off the front page) will ever come to trial despite Concord’s heroic efforts to have their day in court (see 3:48 here).
Surely it surprises no one that Putin is simply too busy to plot subterfuge at every table of every Russian boardroom engaged in Stateside business. Attempting to dampen Western media’s impression of his fearsome omniscience, the Russian President had this to say at the Jul 16, 2018 Summit Joint Press Conference:
Today’s Russophobic dog whistles recall John Maynard Keynes’ 1932 assertion that Bolshevism sprang from, “some beastliness in the Russian nature”. Far from dispelling these beastly stereotypes, CNN reinforces them nightly for the ‘higher dual purpose’ of de-legitimizing the Trump Presidency and positioning Russia as the Military Industrial Complex’ Enemy of Requisite Budgetary Scale.
Attorney Alan Dershowitz has routinely decried the ACLU’s MIA status throughout the Trump Russia witch-hunt. The same can be said of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) whose charter states: “We fight anti-Semitism and all forms of hate.” We’re familiar with battles waged on behalf of the former, less so the latter. Here’s an opportune chance to engage on behalf of another besieged group.
Russian-Americans comprise 3.13 million people, a sizable population by any metric. Surely Russophobia (a dark retread of Nazism’s Anti-Slavism) warrants urgent attention. Blessed be the stoic forbearance of our Russian neighbors. One hopes it is a circumspection that will continue to go unpunished, though the Japanese and German internment camps that dotted WW2 America hardly inspire confidence.
Since at least Hillary Clinton’s Putin = Hitler equivalence-setting, the public consciousness has been in the grips of determined preparatory spadework for war with Russia. Frankly, the People are to be applauded for enduring the last two years of cognitive carpet-bombing with their disinterest and skepticism intact. Alas this failed impartation will not derail WW3. Rather it will cause the war to break out preemptively without the embedded pretext of settled consent. What cannot be consented to will occur nonetheless, leaving ‘new realities’ to compel the appropriate consent post-factum, that is, in a manner analogous to journalist Ron Suskind’s recounting of a 2004 quote attributed to Karl Rove:
“We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
As we see in Syria and elsewhere this authorial prerogative is increasingly being shared by Russia in either a nascent reemergence of bipolarity or an interim way-station towards a multi-polar actor ensemble.
Another Pull variant is, as Nancy Pelosi so helpfully anatomized for us, the wrap-up smear. This is the technique of creating a false set of facts (the smear), “merchandising” the false fact pattern to the Media, then wrapping the smeared individual in the ensuing tar-and-feathery media glare until the former stops beating his or her spouse lately.
Of course the ensnared victim is obliged to continually reference the false facts if only to mount a self-defense. Perversely, righteous denial further reinforces the falsehoods through repetition. There is, as they say, no such thing as bad publicity if the purpose is to keep one’s name front-and-center, which in the case of a wrap-up smear, it most surely isn’t.
Again, the purpose is to pull the media consumer towards a desired narrative based on falsity and distortion. The news-maker advantages his or her podium to initiate news that only becomes news by virtue of a bully pulpit (one of the top-down trappings of power), and not by the inherent truth-value of ‘facts-on-the-ground’. Putin and Trump, the world’s most potent nationalists, are no strangers to being wrapped in deceptive, pejorative garb.
A crucial point to note is that both leaders enjoy the shared contempt of the globalists. Putin’s favorability among Americans has been engineered down to 16%, 9% among collusion-besotted Democrats. Thus, while Russia is not a front-burner issue in US households, the Mackinder-MIC catastrophe of a US-Russia rapprochement is rendered all but verboten by these figures as detente would confirm extortioned compromise.
Viewed in this perma-war context, the establishment palpitations caused by Trump ‘being left alone’ with fellow loose cannon Putin make perfect, twisted sense. Suppose a powerful personal chemistry had erupted into a sudden outbreak of peaceful intentions between the two unchaperoned leaders? The prospects for WW3 might have lain in shards. Summit? What Summit? It’s practically been erased from the annals of geopolitics as was the proposed follow-on Summit in Washington. All that can be hoped for are dashed-off corridor meetings at future co-attended events.
Alas, this shell-game is breaking down in the Trump Era. Fake News is a more tactile, street-level term for false consciousness propagation. There’s little doubt Trump has a gift for branding.
The President is routinely accused of thinking in 220-character Twitter bytes, giving way to charges of truncated intelligence. There may be other reasons to doubt his intelligence. With Twitter, he is fulfilling the greater need of bypassing the Media filter for a communication path more consistent with the needs of direct democracy. The truncation is a non-rescindable feature of the Twitter platform itself.
The current Push-Pull narrative divergence –which has the opinion-shapers in conniptions– is on stark display in the recent Gallup vs. Media Research Center numbers (graphic at the bottom of this post). Surely 92% negative coverage evidences Bernay’s “pitiless publicity”.
Even after the desperate steps taken to shut down alt-media (and yes, desperate is the term), the divergence grows. The Media responds with ever more dislocating and lurid material. Bombs –or at least clocks resembling bombs– appear on Democrats’ doorsteps with eerie synchronicity.
A recursive self-consciousness has now infiltrated the system contributing further noise, not unlike how the pings of a too-high-octane fuel destroy the kayfabe experience (instilled by the car salesman) of a frictionless magic carpet-ride. The clunky mechanics of the process overwhelm the message itself.
The collective wisdom of the People has fully determined their passenger status in a vehicle driven by a malevolent chauffeur. Managed Democracy will be hard-pressed to recover their prior innocence.
The divergence also implodes the notion that the media is in any way reflective of the population it claims to derive its news from. Clearly the reportage has become prescriptive which is to say, not reportage at all. We’re not happy with the facts where we find them. Thus we will be moving them over here instead, beneath the canopy of our desired narrative.
The breakdown of the Pull hasn’t stopped the usual talking heads from pushing endlessly on strings deemed mission-critical by their managers. Like deer trapped in the klieg lights of an indiscernible new reality, they fumble along, in thrall to a dark comedy that takes its cues from absurd representations of untenable narratives.
Though opinions on Trump differ sharply, few can dispute his disruptive role in fomenting managed democracy’s narrative crisis, and for putting back onto its heels a myth-making prowess whose influence up until now had been considered unassailable.
Why might Trump be an authentic change agent, albeit one with a high probability of derailment or self-betrayal? Because the bifurcating narratives cannot be denied. If the divergence is real, the systemic stress must be equally real. Why, one has to ask, does the corporate press protesteth so much? Therein lies a telling litmus.
There’s a tendency to forget Trump’s formal political career is less than two years old and that he contends against a hostile, entrenched security-media complex seventy years in the making. Whether he is already capitulating to insuperable neoconservative power centers or is engaging in tactical ducks-and-feints cannot be confirmed either way. His post-midterm demeanor, and inevitable staffing changes, will reveal much. A verdict today is premature.
For the moment, we applaud small mercies and encouraging signs…
A breakaway bloc now exists in America along the lines of the red pill, blue pill demarcation. Many have been ‘dispelled’. Let us hope more can Push away from the master’s table forever.
UPROOTED PALESTINIANS: SALAM ALQUDS ALAYKUM 