The U.S. population is led from one hysteria to the next, now transitioning from the Global War on Terror to the New Cold War with Russia, a fearful madness that is infecting the collective psyche, says Michael Brenner.
By Michael Brenner
Captain Ahab’s obsessive hunt for Moby Dick was driven by the thirst for revenge. The great white whale had maimed Ahab – in soul as well as body. Ahab was consumed by the passion to restore his sense of self, and make himself whole again, by killing his nemesis – a compulsion that his wooden leg never lets weaken.
Gregory Peck playing Captain Ahab in a cinematic version of Herman Melville’s classic, Moby Dick.
America’s “war-on-terror” has become our national mission for restoration. The psychic wound of 9/11 is what grieves us; it inflames our collective passion for vengeance. The physical wound is already healed. By now, it must be memorialized in order for the scar to be seen. It never did impair our functioning. In that sense, little more than a broken toe.
In the aftermath of 9/11, there was genuine fear of a repeat attack – something that we now know never was in the cards. Our enemy has been emasculated; the great Satan was shot dead in Abbottabad. Only pinpricks at long intervals from within our midst draw blood.
Catharsis has eluded us, though. We still seethe with emotions. We suffer from the embedded anxiety that is dread, from uneasy feelings of vulnerability, from a seeming lost prowess and control. A society that talks casually about “closure” on almost all occasions cannot find closure on 9/11. Instead, the society has a powerful need to ritualize the fear, to pursue the implacable quest for ultimate security, to perform violent acts of vengeance that neither cure nor satiate.
So, we search the seven seas hunting for monsters to slay; not Moby Dick himself, but his accessories, accomplices, enablers, facilitators, emulators, sympathizers. Whales of every species, great and small, fall to our harpoons. The dead and innocent dolphins far outnumber even the smallest of whales. Fortunes of war.
Since there is no actual Moby Dick out there to pursue, we have fashioned a virtual game of acting out the hunt, the encounter, the retribution. We thereby have embraced the post-9/11 trauma rather than exorcised it. That is the “war-on-terror.” That war is about us – it no longer is about them.
Ahab destroyed himself, destroyed his crew, destroyed his ship. He sacrificed all in the quest – a quest for the unattainable. The United States is sacrificing its principles of liberty, its political integrity, the trust that is the bedrock of its democracy, its standing in the world as the “best hope of mankind,” and its capacity to feel for others – including its fellow citizens. America’s Moby Dick has migrated and transmuted itself. It now is lodged in our innermost being.
A wintery scene in Moscow, near Red Square. (Photo by Robert Parry)
There, it spawns fictive offspring, such as Vladimir Putin. But the phantasmagoric Putin is but the projection of our own existential dread. The spectral persona who haunts our minds, “Putin” has no objective existence. “Putin” is the creation of our troubled national psyche. We have transposed onto him the whole maelstrom of turbid emotions we had imparted to Osama bin-Laden, and then the Islamic State.
To be rid of America’s transmuted Moby Dick we must kill part of our tainted being – a form of psycho-political chemotherapy. Otherwise, our national soul will whither away just as Ahab was sucked into the ocean depths entangled in the very ropes he had fashioned to ensnare Moby Dick.
Michael Brenner is a professor of international affairs at the University of Pittsburgh. [email protected]
In my lifetime my government has told us we need to fear: the socialists, faciasts, communists, blacks, Japanese, Mexicans, “terrorists” (whomever they are), Islamists, Russians and Chinese. They have crested two perpetual wars; the War on Drugs and the War on Terror. Our government seems to feel an extreme need to fill it citizens with great fear in order to govern.
The US has been captured by a parasitoid: http://www.unz.com/article/terrorism-how-the-israeli-state-was-won/
“We suffer from the embedded anxiety that is dread, from uneasy feelings of vulnerability, from a seeming lost prowess and control.”
A country engulfed by fear and anxiety cannot lead the humanity. Maybe this is the ultimate reason for all the recent failures of the American leadership in the world. Unfortunately, it seems that you over there just keep digging…
The first time I came to America was before 9/11. When I was going through the passport control, the border officer asked me where I was from. I answered that I was Russian and the first time to the US. From Russia! First time to the US! He spent maybe 30 minutes talking to me and explaining all the great things one could do in SF. For the life of me, I cannot imagine this happening anymore. And you know – this is bad indeed. Not for me, I will manage. For you guys.
Oleg read this….
https://slavyangrad.org/2014/09/24/the-russia-they-lost/
Thanks, Joe, you mentioned this link on another thread, and I did reply there, maybe you missed it. In brief, at that time, we thought that, after the Communism was dead, there would be nothing to divide us anymore and we all would join forces with the US and other peoples to make our planet a better place for all. So when we saw that the US and the other Western countries never actually intended to work together and make our planet a better place, but instead were pushing very hard for unilateral advantages – we were disappointed. The 9/11 didn’t help here too.
Oleg back in 1969 I was on a U.S. Navy training exercise down in Gtmo. Our ship took a Liberty cruise over to Port Au Prince Haiti for a day, and there was where I learned just how horrible a dictator Papa Doc was. I couldn’t seem to reconcile in my mine how America could demonize Castro, while at the same time support and fund such a horrid person such as Papa Doc. Then one morning when back in Gtmo I went out on the catwalk of our ship, and I saw for my first time a Russian Navy vessel. I had already been influenced by John Kennedy’s American University speech, and at that moment seeing that Russian ship, which I don’t know it’s name, I remember thinking how if only Russia and the U.S. were to ally with each other how we could together tackle many of the world’s problems. It is a travesty that our two countries relationships end up where they are. I seriously believe our two countries have more in common that we know, and also how our diversities would prove to be enlightening if we could just come together.
I post that link a lot since I was so taken with it the first time I read it. Joe
Yes, thank you, my feelings exactly! We have been fools to waste so much time and resources on stupidly confronting each other. Our planet honestly is a mess and so much could be done to improve the life of people on it. We have been doing more advanced things in space in 1960s and 1970s than we do now. Even the science and technology is stagnating, except the IT and entertainment. We have lots of people who are left redundant by our economical system and are kept content by macjobs, meager social insurance, and now, most of all, Internet and entertainment. In the US only 10% of the workforce are engaged in making something real, agricultural or industrial, the rest are mostly service jobs. Service jobs are important but not to that extent. If you want to send a spaceship to Mars, you need people who can make things, invent things, not groom poodles. Furthermore, if one is engaged in something demanding and creative, one feels better and lives a better life, and makes the life better for the others too. That’s what we all have been missing – a better life for all of us. Quite stupid indeed. I hope the times will be changing, but who knows. Anyway, it could happen, but didn’t. Maybe, next time.
Oleg let’s both look forward to the next time as now. Joe
All the comments and the article have merit. I wonder if all the people making these perceptive comments are like me, retired and out of the line of fire. Would we be willing, if gainfully employed in government, insurance, banking, etc. be willing to make such comments. Few of us would because we know the price we would pay. Would we even bother to engage in thinking about such issue, let alone speak our views after we thought about the issues. It is doubtful that most of us would and that explains why those controlling the flow of information continue to engage in the kind of disinformation they do. We, as a nation, are afraid even to think about these issues. Those of us who read Consortium get excited about a Tulsi Gabbard because she spoke the truth about ISIS. We hope someone will step up who is in an important position and speak the truth. One wonders what the future of a Tulsi Gabbard will be. Will she be coopted like all the rest. Probably.
Very well said.
A war with Russia means war with China each knows It cannot win without the other. If the US prevail it will mean something like 85% of US civilians will be dead and more to follow. Think about that in your victory march before you die from radiation or starvation or a broken heart when everyone you have ever known are dead.
agree
I don’t think it is helpful to talk about the “national psyche.” There is more than one Ahab, but we know who they are, and this could not be any clearer than it is right now.
The military-industrial-intelligence-MSM war conspiracy is fully under way, and it will not stop with Trump’s inauguration. Trump is already caving, as even die-hard optimists like myself have to admit, with his acceptance of the “Russian hacking” lie and Tillerson and Mattis groveling before the insane warmongers and chicken hawks in the Senate.
War is on the immediate horizon, and not just your ordinary “intervention” that the US likes to cook up every ten years or so, but war with Russia. I wish Hedges and Chomsky and suchlike would team up with people like Stephen Cohen, Robert Parry and Ray McGovern and help make this clear to the broad public.
It is very clear. If Trump continues to cave, there will be a war. If he doesn’t, either he will be assassinated (like JFK) or there will be a false flag to force him into war. (All LBJ needed was Tonkin Gulf, just in case he hadn’t learned his lesson in Dallas.)
The only way to prevent this, or try to prevent it, is to concentrate all our energies (and “organizing”) on the one goal of opposing the warmongers, and this means taking the position they have forced us into, which is defense of Russia and Putin — and of China if Trump continues to force that issue.
This is a very steep uphill battle, because it involves making people aware of what “false flag” means and how concrete a threat it is. I appeal to everyone reading this, especially if you have “credentials” (e.g., former govt employee!) to speak out strongly and clearly, as you do here.
I never felt at all what this essay describes. Within hours of 9/11 I suspected the “usual suspects” were behind it all; an inside job planned by the bankster cartel. I figured THIS was why Bush was shoe-horned into the presidency, because with a Bush in office, you get recession and a war somewhere. Within several months EIR uncovered the culprits responsible for 9/11: the Anglo-Saudi BAE weapons for oil/money deal between royals, which established the funds for launching a world-wide campaign of war-via-terrorists. The last sixteen years (including establishment of EU) has been the carrying out of what Rockefeller described decades ago as the corporatist/fascist NWO/Bankster plan to take over “management” of World affairs, obsoleting democracy (Synarchist Movement for Empire). What I’ve been feeling these last sixteen years is how to reverse all of this and restore democracy, restore our Constitution, restore our Nation, establish peaceful relations among nations; how to stop all of this.
Dont forget that in the early morning hours of 9-11, the Carlyle group, which included G.H.W.Bush and members of the Bin Laden family, had a meeting at a facility with a perfect view of the towers, to discuss how to increase weapons sales…
I suggest this author read up on the PNAC’s agenda of overturning countries in the Middle East that stated boldly we would need another Pearl Harbor to make it happen and that came in the form of 9/11. That the American people go along so easily with a disgusting policy that ignores international law, a policy of murder and mayhem has more to do with their indifference to what happens in other countries, to other people, to non Christians, and their vulnerability to propaganda which often exploits their fears.
And recall, it became declassified shortly before 9-11 that the US had broken the Japanese code, and had foreknowledge of Pearl Harbor, but chose to let it happen, to draw the country into war.
The PNAC flat out admitted what they were planning!
“The psychic wound of 9/11 is what grieves us…”
– Really? Where and when? … When seeing how Bush was kissing his bosom buddies Saudis? – Did not hurt his presidency at all.
Or when the CIA/FBI have been arming various affiliates of Al Qaeda in Syria? – Obama is still very popular.
Or when the US electorate has learned about Saudi’s hefty bribes (well-paid-off) to the Clintons Foundation? – This made no impression on the “support the troops” crowd of the democrats that are now concentrate their energy on supporting CIA silly dirty tricks against Trump inauguration?
I believe we are conditioned to accept being controlled. The powers that “rule” us, use words like “national security,” and “official secrets act,” and “not in the public interest.” We have been made into “prisoners of the system. Yet, we think we are “free.”
Stephen – yes, it starts at a young age. Our parents condition us to conform, then the schools take over. After 20 years of indoctrination, our shapes are formed and we’re put on a shelf to harden. Our belief systems are almost set in stone by this point, and undoing them would take a major upheaval. That’s why a crisis and considerable suffering can actually be a very healthy thing for individuals – it makes them question.
Yes, most certainly. This has been done by every totalitarian regime, from Hitler to Soviet communists. And the technology is the same: lies, many lies, overwhelming lies, repeated many times. Because simple ordinary lies or lies not properly repeated still allow brain defenses to kick in. To overwhelm the brain defenses the lies should be grand and ridiculous and highly emotional. We are under attack! By Putin hackers, or Islamic terrorists, or lizards from Mars. And then the society can be easily manipulated. This is really old stuff but it seems it works – again, now in the US.
The use of the words “totalitarian regime, from Hitler to Soviet communists” is indoctrination in itself. Putting Hitler on the same line with people who sacrificed 27 million lives to fight him is a distortion of truth and belittlement of their sacrifice. And a lie.
As for the rest of it… I dare you to point out one period in the history of humanity or one society where the above is not true. If you want some sort of absolute truth without any bias you need to be born and grow up in the jungle. Bias is unavoidable in any society and you are naive if you believe otherwise.
The “fearful madness that is infecting the collective psyche” has been designed and paid for with the vast profits of war. For readers who haven’t seen it, a succinct review of relevant historical facts is in “War Profiteers and the Roots of the War on Terror”.
http://warprofiteerstory.blogspot.com
JWalters – I’ve only started reading the article, but Building 7 not being included in the official report is actually quite telling. Could it be that the building HAD been slated to be hit by a plane as well, but the plane didn’t make it to its destination? As it had already been rigged to go down, it did. Then they didn’t know what to do with it, except to leave it out.
Or could it have been that because there was no reasonable explanation for its collapse so TPTB left it out of the official 911 Report….added that there is that strange BBC video of the reporter announcing the collapse five minutes before #7 went down?
Yes Joe, I have also mentioned before how BBC news had some kind of crystal ball working for them. People who have not seen controlled demolition probably will accept the false reporting that #7 was brought down by fire, a first in the history of steel structures. To fall at the rate of gravity and collapse into its own footprint should be proof enough for people to be furious, and it wasn’t done by some terrorist in a cave somewhere. It was done by people who had access to the building beforehand.
Years ago I worked on a program that showed the controlled demo of the Kingdome in Seattle, with a map of where the explosives were placed and how they were timed. Building 7 looked very much the same in its destruction as the Kingdome. The phrase “pull it” was also used way back then as well.
I’ve enjoyed Mr Brenners’ articles a lot but the analogy of a whale eludes me here. The real ‘Dick’ involved was not Moby. The author seems to express the idea that it is a ‘given’ for a man in a cave in Afghanistan could,or would, have planned all of this carnage and destruction in NYC . I also am skeptical that a person in the middle east, although educated, would know the significance of 911 in the US. So we are reminded of that day any time one dials for help. He couldn’t have been that clever, but someone more familiar with the US would have that sick sense. I don’t think we have “embraced the trauma” as the author states here, but I think more and more people are aware we are chasing phantoms of our own making. We kill, and bomb with abandon and are somehow shocked that anyone would dare to strike back. It is not a whale, nor even an analogy of a whale we are chasing. We are chasing our own lack of morals and ethics as we kill around the world. We can’t be at peace with any of this behavior.
I won’t belabor the topic of controlled demo anymore since its been mentioned so many times and people don’t want to believe it. But what is a bit new to me is the fact that Paul Bremer was on TV stations that very day blaming Bin Laden. How is this possible? What crystal ball did he have?
If you were as crazed as Captain Ahab then staying at sea for a long period of time to catch some pesky whale may be a good enough excuse to give to Mrs. Captain Ahab for why you missed dinner, and a few other things such as extended in law visits which the old Captain may have dreaded, and he wanted to miss. Regardless the good Professor Brenner’s metaphorical use of Moby Dick works for me well enough for me to catch his drift concerning our country’s historical love for war.
In America not accepting war, is like not understanding big business, among accepting other things that accompany that ideology. The mental block that America has for conquering, and doing away with conjured up villains, is to big to ignore, but we ignore it anyway. Yeah, there are plenty of us who don’t like all these wars, but who among us knows how to bring down this over fed beast called the Defense Industry.
Just look and listen to John McCain. McCain comes from a long line of American warriors, and if you get a chance to study that man, that is all you will need to know to understand this American quest for dominance. Add in God and a huge profit margin, well then your on your way to become a decorated patriot for sure.
My love for America isn’t so much with our military might, as much as America like many other places on this earth has a lot of good people living in it. If only our leaders would work towards peace, and become believers that people are people no matter where you find them on this globe, for it would be a wonderful thing to behold if only these warmongering elitist were to see it this way.
Read John Kennedy’s American University Speech June 1963. JFK’s words will say what I’m trying to relate to you, so much better than any poor English scribbling I have done here with you today Curious, so read his words. Thanks for the conversation…Joe
Curious – you are saying that you think 9/11 was a planned demolition. But you think that foreigners did this, or that your government might also have been involved?
The BBC “cock-up” (as they referred to it later) drove me to verse:
http://911blogger.com/news/2007-03-29/cock
Michael Morrissey Thanks for the link, you said it well.
All of what is in abundance in our America, and yet the Truth is a rarity to be found. The big lie gives birth to multitudes of more lies, and confusion along with it’s cousin deceit, tricks us all to help bring more disaster to an already bleeding world of grief. The saddest part, is that most American people are good, but due to their handlers lies we are but taxpayers, and cannon fodder forever being used to crush the many made up villains who stand between our rulers and the diminishing natural resources of profit left on this dear old Mother Earth.
Thanks again Michael for the link to your verse….Joe
This is an excellent article that everyone should read:
“The primary aim of official propaganda is to generate an “official narrative” that can be mindlessly repeated by the ruling classes and those who support and identify with them. This official narrative does not have to make sense, or to stand up to any sort of serious scrutiny. Its factualness is not the point. The point is to draw a Maginot line, a defensive ideological boundary, between “the truth” as defined by the ruling classes and any other “truth” that contradicts their narrative.
and
The current “Russian hacking” hysteria is a perfect example of how this works. No one aside from total morons actually believes this official narrative (the substance of which is beyond ridiculous), not even the stooges selling it to us. This, however, is not a problem, because it isn’t intended to be believed … it is intended to be accepted and repeated, more or less like religious dogma.”
http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/01/13/why-ridiculous-official-propaganda-still-works/
Yes, it is also a threat declaration of the bully class; you will agree to this or be socially, economically, and otherwise attacked by all of the other dependents of your masters.
Sam F – yes, go along or risk being ostracized. I just know that if I had to sit there and say what the MSM are saying (like Rachel Maddow or Anderson Cooper), I’d burst out laughing and wouldn’t be able to stop until they hauled me off the set. They do it all with a straight face. It’s like they’re paid actors, which is what they are.
Here’s the guy who should really be anchoring the news, not the likes of Rachel Maddow. Catch his take on her about three minutes into the clip.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMZLf3AUz_s
Realist – yes, people like Jimmy Dore do a tremendous service by cutting through the crap. $30,000.00/day for Rachel Maddow? Oh, now I am laughing! A paper bag could do a better job.
After listening to the interview with Richard Engel, she should have been up out of her chair. But the $30,000.00/day keeps her silence, and the unedumicated American public get a little dumber because of it.
Congrats on a nice analogy of the US GWOT/ColdWar to Moby Dick. It is the individual psychic wounds of economic and social exploitation that inflame the passion for vengeance cultivated by the MSM. They would have us “search the seven seas hunting for monsters to slay” only because the MIC/WallSt/zionist oligarchy wants to steal Palestinian/Ukrainian land and natural resources, and their political tyrants must have foreign wars to create fear and to demand power as false protectors, and to accuse their opponents of disloyalty. There are not many Ahabs among the sailors, but it is well that they know of him and how they can avoid joining him in the depths.
“America’s “war-on-terror” has become our national mission for restoration.”
This is what they want us to think of them (that this is all about revenge), but America’s war-on-terror is all about money, control and power. It’s about “inventing” threats in order to profit off of them. Just as the medical industry is more interested in developing new drugs to handle the “effects” of a disease rather than finding the “cause” (you don’t make money off finding a cure), the MIC is more interested in inventing imaginary villains and then profiting off fighting them.
As Tulsi Gabbard said, we’re funding, arming and training ISIS. They were a made-to-order piece of equipment (or disease) that the MIC sorely needed to continue the looting, the power grab.
The American public still suffers from the effects of the JFK assassination and 9/11 because they haven’t been told the truth, and that’s precisely how TPTB want it. They want the American public to feel fear, vulnerability; they’re easier to control that way. Just keep feeding them lies and false flags, and they’ll toe the line.
“‘Putin’ is the creation of our troubled national psyche. We have transposed onto him the whole maelstrom of turbid emotions we had imparted to Osama bin-Laden, and then the Islamic State.”
And right on cue. Putin is the creation, not of our troubled national psyche, but an invented enemy to continue the looting, shore up the power of the MIC, and control the map.
With respect, I see none of this as real, but imaginery, invented, just like Hollywood.
The author’s points may apply to some Americans, but backwardsevolution’s position appears to be more valid if less literary: …but America’s war-on-terror is all about money, control and power. It’s about “inventing” threats in order to profit off of them.
America’s government has been targeting other nations in support of its corporations for decades, and the “war on terror” is just an excuse to use military force. There are no nations in Africa that are a threat to the American homeland, but American policy is to expand our military footprint on that continent and others wherever there are resources of profit interest to our global corporations. The Chinese have a similar interest in resources in Africa and elsewhere, but they appear to find moneybags more cost-effective than their military, which is invariably anything but cost-effective.
In my youth I thought of serving in the state department where I would participate to some degree in diplomacy building cultural and other bridges to other nations. I was quickly disabused of that naive concept and informed the main purpose of embassies and consulates was to provide assistance to American businesses. Fortunately, I found more satisfying employment elsewhere.
I will put my tinfoiled hat aside to hopefully do a decent enough job to further elaborate on Bill Bodden’s and backwardsevolution’s comments made here.
I thought it was odd that our Country’s retaliated response to al Qaeda’s surprise attack was a little to heavy on the armament side. If you recall Osama bin Laden was described to have had a small militia of fighters hidden away in some caves in Afghanistan, so why the B52’s? Now I’m no Four Star, and I will admit that, but at that time, and by the sounds of what we were up against, I couldn’t understand why catching this guy wasn’t a Special Ops mission. Further more why didn’t we take up the Taliban’s offer of handing bin Laden over to us, on the condition we would provide proof of Osama’s guilt. Surely we had the evidence, right? But no that would never do. Instead Cheney send in the CIA, the Marines, and a few B52’s, and we were letting freedom ring. If you recall as a side note we were going to free the battered Afghanistan women…remember watching the videos of their Taliban Male Masters beating them in public?
Shortly after, we were witnessing on our TV’s lines of prisoners roped together with bags over their heads, and we were taking them to places like ‘black sites’ and GTMO. There were special courts, but no we weren’t going to observe any Geneva Convention rules, because we’re America and we are pissed…okay, after what these Monkeys, as Lee Hamilton called them, did we were going to make these monkeys suffer a thousand deaths over. Ooh-Rah!
It didn’t take long before we all had to take our shoes off, and get felt up at the airport, as we all went to Disney World to show Osama how we Americans were going to live our life’s to the fullest, and being good Americans we did just what our Commander and Chief had told us to do. Since we had nothing to hide personally it was no big deal that our government guardians were going to snoop on us 24/7, so we allowed our government do what they needed to do to keep us save….we were prepared with our flashlights and duct tape, and don’t forget the yellow ribbons we stuck on our cars to show our patriotic support we had for our warranted revenge. Hank Williams Junior CD’s flew off the shelf, as well.
So here we are some sixteen years later, and with less rights than what we had before 911 gone away, and now we have a brand new villain to hate. Never mine that our new enemy was the first world leader to contact our ever loving jingoistic president back on 911 offering his country’s help to bring down this dastardly evil terrorist network who attacked us on 911…just know that Vladimir Putin is a bad man, and with that we now must square off with Russia. You see Vlad is beating up the original enemy we went after way back when, so now Vlad must pay the price for his interrupting our war.
Eisenhower warned us, JFK was murdered over it, and many have died along the way only to support an industry who is long overdue to be put upon the trash heap of trash heaps. It’s never been about freedom, or liberty for all.
No it’s about profit and lots of it, and it’s not for the many but for the few to enjoy the fruits of those profits. George Carlin warned us about this. The MIC is so big no one knows how to bring it down. This MIC monster has taken on a life of it’s own, and you dare not get in it’s way, or it will eat you alive.
The wounds of 9/11 will never be healed until we have an honest and complete investigation of the events on that day. The true perpetrators brought to justice would do wonders to heal this country. Sad that professor of international affairs at a major university continues to elude the truth on this matter to the public.
B. Wilson – well said! It is sad.
It is telling that the evidence is so blatant, and yet NOBODY is willing to risk character assassination (or physical assassination) by discussing it. The official report on Building 7’s collapse, which theorizes a “progressive” collapse starting at the buiding’s east end and progressing to its west end, is starkly contradicted by videos, which clearly show the two ends collapsing simultaneously, not progressively. When glaring facts cannot be discussed, by definition the country is living under tyranny. This must be a VERY powerful tyranny.
The initial 9/11 report did not even mention the fact that Building 7 collapsed! That can only be either grotesque sloppiness by the 9/11 commission, or intentional omission of highly significant information.
Exactly
Until the myth of 9/11 is crushed, and the new state religion that followed is eliminated, there will be no truth discussed publicly in the US.
It is the myth itself, that keeps feeding the erratic and destructive behaviour of the US.
Questioning the official narrative, not very hard to do, is akin to blaspheme the new God of US, and the myth is the foundation upon which this new godly figure stands. The two parties is the cloak he wears and the uncritical thinking of the masses is the chain by which he binds his worshippers and subjects.
If the myth is not smashed to bits, nothing good is on the horizon.
No question that raw emotions are manipulated in the collective American psyche to keep this conflict stoked, but there is a cold calculating logic not in the service of anything good and holy behind it all. To wantonly kill, maim and displace so many innocents to attain whatever these schemers are after is simply Satanic. Not making a religious statement claiming that there is such a being, but the masterminds behind all this suffering fit the mold.
That might be worth some exploration of literary parallels, and no doubt there has been much of that – the MIC/WallSt/zionist oligarchy and their tyrants as Satan or better symbols of ultimate evil, preferably characters who indicate the causes of the wrongdoing, such as the ignorance, selfishness, hypocrisy, and malice of the billionaire class.
“The New Cold War with Russia, a fearful madness that is infecting the collective psyche,” is not some disease we have caught by contact with sick carriers, it is germ warfare using deliberately bioengineered memetic pathogens created by American Deep State psy-ops. They have hacked our collective psyche and purposefully inserted an informational virus, just as virulent as Stuxnet was to Iranian computers. That’s why I called our national angst the product of diabolical design, not some existential identity crisis.
“ ‘Putin’ is the creation of our troubled national psyche.” No, “Putin” is a mental implant deliberately seeded into the population.