The wall of propaganda that towers over us, resting on an insidious culture of irrationality that has come to suffuse the American polity, is weakening.
Press Secretary Jen Psaki. (Official White House Photo/ Erin Scott)
By Patrick Lawrence
Special to Consortium News
Finally. Finally our mainstream press and broadcasters show signs of waking up to the cynical, pervasive, propaganda campaign official Washington wages to obscure its imperial pursuits. Finally there is some suggestion—not more—that the mainstream may someday stop participating in the antidemocratic onslaught of lies and subterfuge they have very willingly assisted in inflicting upon us for most of this century.
I refer to two remarkable confrontations between the press and official government spokespeople this past week. At the State Department last Thursday Matt Lee, diplomatic correspondent of The Associated Press ran department spokesman Ned Price straight to the ground on one of the government’s most familiar, most nonsensical tropes: We told you, and telling you is evidence that what we told you is true.
Aboard Air Force One, National Public Radio correspondent Ayesha Rascoe reacted similarly when Jen Psaki, the president’s press secretary, tried on the same ruse in the matter of civilian casualties during the raid Thursday on the Syrian hideout of Abu Ibrahim al–Hashimi al–Qurayshi, the putative head of the Islamic State. What? Do you dare not believe me? the rarely-to-be-believed Psaki asked aggressively.
At last.
Independent media such as Consortium News have waged a battle against the government’s incessant assertions of facts-that-are-not-facts at least since the WMD in Iraq subterfuge and the irruption of the Russiagate fiasco in mid–2016. Last week the leading U.S. wire service and public broadcaster effectively joined in when they questioned official accounts of two key events in the absence of authentic evidence of their veracity.
Let us not read too much into these developments. The AP and NPR have been card-carrying purveyors of liberal authoritarian orthodoxies for a very long time. Demanding evidence to support official assertions of authority on two occasions is hardly an indication of some new determination to reclaim surrendered ground as independent poles of power.
The Significance
But we ought not miss the potential significance of this turn, either. The wall of propaganda that towers over us, resting on an insidious culture of irrationality that has come to suffuse the American polity, is weakening. In my read, the doggedness of independent media has forced the mainstream to begin reckoning with its own complicities.
I have long admired Matt Lee as a standout among American correspondents. He is one of the most dedicated journalists now active in the Washington press corps, unswerving in his adherence to the principles and ethics of the profession even as most of those around him have abandoned both. His conduct during one of Ned Price’s daily press briefings last week was remarkable even by Lee’s high standards.
Price, a former C.I.A. analyst and a professed propagandist in the Obama White House, announced that Russia was preparing a faked video, with “crisis actors,” of a sabotage incident in eastern Ukraine that would justify a Russian invasion. “What we know, Matt, is that they have engaged in this activity,” Price said as Lee began what became a five-minute and six-second drilling in. “We have information that Russia has already prepositioned operatives to conduct a false-flag operation in eastern Ukraine.”
“Crisis actors?” Lee responded. “Really? This is, like, Alex Jones territory. What evidence do you have to support the idea that there is some propaganda film in the making?”
“This is derived from intelligence information that we have declassified,” Price replied.
Lee: “Where is this information?
Price: “It is intelligence information that we have declassified.”
Lee: “Well, where is it? Where is the declassified information?”
Price (feigning incredulity): “I just delivered it.”
And there you have it: We have evidence of a Russian false-flag operation, derived from declassified intelligence, and I have shared this declassified evidence with you by telling you we have it.
Simultaneously on the presidential jet, Psaki was fielding questions as to who was responsible for 13 civilian casualties, including children, during the raid that ended with al–Qurayshi’s death. The official position is that the ISIS leader detonated a bomb, taking his life and 13 others to avoid capture, and that the Special Forces commandoes conducting the raid bore no responsibility for the casualties.
NPR’s Rascoe, greatly to her credit, thereupon suggested that critics might be skeptical of the Pentagon’s (and President Joe Biden’s) account. “The U.S. has not always been straightforward about what happens with civilians,” Rascoe pointed out. “And, I mean, that is a fact.”
The combative Psaki, having no evidence to support the official rendering of events, instantly went on the offensive. “Skeptical of the U.S. military’s assessment when they went and took out… the leader of ISIS?” She asked, pretending to disbelief just as Price did. “That they are not providing accurate information, and ISIS is providing accurate information?”
In neither case did the official posturing hold. Price took a battering at Lee’s hands the like of which I have rarely seen in a press briefing, live or videoed. Rascoe was more merciful, but Psaki came off just as much the shyster.
‘With Us or Against Us’
You’re either with us, or with the Russians, Biden administration tells mainstream journalists. (Picryl)
Not to be missed in all this is the binary logic Price and Psaki tried to put over in the course of their defenses. Psaki implied that Rascoe, because she did not accept the American account of events in Syria, accepted an ISIS account—this even as there is no ISIS account to accept or reject. In the same line, here is Price later in his exchange with Matt Lee:
“If you doubt the credibility of the U.S. government, of the British government, of other governments, and want to, you know, find solace in information that the Russians are putting out—that is, that is for you to do.”
Preposterous times two. This is no better—no different, indeed—than the George W. Bush administration’s assertion after the September 11, 2001, tragedies: “You’re either with us or with the terrorists,” one of our stupider presidents infamously declared.
Among the notable features of these two exchanges is how surprised the two official spokespeople appeared to be when asked to support their assertions with evidence. And why should they have been otherwise?
The mainstream press and broadcasters, along with “progressive” publications such as Mother Jones and The Nation, have eagerly embraced official accounts of events, while accepting these accounts as evidence in themselves. This is what I mean by a pervasive culture of irrationality.
The Ukraine and Syria crises, the treatment of Uighurs in China, what is or is not going on in Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, Moscow’s supposed interventions in American politics: All of these questions and numerous others are an absolute blur—a mess of mis– and disinformation—if you rely on mainstream accounts alone. Were it not for the more conscientious independent publications, there would be no true record of these matters.
I trace this most immediately to the swoon into propaganda and deception that began with the Russiagate fiasco and the liberal authoritarians’ obsessive-compulsive hatred of Donald Trump. Anything that reflected badly on Trump and demonized Russia was fit to print. This seems clear, but we have to go further back to understand what led us to the dire circumstances we now face.
The press’s eager enlistment in Bush II’s “war on terror” was the seminal turn. The events of September 2001 had the American empire on its back foot for just the second time in its century of history, (the first was after defeat in Vietnam) and mainstream media rushed to its defense. After she was canned (deservedly) as executive editor of The New York Times, Jill Abramson gave a remarkably candid account of the corporate-owned press’s entry into servitude.
So it has been ever since. The media’s corruptly close proximity to the power they report upon cannot be separated from the phenomenon of an empire that is in decline and, what is more, knows it.
Are Matt Lee and Ayesha Rascoe exceptions that promise a new way forward, a break in the tight post–2001 embrace of power and the press? Or are they exceptions that prove the enduring rule?
This is not easily answered.
The evidence game, as I’ll call it, took an especially dramatic turn in January 2017, when “the intelligence community” issued a Swiss cheese “assessment” of the mid–2016 theft of the Democratic Party’s mail and the press accepted this devoid-of-evidence assessment as prima facie evidence. Six years later we find ourselves in an information culture that has been rendered indifferent to evidence: It is desired conclusions that matter.
Still ‘Imminent’
NPR headquarters in Washington. (Cornellrockey04/WikimediaCommons)
As I wrote this column Sunday, NPR came over the kitchen radio with yet more unsubstantiated junk about Ukraine—this time quoting National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan saying (once again) that a Russian invasion was “imminent.” The AP news feed ran the headline, “Top Biden aide says Ukraine invasion could come ‘any day.’”
Neither NPR nor The AP cited any evidence to back up Sullivan’s assertion for the simple reason that he didn’t provide any. Plus ça change.
But I tend to think Lee and Ayesha effectively declared the evidence game over last week, when they said, Let’s have some, please. Lee’s byline wasn’t on The AP’s story, it’s worth noting, and Rascoe’s not on NPR’s.
Is this some grand turn in mainstream media’s stance toward power, a dusting off of the old notion of the press as the Fourth Estate? No, I see nothing so precipitous or dramatic. My intent is to suggest the beginning of a long, gradual process, wherein we may find the press shifting away from its supine fealty to power in all its manifestations.
This will depend on two things:
One, there are indications that some voices within the political and policy elites in Washington are turning against America’s imperial adventures—not out of decency or some elevated vision of how the U.S. should act, but because they are coming to cost more than they are worth. This factor must not be underestimated.
This process first became evident with the series of stories The New York Times published late last year in which it exposed the Pentagon’s sloppy conduct and just-as-sloppy deceptions. I am thinking of the exposé last autumn of the fatal drone strike in Afghanistan and subsequent reports of rogue attacks on a Syrian village and a Syrian dam across the Euphrates.
Those reports, while surprising, were not cause to assume the Times had taken some brave turn toward speak-truth-to-power journalism, as some readers interpreted them. They reflected a faction within the policy cliques that thinks these excesses do not serve the cause of American primacy well. The Times appears to line up with this faction.
Two and more interestingly, the persistence of independent media in making true accounts of events ever more available to the reading and viewing public will, a story at a time, require their corporate-owned counterparts to report more honestly. The consistently good reporting on Afghanistan and Syria to be found in independent media reports is a case in point.
We will have to see how all this turns out in coming weeks and months. Lee has been at it a long time and requires no prompt from anyone to do good work. But what he and Rascoe did last week, fair to say, is what reporters and correspondents unbeholden to power have dedicated themselves to since independent media came into their own over the past couple of decades.
Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for the International Herald Tribune, is a columnist, essayist, author and lecturer. His most recent book is Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century. Follow him on Twitter @thefloutist. His web site is Patrick Lawrence. Support his work via his Patreon site.
Very good analysis. I would rather be skeptical and my conclusion is that journalists like Lee and Rascoe are just oddballs in the ‘news entertainment’ industry. From here on, it will only get worse. I can’t even read the front pages of NYT, The Guardian, NPR, The Nation, etc., without having fits of rage on the absurdity and lack of sense.
A great article by Patrick Lawrence once again-he has his finger on the pulse of this dying empire as no one else-it would be Matt Lee
Interesting that the alternative press is an example of truth for mainstream media, a counterweight to bullshit, which is what the press as a whole should be to the government. Institutions are meant to provide high ideals and principles that allow individuals to rise above their petty selves. Unfortunately, all such man-made creations can become corrupt, leaving a poor little sap like Jill Abramson all on her own.
As a journalist who lived for 24 years in Rome and Istanbul, I attribute the basest motives to any government statement, and believe that looking for the motives behind mainstream media coverage of any story is like the good old days of trying to determine Politburo policy by reading between the lines of Pravda.
Excellent article. Let’s hope this nascient turn toward a more honorably purposed press broadens. The damage to our democracy has been profound. Since 2015 I stopped watching MSM entirely. And have experienced censoring while a commentator on NPR/PBS, on key isdues particularly uncomfortable to MIC donors.
Let us teach critical thinking to our children, too.
Reliable Sources(sic) did comment on the Lee exchange but if I remember correctly the reporter wasn’t mentioned by name and no footage was shown. This was followed up by one of the panel members congratulating CNN for holding Trump’s feet to the fire during his Presidency but he failed to mention CNN’s role in getting him elected
Jake Tapper did a segment on Lee and said the government has long been lying to us. What got the MSM’s backs up is that the spokesman accused Lee of siding with Russia. Now the MSM knows what it feels like as CN and others in alternative media have long been smeared for demanding evidence and being skeptical of government claims.
The relentless barrage of Russia is, will or will be invading Ukraine is deafening a propaganda tsunami without equal in recent years. Undeterred by the falsity of the headlines the MSM bangs out the propaganda without a second thought repeating incessantly the lies and falsehoods demanded by the US/UK National Security States. Such craven deference to the coercive State apparatchiks is also influenced by the need to sell their media products in the marketplace. This means embracing the hard sell technique combining a toxic combination of entertainment and fear in the Hollywood idiom. State propaganda is news ‘in extremis’ deliberate cannon fodder for the assault on human rationality and truth much of which can be understood as a subliminal projection of the elite’s economic and moral insecurity onto the banner headlines in graphic threats of war, civil unrest and dystopian futures, but also their reduction of the commodified masses to a malleable common denominator.
And, there we were, beginning to think that all of journalism was pure gift of gab!
That Julian Assange (Wikileaks) is being murdered, clandestinely and illegally, behind barred doors, in broad daylight, because he has been attempting to declare “the evidence game over” – to no avail, as far back as at least 2010, and still, not enough of us dare to mention this fact, speaks volumes about the actual state of journalism!!!
And, as Journalism is intended as an integral aspect of any openly democratic and transparent culture, what does this treatment of the Fourth Estate, by the powers-that-be, tell us about our “civilization”?
Somehow collective amnesia has allowed Americans to disremember Time magazine’s front page story and Mr. Koppel’s “nightline” episode both detailing our extensive efforts to get an alcoholic buffoon reelected in Russia in 1996. Somehow, Yeltsin is widely considered a far better leader than Putin. Perhaps because during his reign of terror, life expectancy in Russia fell by levels never before experienced by any nation except for those experiencing very violent wars. Consider comparing quality of life, GDP of Russia in 1991[520 bil], 1999[last year of Yeltsin =195 bil] ,and 2013 [2.28 tril] . Hard to understand why so many good people still support our draconian policies toward much of the world.
Patrick, what happened to your twitter account? Miss your voice on that site.
James.
Working on it.
My Twitter account was hacked or otherwise “compromised,” in Twitterese. Someone took it over with the apparent intent of using it to spam my followers–though they do not seem to have done this this, thankfully. I am now going through the (strange to me) process of restoring the account. It’s a question of finding the time to go through the steps. Soon.
Good of you to notice. And thanks to you and all others for comments.
Patrick
While I hope the author is correct and that more “journalists” will occasionally do journalism rather than stenography, I have my doubts. True journalists like Lee and Rascoe will likely end up like Sy Hersh and Sydney Schanberg, exiled to the fringes of media, and ostracized for life.
And while alternative media has generally been preferable, we see two trends.
One, the State Media are going hard after Joe Rogan and Spotify, probably because he is a more trusted source of information (and gets more clicks). I can see that soon expanding to ALL alternative media, smearing any sites with anti-Establishment views or evidence-based complaints against the Government’s Narratives.
Two, launching, funding, taking over and favoring alt sites with articles with either vapid repetition of the Official Narratives, or their version of Alex Jones/ Weekly World News type stories (at least entertaining) to discredit the sources as fake news. Alt sites often break important stories (particularly at the moment Biden corruption exposes) which State Media won’t touch, but often make mistakes as well (just not intentionally like State Media).
“the Special Forces commandoes conducting the raid bore no responsibility for the casualties.”
So how come THEY weren’t injured or killed? If you’re someone like Qurayshi and you have a bomb, don’t you wait until the enemy are within range before you set it off? Instead, he slaughtered only his own family – or so we’re told.
It’s more like the commandos fired a rocket into the house, from a safe distance. So how do we know al-Qurayshi was actually killed? Some of those leaders have been “killed” multiple times.
Perhaps we should revisit the Communications Act of 1996 which abolished limited ownership restrictions and opened the door for corporate media. I was in broadcasting for 45 years and watched this slow erosion begin around 1980, beginning with Iran finally releasing the hostages as Reagan was sworn in. As Chico Marx would say: That’s what you call your coincidence!
Let’s also reconsider revisiting Citizen’s United which opened the floodgates of corporate and FOREIGN money into our electoral process. Campaigns are now run by PR firms. Gone are serious debates with policy questions. We are sold candidates like any other product.
Does anybody know the details of the “Patriot” Act? It’s been the law of the land for 21 years. As I remember it was hailed as so important that it had to be enacted very quickly to keep us safe; Dubya didn’t even have time to read it.
Needless to say Matt Lee has been in the forefront when it comes to critical reporting of events .As CN and Patrick’s article.
I would like to think that we are on an upswing of good critical truthful reporting from our Western media journalists as this report indicates .There is so much happening in our world today, on so many levels .
There is indeed IMHO something very big happening in the world and it portends change for humanity ,possibly unprecedented
historically .
Je n’accorde aucune crédibilité aux médias mainstreams. J’accorderai mon crédit seulement qu’à deux conditions:
1: Qu’ils défendent de tous leurs moyens et de toutes leurs richesses la liberté de Julian Assange et qu’ils lui fassent des excuses publiques à grand déploiement et à multiples reprises pendant au moins 25 ans.
2: Qu’ils dénoncent le fascisme de Washington. C’est-à-dire qu’ils doivent utiliser tous leurs moyens et toutes leurs richesses pour diffuser cette réalité:
” Tant et aussi longtemps que la constitution et les institutions de Washington ne seront pas totalement rejetées du revers de la main, le fascisme, le militarisme, le racisme, l’affairisme, le cléricalisme, le libéralisme, le nombrilisme et le féodalisme économico-politique resteront à demeure dans cet État voyou, criminel, barbare, tueur, assassin et meurtrier washingtonien.”
Google Translate for non-French speakers
I give no credence to the mainstream media. I will give my credit only on two conditions:
1: That they defend with all their means and all their resources the freedom of Julian Assange and that they publicly apologize to him with great fanfare and on multiple occasions for at least under 25 years old.
2: Let them denounce the fascism of Washington. That is to say, they must use all their means and all their wealth to spread this reality:
“As long as the constitution and institutions of Washington are not totally rejected out of hand, fascism , militarism, racism, racketeering, clericalism, liberalism, navel-gazing and economic-political feudalism will remain permanently in this rogue, criminal, barbaric, killer, murderer and Washingtonian state.”
Google Translate is surprisingly poor. The last half of Daudelin’s first condition is about widespread or extensive public apology which should continue for at least 25 years.
You nailed it, pal. Congratulations!
1. It would be bad enough if the Price Psaki, Sullivan BS was solely fed to Americans but it’s not. Global western state friendly media dont have journos other than in their local area. They publish WAPO, NYT, WSJ, ( and british) syndicated stuff. The masses devour it as gospel as can be seen by the universally inane content of the “Comments” sections below the stuff. 2. The clear conclusion that the Price material on the “Russian False Flag video” is baseless propaganda has not even remotely stopped this becoming established narrative in the media, and thus the dimwit masses. 3. Watch both those brave and foolish journos get the Helen Thomas treatment….and we wont know about it.
I spent a year in northern Iraq, 18 years ago, and I am used to the idea that my govt and the corporate press engage in relentless propaganda and that our foreign policy is routinely run by war criminals.
Yes. The wall of propaganda is entirely rational for the goals of the war profiteers who run out media, government, and war industry. And, it turns out, big banking, big oil, and big pharma. Big banking is at the helm, as described in war profiteer story.
Makes you wonder about Benedict Arnold. Been interesting to read about Emperor Nero’s quietly pedaled rehabilitation after all these centuries of blaming him for setting Rome on fire and poisoning his mother, etc., etc., historians now suggesting he was out of town for these events, but nonetheless too concerned with plebian misery and his embrace of their gratitude for eternally wary patrician comfort.
Thanks, Mr. Lawrence, excellent article. It took me a while to totally distrust the NYT. The icing on the cake was the day I hear the then editor of that paper, Bill Keller, say, “Before I print anything, I run it by the White House first.” I, along with Bill Moyers, said, “That’s not journalism.” Now I look back and realize the MSM has always lied.
In the interesting exchange with Matt Lee, Ned Price uses the word “information,” and not “evidence.” Significant? Yes it is, in the way of a clue as to the honesty of Price, who to me failed to behave in a way consistent with honest intentions.
In fact, Price never uses the word “evidence.” Why, because it’s unlikely there is any and he’s protecting his ass if for some magical reason we learn the truth. He even fools Lee into saying “information,” and Lee should’ve pointed out directly the fact that information is not evidence and that he wants to know evidence, not information. “Information” is a much lower bar and it introduces all kinds of loopholes that Price could later claim as excuse for the fact that there is no evidence. Anything can be “information.” Not so with evidence.
We saw that with the 2003 debacle. The excuse given later, after it was proven that Powell’s vial, the aluminum tubes, and the yellow cake were really not evidence but lies, was that the Intelligence Community had wrong information, and Bush could only go by what that community advised. Horseshit. And a million people died.
The astonishing thing is that government has become so arrogant they no longer need the fig leaf of at least a modicum of evidence, as they did in 2003. The only similarity between now and then is that it’s all lies.
starts with “Finally. Finally our mainstream press and broadcasters show signs of waking up to the cynical, pervasive, propaganda campaign official Washington wages to obscure its imperial pursuits.”
which, of course is propaganda … the mainstream media has always been “cooperative” with the govt.
Who’s propaganda do you believe, US or Russian?
Well, at least Russian propaganda is actually plausible.
You need no believe either one. Suspend judgement!
Mainstream media is unfortunately dead when it comes to actual journalism.
This is because of two reasons:
1: A newer generation of journalists, some of whom see the traditional notion of reporting as outdated, and thinks journalism should serve their particular political cause.
2: The traditional news media has been through a financial bloodbath. (Partly because of technological changes, partly because few trust them these days.)
As a survival strategy, they have become increasingly closely tied to the power structures and financial interests. Bezo’s Washington Post is a great example.
Fortunately, there is still a hunger for real reporting and the independent media.
One other aspect to the beginnings of mainstream pushback against official pronouncements is the longer unaccountability is allowed to go unchallenged, the more brazen it becomes. Give them an inch, they’ll take a mile. Thus the press has had to appear more and more unhinged from reality to cover for power. They have suffered the consequences as trust in those institutions is at an all time low. At some point, they have to prevent it from hitting the floor to survive. That appears to be the point we’re approaching.
You are so right. WMD in Iraq, Powell, the hapless Ned Price. I firmly believe that soon they could claim Putin is an alien pedo, whereupon the western corporate state friendly media would report it as gospel and the masses would swear it was fact.
MI6’s pet spook/ traitor Litvinenko, was trying to claim that Putin was a paedophile, among a number of other wild assertions.
The western media have been more than willing to peddle corruption allegations against Putin from fraudsters and financial criminals like Browder and Khordokovsky that he has stolen $40 billion (sometimes casually raised to $200 billion and parroted by countless western politicians) without a shred of evidence to support them.
Biden says you’re either with us or against us. I don’t have a dog in this fight my son didn’t make millions from any dealings with the Ukraine, his did. That means to me his remark is tainted by his own personal actions and those of his son.
President seems to be acting more like his predecessor than not. So I’ll consider the source here and pay him no mind.
Anybody but Trump got elected His kid got rich and the rest of the populace from the middle of the middle class down are going broke just trying to stay alive.
Ain’t that something to be proud of?
Thanks CN
Hunter Biden’s seat on the board of Burisma was everyday, run-of-the-mill corruption. Relatively speaking, it was small potatoes.
The real corruption story involved VP Biden’s flagrant interference in the internal affairs of Ukraine. It’s true that the independent Prosecutor General, Viktor Shokin, refused to close the investigation into Burisma. But Shokin also refused to issue an arrest warrant for Ukrainian national, Dmitry Firtash, who was the subject of a U.S. extradition request in Austria. He refused because the US would not, or could not, produce evidence of any criminal wrongdoing by Firtash.
The end result was Joe Biden withholding $1 billion in aid to Ukraine until Shokin was fired by Poroshenko.
According Shokin’s sworn statement;
“The events relating to [Firtash] and Biden in 2015 reveal the extent of the U.S. administration’s interference with Ukrainian domestic affairs and the eagerness to exercise control with the aim of advancing US interests.”
hxxps://cdn.factcheck.org/UploadedFiles/427618359-Shokin-Statement-1.pdf
When Bush used the “you’re either with us or against us”, the media and Democrats exploded with righteous indignation, Hitler comparisons and warnings about “creeping fascism”.
Biden says it? Nothin’ to see here! Unless you’re some kind of Russian bot/intelligence asset.
The collective intelligence of the American people seems to have nosedived the past two decades, and hypocrisy have somehow become a virtue.
The democrats missed a great opportunity to move in the direction of re-inventing their party during the run-up to the last election.
The republicans now have that unique opportunity to do so themselves and win the next presidential election. If we have one.
Many seem to miss the fact that when faced with a “zero tolerance ” everyone loses. But then where the Dimocraps and the Repugniclans are considered the outcome is always the same, everyone loses except those in the political business of making profits from governing.
Either way expect civil war, that ” hypocrisy have/has s0mehow become a virtue” obviously cuts both ways. Unless one is blind to the reality of one’s favorite parties politics. On the other hand could be hysterical blindness brought on by the fragile mind.
“Creeping fascism”, seemed to have been dramatically emboldened by “Trumpism” and has boldly strode to center stage of the political arena.
Has Biden considered that his earlier actions in Ukraine, which have become clear for all to see? If so he seems oblivious, which bears on his obviously lacking moral compass, being on drugs or descending into dementia. OOPS! I’ve said the quiet part out loud. So be it.
This must be expected when the same two party system still reins supreme over a country that got, so much wrong after WWII. ( if CIA knew about North build up they lied about the Korean build up to war. Most likely because so Curtis Le May could push Ike to using a nuke. Then rush to judgement of the North Vietnamese behind CIA lies, again, then onto Reagan’s Bush 41’s led blow them up and let it “Trickle Down” destruction of the labor movement, and head long charge into efforts to” Christianize America” using the aging silent majority , by lying through his teeth to everyone about almost everything.
That happens when a handicapped elder get elected Pres. of the U.S. A. something foolhardy democrats are responsible for this time.
That one man who must be at the top of his game can lead this dysfunctional amalgamation of fools known at political party officials is a fallacy, same as the belief that Americans and therefore America are infallible.
Very few elders have the stamina to take the brutal beating a president endures on a day to day basis. I’ve repeatedly warned about what happens when a newly elected president is subjected to his Nationals Security briefings. We all recognized age ravages people, to be president I believe must accelerate the aging process.
Like it or not stress is the mortal enemy of the aged. Joe has been in DC too long, very much like the “Turtle” and the demands of those positions has become much greater as the years have worn on. Like it or not it’s a fact!
As Strother Martin Jr. , the prison warden, said to Paul Newman in “Cool Hand Luke”. ” Luke you gatta get yer mind right.” There is great truth in that statement. When the mind begins to fail bad things ultimately happen. Any of you democrats or republicans listening.
Thanks CN
And one more thing. Biden says Mitch McConnel is his personnel friend. Wow! But if I’m not with him I’m against him. Fair enough. I will consider the source and pay him no mind!
At this point the level of ignorance is so high, tolerance of the intolerable in politics has become on the democratic side of politics I’ve become cynical, intolerant and a little vindictive.
No friend of Mitch is a friend 0f mine. If Senators expect to be treated with the respect they seem to thing they still deserve in my book they are out to0 lunch. If you want some respect earn some by doing something constructive besides building your own fortunes.
Thanks CN