Diabolic methods of propaganda and perception management are at work now that have no precedent. This is war waged in a new way — against domestic populations as well as those declared as enemies.
Stand with Ukraine rally at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington, Feb. 20. (Victoria Pickering, Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
By Patrick Lawrence
Special to Consortium News
The news reports come in daily from Moscow, Kiev and the Western capitals: how many dead since Russia began its intervention in Ukraine on Feb. 24, how many injured, how many hungry or cold, how many displaced. We do not know the true count of casualties and the extent of the suffering and ought not pretend we do: This is the reality of war, each side having its version of unfolding events.
My inclination is to add the deaths in Ukraine these past two weeks to the 14,000 dead and the 1.5 million displaced since 2014, when the regime in Kiev began shelling its own citizens in the eastern provinces — this because the people of Donetsk and Lugansk rejected the U.S.–cultivated coup that deposed their elected president. This simple math gives us a better idea of how many Ukrainians are worthy of our mourning.
As we mourn, it is time to consider the wider consequences of this conflict, for Ukrainians are not alone among its victims. Who else has suffered? What else has been damaged? This war is of a kind humanity has never before known. What are its costs?
Among paying-attention people it is increasingly plain that Washington’s intent in provoking Moscow’s intervention is, and probably has been from the first, to instigate a long-running conflict that bogs down Russian forces and leaves Ukrainians to wage an insurgency that cannot possibly succeed.
Is there another way to explain the many billions of dollars’ worth of weapons and matériel the U.S. and its European allies now pour into Ukraine? If the Ukrainians cannot win — a universally acknowledged reality — what is the purpose here?
Whether this strategy goes as Washington wants, or if Russian forces get their work done and withdraw to avoid a classic quagmire, remains to be seen. But as Dave DeCamp noted in Antiwar.com last Friday, there is no sign whatsoever that the Biden administration plans any further diplomatic contacts with the Kremlin.
The implication here should be evident. The U.S. strategy effectively requires the destruction of Ukraine in the service of America’s imperial ambitions. If this thought seems extreme, brief reference to the fates of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria will provide all the compelling context one may need.
Brzezinski’s Plan in 1979
Jan. 1, 1987: Mujahideen in Kunar, Afghanistan. (erwinlux, Flickr, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)
To an extent I find surprising given its calamitous consequences, Zbigniew Brzezinski’s plan in 1979 to arm the Afghan mujahideen against the Soviets remains the more or less unaltered template.
President Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser saw nothing wrong with getting into bed with what became Al–Qaeda. Now it is the Nazis militias that infest Ukraine’s National Guard that the U.S. arms and trains.
If the record is anything to go by, this conflict could well destroy what remains of Ukraine as a nation. In the worst outcome, little will remain of its social fabric, its public spaces, its roads, bridges, schools, municipal institutions. This destruction has already begun.
Here is what I do not want Americans to miss: We are destroying ourselves and what hope we may have to restore ourselves to decency as we watch the regime governing us destroy another nation in our name. This destruction, too, has already begun.
Many people of many different ages have remarked in recent days that they cannot recall in their lifetimes a more pervasive, suffocating barrage of propaganda than what has engulfed us since the months that preceded Russia’s intervention. In my case it has come to supersede the worst of what I remember from the Cold War decades.
You asked for a robust anti-war movement in America, you got demonstrations calling for World War 3. https://t.co/Gjk3TuUcen
— Caitlin Johnstone ? (@caitoz) March 7, 2022
In January 2021, NATO published the final draft of a lengthy study it called Cognitive Warfare. Its intent is to explore the potential for manipulating minds—those of others, our own—beyond anything heretofore even attempted. “The brain will be the battlefield of the 21st century,” the document asserts. “Humans are the contested domain. Cognitive warfare’s objective is to make everyone a weapon.”
In a subsection headed “The vulnerabilities of the human brain,” the report has this to say:
“In particular, the brain:
is unable to distinct [sic] whether information is right or wrong:
is led to believe statements or messages it has already heard as true, even though these may be false;
accepts statements as true, if backed by evidence, with no regards to [sic] the authenticity of that evidence.“
And this, which I find especially fiendish:
“At the political and strategic level, it would be wrong to underestimate the impact of emotions…. Emotions—hope, fear, humiliation—shape the world and international relations with the echo-chamber effect of social media.“
No, we’re not in Kansas anymore. Cognitive Warfare is a window onto diabolic methods of propaganda and perception management that have no precedent. This is war waged in a new way — against domestic populations as well as those declared as enemies.
And we have just had a taste of what it will be like as these techniques, well-grounded in cutting-edge science, are elaborated. Yet more disturbing to me than the cold prose of the report is the astonishing extent to which it proves out. Cognitive warfare, whether or not the NATO report is now the propagandists’ handbook, works, and it is working now on most Americans.
(NATO)
This is what I mean when I say we, too, are the victims of this war.
Last week the conductor of the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra, Valery Gergiev, was sacked for refusing to condemn Vladimir Putin. The same thing then happened to Anna Netrebko. The Metropolitan Opera in New York fired its star soprano for the same reason: She preferred to say nothing about the Russian president.
There is no bottom to this. Last Friday Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Senator, openly called for Putin’s assassination. Michael McFaul, briefly Barack Obama’s ambassador to Russia and the king of nitwittery, asserts that all Russians who don’t openly protest Russia’s intervention in Ukraine are to be punished for it. In the idiotic file, the International Federation of Felines has barred imports of Russian cats.
Here is the entry on this list of preposterous assertions that got me out of my chair in a rage last Thursday: The International Paralympic Committee banned Russian and Belarusian athletes—why the Belarusians, for heaven’s sake?—from the winter Paralympics that commenced the following day in Beijing. We’re now down to persecuting people whose hearts and souls are abler than their limbs?
The committee made it plain it acted in response to international pressure. I wonder whose that might be.
What Has Become of Us
U.S. military assistance arriving in Ukraine, Feb, 10. (U.S. Embassy Kyiv Ukraine)
Look at what has become of us. Most Americans seem to approve of these things, or at least are unstirred to object. We have lost all sense of decency, of ordinary morality, of proportion. Can anyone listen to the din of the past couple of weeks without wondering if we have made of ourselves a nation of grotesques?
It is common to observe that in war the enemy is always dehumanized. We are now face to face with another reality: Those who dehumanize others dehumanize themselves more profoundly.
“Rational argument can be conducted with some prospect of success only so long as the emotionality of a given situation does not exceed a certain critical degree. If the affective temperature rises above this level, the possibility of reason’s having any effect ceases and its place is taken by slogans and chimerical wish fantasies. That is to say, a sort of collective possession results which rapidly develops into a psychic epidemic.”
That is a snippet from a book by C.G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self, that a friend just sent. When our feelings get the better of us, we can no longer think or talk usefully to one another: This is the Swiss psychoanalyst’s point in simple terms.
The other day PBS Newshour ran an interview with one Artem Semenikhin, in which the small-town mayor was lionized for standing up to Russian soldiers. In the background, as the ever-alert Alan MacLeod points out, was a portrait of Stepan Bandera, the savage Russophobe, anti–Semite, and leader of Ukrainian Nazis.
PBS Newshour interviews the Mayor of Konotop, Artem Semenikhin, presenting him as a hero for killing Russian invaders.
However, despite his Zoom blur effect, you can clearly still see that behind him is a portrait of Nazi leader and Holocaust perpetrator Stepan Bandera. pic.twitter.com/KNwCuFeCkO
— Alan MacLeod (@AlanRMacLeod) March 4, 2022
What did PBS do about this careless oversight? It blurred the Bandera portrait and broadcast the interview with its Ukrainian hero. American journalism at its zenith.
It strikes me as the perfect metaphor for what has happened to our reasoning faculties — or, better put, what we have allowed to be done to them. Factual realities that lie beyond dispute, if inconvenient, are blurred out of the movie we think we’re watching.
It is the same with any genuine understanding of the Russian intervention. I have four words for what we need to read this crisis: history, chronology, context, and responsibility. Since none of these serves our cognitive warriors’ purpose, we are invited to blot them out. And once again: With dreadful fidelity to those actively manipulating our perceptions, we do so.
Context, the worst of us assert, is some idea those awful Russians came up with. We take no interest whatsoever in how the world may look from anyone else’s perspective. Who in hell, please tell me, thinks this is a good way to live?
I have rendered a pencil-sketch of a nation falling apart as it takes another one apart. A nation this far into one of Jung’s “collective possessions” cannot possibly do well. As is always the case (a thought that came to me as I studied the Japanese nationalists of the 1930s), the victimizers are victims, too.
If we are to find our way out of this funhouse, we will have to do one thing before any other: We will have to learn to speak in a clear, new language so that we can name things as they are instead of blurring them as PBS did that Bandera portrait.
And we must start with one word. Unless we can learn to call America an empire, we will stumble in the funhouse dark until it becomes so unfun we can no longer bear our own self-deceptions.
I see in here a virtue in this large, complicated moment. Between Russia’s intervention in Ukraine, which I count regrettable but necessary, and the joint statement Putin made with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Feb. 4, we are all called upon either to recognize the United States for what it has become, an empire violently defending itself against history itself, or accept our fate among the victims of this empire.
Clarity: It is always a fine thing, whatever the difficulties it brings.
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.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
You reluctantly say Russia’s intervention was necessary but look what the consequences are going to be. We are going to get Russia to demolish large swaths of Ukraine and kill many thousands of civilians – thanks of course to our rushing vast quantities of arms to Ukraine. This is a great service to the USA and it’s imperial power ! Why didn’t Putin see that ? Why don’t you see that ? The American empire will stagger on with this nice boost from Russian self destruction, temporarily shored up to continue on its own quest for self destruction.
Not short of taking sides, you keep refering to a Russian Intervention. You stated it at least 3 or 4 times. Try telling that to the 2 million refugees headed our direction and the dead amongst them.
It doesn’t matter what actions the Biden administration take. They are only giving Russia cultural currency by making sanctions.
Another great entry from Mr. Lawrence – a voice of sanity in the thickest fog of psychological warfare I have ever experienced. And that is saying something considering the bombardments of the last 6 years.
So much to say on the subject but I will sit in gratitude for the essay and the many comments here. Thank you, CN, for publishing.
“We’ll Know Our Disinformation Program Is Complete When Everything the American Public Believes Is False.” – Former CIA Director William Casey
Thank you Patrick, enjoy your writing. While I agree with many of the points, I agree with Mike Strong: I was right on with this article until the next to last paragraph when he writes, “Between Russia’s intervention in Ukraine, which I count regrettable but necessary, ….” this is a pretty sugarcoated discounting description of a war where innocent people appear to be getting killed by indiscriminate Russian bombing. This is a regrettable trend I see among some of the writings of what I will humbly call the “Empire Exposure Team”. The US war machine keeps on turning though, and I believe that our provocations of Russia over the years (and recently) are part of a decades long plot by NATO and the MIC to keep the weapons sales booming (literally). I look forward to hearing your thoughts as the war continues.
Sadly and reluctantly I find myself aligned with the author’s position. The only way this situation could have been prevented, and indeed the only way it can now be stopped, was through good faith diplomacy, negotiation and the honoring of agreements. These failed and the fault lies with Germany, France, and Ukraine. And behind the actions of these countries is the U.S., as always meddling and dictating to others. Russia waited seven years for compliance with the Minsk Accord. Russia has all along made clear where the red line was and that NATO’s expansion was an existential threat. There is abundant evidence that the ultimate aim of the U.S. has long been regime change in Russia. We now know there are some 20-30 U.S.-backed bio-weapons labs in Ukraine, many near the Russian border.
Moreover, As Moon of Alabama pointed out on a 5 March posting: at the 19 February Munich Security Conference Zelensky “prominently mentioned the Budapest Memorandum under which the Ukraine had given up the nuclear weapons it had inherited from the USSR.” This is what Zelensky said (a thinly veiled threat of bringing nuclear weapons back into Ukraine):
“Since 2014, Ukraine has tried three times to convene consultations with the guarantor states of the Budapest Memorandum. Three times without success. Today Ukraine will do it for the fourth time. I, as President, will do this for the first time. But both Ukraine and I are doing this for the last time. I am initiating consultations in the framework of the Budapest Memorandum. The Minister of Foreign Affairs was commissioned to convene them. If they do not happen again or their results do not guarantee security for our country, Ukraine will have every right to believe that the Budapest Memorandum is not working and all the package decisions of 1994 are in doubt.”
hxxps://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/03/zelensky-and-the-fascists-he-will-hang-on-some-tree-on-khreshchatyk.html#more
How long was Russia supposed to wait for the U.S. and NATO to bring war onto its soil? It’s sickening because as you rightly point out it is the Ukrainian people who will suffer and die. But I do not think Russia was left with any other options. That said, I have utmost respect for your principled and opposing point of view and wish I could join you in it.
Cara,
First paragraph. You are correct peace efforts failed. Your description of events is on message and complete.
Save one item, those damned US missiles in Poland, a sticky issue with not so small implications.
Would you agree that the U.S. leadership could have done a better job of handling the matter? Something that was never in the cards as long as the NeoCon mindset prevailed. And it did. ” It ” being of course the mindset destroy Putin, the Russian people’s will and Russia.
One would think that the so called “leader of the free world ” would take the moral high road at some point and lead by example.
Turns out the “leader of the free world” is evidently neither. Neither a leader or the head of the free world.
The quote you provide was obviously available to the POTUS who to my estimate still picks and chooses his facts with blind bias. I guess the NeoCons got what they paid for.
Your last paragraph ” . . . .Russia was left with with any other options. . . ” just as the State Department planned it.
Thanks CN
Along with Jung’s The Undiscovered Self, I suggest Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents . Both books are similar, written in their last years . Every time I read Freud’s book, I learn something new about what is happening now politically. It was published when he was in exile in England from Nazi Germany. Jungians and Freudians have more in common. Esp. Freud’s book seems applicable to the current situation. Note that he mentions the enlightened people looking down on others….the super-ego within and without harms individuals, who feel afraid to speak up. / Chinese medicine & I-Ching…..helps us see too much Yang now, too little Yin / peace and love across the miles dear friends
Readers of Consortium News from across the Earth can learn the brutal truth about what has been occurring across the last two painful years, and today, – by reading the unsurpassed analysis found in the 24-page recent writing of Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano:
hXXps://www.globalresearch.ca/declaration-msgr-carlo-maria-vigano-russia-ukraine-crisis/5773586
Peace.
Edit: Here is the correct link to Archbishop Vigano’s must-read statement:
hxxps://www.globalresearch.ca/declaration-msgr-carlo-maria-vigano-russia-ukraine-crisis/5773586
Many years ago I concluded that, while the Allies beat the Axis forces in WW2, fascism won the war. Because, in the decades after, fascist and sub-fascist governments popped up all over the place. Often with support from the US government (not its people, who thought their government was promoting democracy).
Here in America, we live at the center of an empire. And I believe it is common, regular, and possibly necessary that the citizens at the center of an empire believe that the empire’s intentions are benign. That attitude, I believe, permeates even up to the higher levels of the government, where there must be a lot of cynicism (to tolerate the daily hypocritical actions) but at the same time a personal sense of blameless innocence (a la Madeleine Albright and the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children). After all, nobody gets up in the morning and looks into the bathroom mirror thinking, ‘What kind of harm and destruction can I bring forth today?’. We all want to feel good about ourselves (even if we feel conflicted).
The point being, American people WANT to be told that we are doing the right thing in Ukraine, because we live at the center of the empire and we want to feel good about our country and ourselves. Which makes it that much easier to enlist us as citizen-soldiers in the cognitive warfare described in Patrick Lawrence’s excellent essay. Most of us are already volunteers.
That we are being “called on” to give everything we have – financial, moral, military support, even our lives if this keeps up, to support freaks who admire Nazis so much they have portraits hanging on their walls, is getting to be too much, it is very wearying, it’s been so hard to keep positive during the pandemic, and it’s just like a damn nightmare then never ends, like some kind of macabre heavy metal album cover or something.
The current war psychosis afflicting the west is not new. It has been instantiated both in literature and science. Typical of the genre, Lord of the Flies was a 1954 debut novel by Nobel Prize-winning British author William Golding. The book focuses on a group of British schoolboys stranded on an uninhabited island when their aircraft came down and the aircraft crew was killed. Then came their disastrous attempts to govern themselves. Themes include the tension between groupthink and individuality, between rational and emotional reactions, and between morality and immorality. Since the boys had not reached a level of emotional maturity and therefore could not imbibe the norms of structured and internalised behaviour patterns they gradually descended into primitivism and savagery. They were finally rescued by the adults.
But this is hardly new. The seething irrationalism is not difficult to stir up in mass society through constant fear and emotional manipulation. This is true in much commercial advertising. More disturbing, however, is the suggestibility of this method when political issues are broached. Newspaper readers, radio and TV audiences, members of a political party even if not physically gathered together are easy to work up into a psychological crowd and into a state of frenzy in which attempts at rational argument only spurs the animal spirits … and mere assertion, often repeated, counts more than rational argument and so does the direct attack upon the subconscious which takes the form of attempts to evoke and crystallize pleasant associations of an entirely extra-rational impulse, very frequently of a sexual nature.
‘’The reduced sense of responsibility and the absence of effective volition in turn explain the ordinary citizens ignorance and lack of judgement in matters of domestic and foreign policy which if anything is more shocking in the case of educated people and people who are successfully active in non-political walks of life than it is with uneducated people in humble stations. Information is plentiful, but it does not seem to make any difference. We need only compare a lawyer’s attitude to his brief and the same lawyer’s attitude to the statements of political fact presented in his newspapers in order to see what the matter is. In the one case the lawyer is qualified for appreciating the relevance of his fact by years of purposeful labour done under the definite stimulus of interest in his own personal competence; and under a stimulus which is no less powerful he then bends his acquirements, his intellect, his will, to the contents of his brief. In the other case he has not taken the trouble to qualify; he does not care to absorb the information or to apply it to the cannons of criticism he knows so well how to handle; and he is impatient of long complicated argument … All this goes to show that without the initiative that comes from immediate responsibility, ignorance will persist in the face of masses of information however complete and correct …Thus the typical citizen drops down to a lower level of mental performance as soon as he/she enters the political field. He/she argues and analyses in a way in which he/she would recognise as infantile within the sphere of his own interests. He/She becomes a primitive again. His/Her thinking becomes associative and affective.’’ (Joseph Alois Schumpeter – Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. Quoted in Political Philosophy, p.153)
These immanent tendencies were captured not only in the writings of Sigmund Freud, but also in lesser-known luminaries such as Gustav Le Bon; these theorists were part of a political elitist worldview. In addition to this there were the militant and militaristic theories of the Italian elite theorists, such as Gaetano Mosca (The Ruling Class) Vilfredo Pareto (Mind and Society) and Roberto Michels (Political Parties) which gave rise to Mussolini and his movement in Italy and Hitler in Germany. A milder view of these views was articulated by the British imperialists George Bernard Shaw and Cecil Rhodes.
And the same methodological approach to mass mind control is now being carried out by the western states – headed by the United States of course – against the Eurasian bloc. War is a racket, but of course, what else could it be in an age like this. Present day imperialist fascism can be compared to the earlier pedigree articulated by one Houston Stewart Chamberlain (1855-1927). It was he who synthesised the philosophical rationalism of the imperialist age, ‘vitalism’ with racial theory and the and the findings of Social Darwinism. Thus, he became a direct precursor of Hitler and Rosenberg. The philosophical classic of National Socialism.
So, this is where we have arrived. Where do we go from here?!
“The Lord of the Flies” has been disproved in concept and in an actual wreck in real life where a similar group of boys organized a cooperative arrangement in order to survive on their island, until, finally, they were rescued. A lot of ink has been wasted on such half-brained dramatic concepts. Remember how common “complexes” used to be in TV shows and movies? Or how “juvenile delinquents” were the big bads of yesteryear.
Google for “real life lord of the flies” for a number of links on this group of 6 Tongan boys June 1965.
Here is a modified link (replace the xx’s with tt’s) This is a June 2020 article
hxxps://people.com/human-interest/inside-real-life-lord-of-the-flies-survival-of-6-tongan-boys-54-years-ago/
When I see these kinds of literary extrapolations, purporting to be solid data, I grit my teeth and roll my eyes. Oh, also look up frogs slowly boiling if the heat is turned up every so gradually (they would move), and lemmings supposedly doing mass suicides (they don’t, it was a total Disney fake documentary).
The UK Security State apparatchiks are wetting themselves with excitement- their unrelenting PHYSOPS onslaught has seen homeless on the streets of UK cities selling fanzine magazines (published by homeless charities) for Zelensky and his junta (at the same time unreported violent assaults on Slavic immigrants are occurring in poorer neighbourhoods). The ruling class must be agog with this spectacle of support and emotion in which they have converted a humanitarian ethos into a race war generating enough outrage to fuel an army of homeless poor and violent crusaders to march on Kiev and liberate it from the heinous Slavic Rus. An old cruel adage is awakened in their shrivelled souls war solves all the social and economic problems of capitalism. Therein lays the danger from a ruling class who confident in the power of its propaganda goes into overdrive to force regime change in Russia more convinced than ever of its historic mission. This is a dream the UK ruling class has nurtured since the 19th century and is as fresh today as in 1853 start of the Crimean War. The UK state has spent billions on Russophobia campaigns and hybrid wars in Europe, the Middle East and Eurasia against Russia. M16 will be awash now with money to engage the Russian enemy in Ukraine and the imperious generals of the MOD not far behind escalating conflict in Europe which has been their role since 2014..
Intelligent, persuasive, undeniable description of causes and events and even things that must be done. But there is a wall between the petitioners for truth and injustice and those in power who must be persuaded or moved aside. Sam F suggests a way in reforming how we select leaders. The best way, but how do you get there from herre.
Perhaps we will be saved by unanticipated consequences hopefully not the result of catastrophe. Listening to the likes of our elected representatives during the Russian intervention, watching our leaders refuse to even to listen to Russia’s case before they invaded was truly sickening. Biden et al got what they wanted, to get Russia to invade. They should be wary that the outcome could be one they or no one else imagined.
I share the loneliness (or is it isolation?) of those who wish to see more than the one-sided
narratives we are be force fed.
With thanks to Patrick Lawrence (and Joe Lauria, Scott Ritter and others) with one exception:
I do not see that calling the US an empire is going to be. We must bow to history and one
great example is Francis Jenning’s “The Creation of America” both for its discussion of “democracy”
(which did not exist then..or later) or of “empire” . Jennings argues that the beloved upper class
founding fathers wanted their own “empire”, apart from Britain’s empire. Mine is a more pessimistic
assessment perhaps. I call it the “workers of the world unite” tendency in so much other analyses.
As we all know, the workers of the world—for many factors–did NOT unite.
The world gendarme tried so hard to carry out the westernization of Ukraine that as a result he made the ukrainization (nazification) of the West. Racism, cynicism, aggression and impunity have become the way of thinking of the Western population, dropping the maxi of decency and civility.
The only thing that is new in this is a more effective means of propaganda delivery and the greater data and analytical tools available.
The author apparently needs to read more about World War I before declaring that we are in a brave new world of propaganda effectiveness. A history I recently read made a pretty convincing case that WWI went on for a year or two after the militaries of Germany and France and Britain realized there could be no military victory for either side. The problem was that the propaganda in both Germany and Britain had been so effective at painting the other as evil that the governments couldn’t be seen to be negotiating any kind of concession to “evil” to try to end the war.
Your courageous honesty, and wise assessments of fact vs purveyed fictions from the now massive
milinteltech complex level, those of the button pushers/prodders of the human psyche, are a much needed balm for those of us whose lot is to question much in these hours, Patrick. My sincere and abiding thanks, sir.
Slightly off topic, but Oliver Stone’s banned “Ukraine on Fire” has been reposted: hxxps://www.bitchute.com/video/Dq8WHsXmpJAx/
I live in Finland which is located next to Russia with a 1300 km border. The same US/EU propaganda is here. After joining EU matters in our country has gradually been going worse regarding the foreign policy. We buy arms from US and Israel. Our politicians remain silent about Palestine, Syria, US sanctions, Assange etc. Not a single person of our political elite has commented the HMW or Amnesty reports about apartheid in occupied Palestine. Yemen is in news very rarely. The only positive matter has been that people have all thse years been against joining NATO. The discussion whether to join or not is kept in mainstream media regularly and fearmongering toward Russia is performed. But now that is also changing and the recent polls show dramatic increase in support of joining NATO. The hysteria about Ukraine war is unpecedented. Nobody mentions the people in Donbass or Luhansk. Also the military expenditure of Finland is increasing dramatically. I really am not able to organize my thoughts any more, is the human race this bad in general.
So far the only explanation i find reasonable is the cold capitalistic logic executed by the rich and powerful. The war is a racket. But then it is very hard to conclude that so many people are so incapable of reasoning this out. I know many intelligent persons who just does not understand what is happening. I feel very depressed.
“But then it is very hard to conclude that so many people are so incapable of reasoning this out. I know many intelligent persons who just does not understand what is happening. I feel very depressed.”
As do most of we people worldwide, and of good will, Vesa. You are not alone, at all. Best sincere wishes to you and yours as we go through whatever this “thing” may bring.
I live in the US and I agree with you applying what you say to this country. It staggers the imagination, it has been said. I too find it hard to think and feel depressed.
Thank you for your comment.
Thanks, Vesa!
Your thoughts are organized! So well organized that you helped to reassure me that this ugliness we are experiencing in the U.S. is not by chance or just serving domestic “power elite” short sighted thinking. It’s the same as you’re experiencing in Finland. It’s the same. It’s not by chance.
I’m thinking that it may be part of a longstanding – hundreds of years – white supremacist ideology exploiting vulnerable populations targeted by the military giants who have used NATO to drag in other countries. I notice that Finland joined “NATO’s Partnership for Peace”. Maybe that’s why you “got the memo” to join our craziness. Sorry.
It’s ok to bomb the shit out of Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, and the rest. No outcries.
But when Russia’s efforts at diplomacy are denied and they “take the bait” – no other choice available after years of trying at the U.N. – and invade our NATO puppet (following our bloody 2014 coup – no international uproar over that) the whole white supremacist clique enters step #2 – the sanctions.
The only hope we have for saner sustainable policy is that they have bitten off more than they can chew and the over reach backfires on them before they destroy the planet.
That’s all we got right now during this witch hunt that attacks of all people our dear beloved Valery Gergiev and cancels his conducting performances in clique countries. I hope if we survive this madness that he refuses to conduct in those places that shunned him like Munich, New York (Carnegie Hall!!!????) etc
Hello Versa,
Thank you for your comment especially for
mentioning Julien Assange.
Free Julien Assange NOW!
As for me, mr Lawrence is mostly right however is there nothing new to what we see these days and I refer to the life and work of the author of ‘Propaganda’, Edward Bernays. Humans are not fit for handling mere facts. Like all mammals we are profoundly led by emotions. Our perception runs in order to comfort us, not to win prizes for correct observation and this is as old as human kind and is not to change for the next millennia so fasten your seatbelts.
True, but the people manipulating emotion are coldly rational and need to be correctly observed and condemned as Mr. Lawrence has done in this fine article.
speak for yourself.
Tnx Patrick, CN.
Agree vics not confined2 op theater.
Been appx 100 years since Ivy Lee had JD Rockefeller hand out New Dimes…
Mad Ave revered in 50s (less so now).
Far as da ol cui bono… CNpiece (during PR runup) pointed out how much war gear stock has increased in value… Biz as usual?
NATO destroyed Libya because it was poised to challenge the French Franc as the trade currency of Africa, making Tripoli the banking capital of the continent and replacing Paris. Qaddafi had amassed over $50 billion in gold reserves. To what lengths would our own madmen be willing to go to protect the dollar?
The sacrifice of Ukraine in order to suck Russia into a quagmire seems like a long shot. Even the madmen in charge of this country can see the risk of nuclear war. That they are willing to take that risk suggests desperation. Perhaps the loss of the dollar?s status as world trade and oil currency? Just thinking out loud.
The frenzied Russophobic groupthink throughout the entire West and its militarist-corporate media is stunning to witness. I stand back in awe at the indoctrination that’s running non-stop 24/7. Never seen anything like this in my life, disturbing beyond belief.
And I thought the Russiagate nonsense and Covid hysteria were the worst mob mentalities I had ever witnessed, neither hold a candle to what’s going on now.
Also, the cavalier manner in which liberals and neo-cons are essentially dismissing the MAD doctrine as it comes to nuclear war is astonishingly dismaying.
I know, the intrusions that Democrat friends of my brainwashed sister make are absolutely stunning. I don’t even know them and they send me emails celebrating the glorious little war that Lord Biden as arranged for them to support. I thought I had finally shed all the Democrat propaganda remaining from Hillary’s non-election and alleged Trump puppetry. Now I get daily BS about the poor brave Ukrainians being murdered by Putin’s thugs. I would tell them directly to fornicate themselves and report immediately to hell, but I’m already persona non grata for my “cruel” attitude towards wokeism. If this country could start an actual movement like this on “anti war,” “save the environment,” “feed the poor,” “stop the revenue waste,” or rationally “control our own borders,” we might accomplish something truly useful rather than take us closer to the abyss of another world war. I even note there is madness afoot on the ICH site where I was repeatedly censored for trying to note the illegality Washington has embraced with its widespread naked theft of Russian assets around the world. I complained and now anything I put up is immediately removed. With allies for truth like that we are doomed. We will all be crushed by those who blatantly seek raw power and misrepresent it as justice.
One thing I noticed in recent news reports (at least in Europe, not sure if there is much a difference from the USA anymore) is that emphasis is given to accusations that can clearly also be attributed to NATO or the USA. There is naturally also a lot of blame shifting between Ukraine and Russia official war reports that are mostly represented assuming the Ukrainian side is trustworthy, but I also heard a lot of “bringing war in Europe for the first time since WWII”, sometimes with qualifiers that make the sentence factually true, or about the bombing of a news related building (yep, Beograd went though it first), unprovoked aggression, a will to establish a puppet government in an independent state and so on. There is also a focus on limitations of freedom of press in Russia, not so long after the EU banned some news outlets, clearly because of their affiliation, not because of accuracy of the provided information (such limitation are more expected in “democracies” which are directly engaged in a war, whatever they decide to call it, than in ones that pretend they are not) and outrage about jailing of participants in unauthorized protests which are indeed also illegal in many western “democracies”. In Italy, a member of NATO, people from around the word were tortured for participating in an authorized protest, just for context. My point here is not who is right or wrong, but that similar tactics (e.g. DARVO) are well known to be used by sociopaths and in torture, which isn’t really good at extracting reliable information, but may be good for manipulating public opinion and I feel some similarities in commonly reported news already crossed the border between simple hypocrisy and psychological manipulation.
If you think of Rupert Sheldrake’s concept of ‘morphic resonance’ whereby creatures (surely including us) are influenced and changed without observed communication,through the experiences of their fellows in another part of the country. The bluetits of Holland learning almost simultaneously to open and sip from bottles of milk on doorsteps were subjects of one of his studies. An even more sinister explanation for modern torture diabolism is then suggested: the torture of a few victims resonates through collective consciousness as a kind of psychic learning experience, sharing both the perpetrators’ guilt and motivational deformities, and the victims’ powerlessness and fear, with the species… all the rest of us. This may seem a wild idea.. but not that far from Jung’s theories of collective consciousness. We can also see that allowing our attention to be repeatedly flooded by images of violence and horror and depravity via corrupt filmmaking wherein the negative perceptions are delivered through STORY could be another weapon being used against us.
And if the morphic resonance theory is correct, think what a powerful tool a few right-thinking people have when they gather to voice dissent on sites like this. Another reason USUK mind control wizards are so determined to stifle any truth-sharing.
A special note to thank ev’one commenting here for their special remarks. One of you, Carolyn in N. California, notes how easy it is to feel lonely amid this freak show. I join ev’one here in drawing some comfort from thhe company we’re able to keep via Consortium. My best to all. Patrick.
thank you Patrick united with you, Consortium and readers across the miles….peace be with you
It used to be illegal for the U.S. government to propagandize its citizens. Obama partially lifted this ban at the end of his presidency.
The U.S. role in the 1979 Afghanistan war was more sinister then simply arming the jihadists; the Carter administration actively manipulated the Soviets to invade. In other words, they were pleased when the invasion happened, despite their public outrage and the misery they were bringing to that country.
I was thinking the same thing, Edward. One of Obama’s parting shots was to sign into law the Portman-Murphy Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act secretly inserted into the 2017 NDAA. Are witnessing the fruits of that tragically underreported Trojan Horse?
“Partially?”
Hmm… “The Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act” has always seemed to me to be quite egregious enough to qualify it as adequately all-encompassing. That the ‘smooth operators’ will always go beyond the scope of any such law as soon as expediency permits is a given, until stopped by an injunction. In addition, they were actively baiting journalists, bloggers, anyone with a burgeoning or blossoming forum to “get on the right side of things” with serious cash. It caused me to immediately take a long and sustained (still extant) look at people and publications I’d long followed. Perfidious it is and “They” are. The nature of their business model. And they mean business.
Unfortunately, this is really happening. It’s as if I’m now living in a 1956 sci fi movie where the people I used to know, except for a tiny few, have been replaced by pods.
thank you Patrick Lawrence for your wonderful article. I join the chorus of readers in the comments column here…we are not alone, though it feels that way for sure. Least for me, a widow in “progressive northern California” where all my friends, except two, are into Russia hating. Shocking too the cancelling of Russians in the arts. After WW II we started our McCarthyism, which continues over the years. May a miracle of peace prevail.
Just over 70 years ago many brave young men gave their lives fighting fascism and also helping our Russian colleagues on the Atlantic convoys. Now ‘we’ are actively supporting fascists in the Ukraine and spouting hatred for the people of Russia.
What an insult to our war dead, I despair.
PAX AMERICANA
The Hypocritica
you must really think we’re sleeping
where is all that peace you’re keeping?
people crying, people dying
all we get from you is lying
you kill and maim, it’s plain to see
for your fake democracy
what makes you think you have the right
to carry on your evil fight?
you say you kill, the peace to keep
we say the price is far too steep
you’ve gone too far, you can’t deny
the pain you’ve caused, don’t even try
and when the final bell has rung
and when the final song is sung
and you collapse in blood and gore
we’ll see you gone for evermore
I love it!
We did this to ourselves accepting hook line and sinker the digital prison camp and the emotional infantilism, shallow thinking and lack of concentration it has bred. Of course, great sites like this are digital, but the writers come from scholarly backgrounds, “print” backgrounds, critical thinking backgrounds and language is respected.
As for the skeptical Right, we have lost the eloquence of William F Buckley Jr, say what you will of him, in favor of Rush Limbaugh, Dan Bongino and Ben Shapiro. The intellectual lowering of the bar caused all of this, now emotion has taken over. But some of were called “snobs” for wanting to retain the old, sharp elitism. Enoch Powell would not have been scared of this sh*t, he would have bulldozed them all.
I simply had no clue as to the savagery of the United States of America.
Confession is good for the soul. And now having seen it, you can never unsee it.
Here is a link to a Rand Corp paper on how we (the US) can hurt Russia. I am sure Putin has read it. It is on the internet. It comes up in Google searches:
hXXps://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB10014.html
Ukraine is a foil for US “interests” in the war against Russia; just as Kurdistan was/is a foil for US “interests” in the middle east.
Surely someone who is propagandized would see the light when reading this rand paper? Or is it naive to think so ;-)
All proof and facts are there to see, no conspiracy theories, no biased opinions, but still the earth remains flat..
I wonder when they come and close consortiumnews.
The United States Government.
Not the people.
Half of them are hypnotized and simply accepting the propaganda spoon fed to them.
The other half is still fighting the war on our corrupt government and media.
Yes, Thank you for a clear reminder of what is really going on.
I was just a teen-ager during WW II, but I remember it clearly. Then I was inducted into the army during the Korean debacle. I was an avid news participant to Vietnam and took the position that as long as it was economically profitable the war would continue despite all of the student level protests. When it was no longer profitable, our government would end it, not the protesters. I was not popular with that idea. Meanwhile we were so incompetent militarily that we were simply beaten to the ground, because the military believed their own wishes would come true.
I found that the position of Hillary as Sec. of State which was so clearly designed to give her the panache of experience for a presidential run while this money-minded woman tried unsuccessfully to demonstrate her love for “the people” to confirm my idea that she was chosen, badly, by forces behind and above the public officials we elect. I campaigned in letters detailing and promoting the idea that a shadow government was running America. It was not the good-looking pussycat, Obama nor the VP Joe Biden nor even the loud-mouthed Putin-hating Hillary who set light to hanging Saddam, shredding Kadhafi, and making wild accusations against Assad. It was all for energy sources, exactly when and where The Limits To Growth had predicted in 1972. (I concede becoming a true believer in that book.) I had the unpopular position that from 1988 on, anyone not a member of that shadow government was locked out of the real decisions and actions that ran our foreign policies.
Trump was the proof of Hillary as a wrong choice even though he was far more goose-stepped than the real decision-makers, he was brought under control by his easily demonstrated business faults. Those with access to the full panoply of the FBI/CIA files have the ultimate power of political blackmail that has become a powerful source of getting ahead in the last 30 years. As a rogue, Trump was a blip in the empire plans of the real planners, so another puppet, Joe Biden was his successor.
And now Putin felt the time had come to eliminate the Ukraine’s Azovs and Svobodas, etc.; openly admitted followers of Hitler’s Nazis who have infiltrated the upper reaches of the Ukraine government. What Putin failed to recognize was all that Patrick Lawrence has so well displayed for those of us who found so few supporters of the truth that lies beneath the blanket of lies intended to smother any rational thought. Just as we initiated and lost militarily in Korea and Vietnam, because our Generals were fighting with West Points WWII tactics, Putin is fighting with the outdated playbook of the Russian Empire’s days.
At 93 I’ve lost some muscle, but not my mind. We need a way to organize a thinking opposition and a more coherent form of a public oriented government. That may not be possible.
Thank you, Anonymot, that is a great comment.
The mass media propaganda during the run up and invasion of Iraq was about the same as the breathless reporting about Russia’s plans to invade Ukraine. What has changed is the liberal websites and commenters who are incensed with hatred for Russia and intolerant of any dissent. Democratic liberal support for war has never been higher.
Rachel Maddow could not be more pleased. Her partner in war crimes Richard Engel could not be more pleased. The great liberal betrayers, Obomber and the Clintons, could not be more pleased. Loopy Joe Biden wants more pudding and his ten percent. Only Jimmy Dore, Aaron Mate’, Max Blumenthal, Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald uphold any shred of integrity in the liberal media.
They were primed for this moment by Russiagate. It makes one wonder if Russiagate was the intentional and strategic first salvo, so to speak, in the the psychological warfare Lawrence writes of.
I think (truly believe) you can cease and desist with the wondering now. It is set in stone.
Yes, the empire must “learn to speak in a clear, new language so that we can name things as they are” which is the language of balanced political debate run by a well-structured Congress of Policy Debate (congress Of Debate dot org).
But effective policy debate requires reforms to eliminate economic influence upon all branches of the US government and mass media, which is unlikely to occur peacefully or in the near term. Our fate may be “among the victims of this empire… violently defending itself against history” which will turn upon this hemisphere and then its own people.
I was right on with this article until the next to last paragraph when he writes, “Between Russia’s intervention in Ukraine, which I count regrettable but necessary, ….” That’s a pretty poor way to write off what is happening to the regular people of Ukraine in this. Regardless of the US’s egregious and bloody behavior (and not just recent decades) there is no call for Putin to do this. All the USA’s wrongs don’t make this, from Russia, with propaganda, right. This was very well done until this part for me, which was (is) puzzling.
Further point, all the control of message in the US, which is the worst I’ve ever seen it, (seemingly suddenly, but it has been creeping up on us) as bad as anything from totalitarian countries, Russia is also totally blanketing all information with their own messaging. Here is a link to a BBC article in which several persons in Ukraine tell the BBC how their own families in Russia refuse to believe them, that they are being shelled.
hxxps://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60600487
You could also go back to the early 1990’s and Henry Kissinger’s company giving advice and privatizing St. Petersburg using the mayor, Anatoly Sobchak who assistant was Putin. And who later returned to Russia to campaign for Putin, until his enthusiastic interviews departed from Putin’s crafted self image, then he died in a manner which tells us that he was murdered with poison gas (he died and his bodyguards nearly did – an old KGB technique of putting poison on a light bulb which evaporates into the room once it is lit and gets hot). You should not excuse Putin with the behavior of the USA.
We seem to be living the world of “1984” in practice. Our Ministry of Truth tells us that “We have always been at war with Eurasia [Russia].”
And the sheeple reply, “Double-plus good!”
Thank you so much, Patrick, for that excellent presentation. I vaguely recall reviewing that disgusting Cognitive Warfare document when it came out, and thinking how diabolical it was. Now I know.
Agreed. I am “humbly proud” to have discovered sites like this long ago, and other outstanding scholarly sources and authors on the same page as the views presented here to clarify what is and has been going on.
My only fear now that biolabs are in the news is that with all of the demonization of one side, there is nothing to prevent some deadly agent being released by design/on purpose, and then blamed on Russia.
When I was young I merely assumed that 1984 was about Russia.
Now that I am old I know that 1984 was about the west. At least the Soviet citizens KNEW they were being propagandized.
Russians are now guilty by association regardless of their actual culpability. Privately held Russian assets are being expropriated, read stolen, supposedly to punish a third party. Western nations are prosecuting “thought crimes” whereby you can be sacked or even gaoled for not being critical enough.
I’m beyond disgusted that the West is guilty of worse crimes than Russia. For example, Turkey and the US are currently occupying and looting Syria. England continues to occupy the Chagos Islands even after a ruling by the ICJ. When it comes to international law, some are more equal than others.
But the thing that disgusts me most is that dissenting voices are not permitted in the MSM or on Western social media platforms. Debate is forbidden. The masses must not be permitted to learn the truth.
It’s taken 40 years longer than Orwell predicted but he otherwise had it had it 100% spot on. Big Brother has arrived courtesy of the US and its cronies. This post is no doubt being surveilled, and so are yours.
That my own government denies me the truth is unacceptable: I demand the right to make up my own mind.
Thank you for an intelligent, reasonable commentary, one of very few recently. Did not know about the Cognitive Warfare report. It is depressing but expected at this point that the MSM will all bleat in unison to command us to demonize the latest Hitler du jour. However, it has been shocking to see other progressive news sites getting pulled into the Putin=Hitler vortex. I blame this on English teachers. It was my job for decades to teach English, which of course includes critical thinking skills. Don?t see much evidence of critical thinking these dark days.
Thank you Mr. Lawrence. A great overview of where America is today. And largely because of not only the lack of real journalism but willful deception as your example of PBS blurring out Bandera’s portrait.
Once again an extraordinary article. Lawrence describes the unseen contours of what this nation has become. Failure to heed his message( and others who’s views are anchored in reality rather than falsehood) earns us only chaos and havoc. Thank you for pointing out the consequences of the wanton manipulation of history and the lies that are part and parcel of this government and the media.
I’m sure somewhere in Hell John McCain is ranting at the top of his lungs, so loud that even Sean Hannity and Lindsey Graham can hear and channel him on this Earth: “We are all Banderistas now!” The hell we are, John.
All professional bean counters and would-be historians, just make damned sure you attribute all the deaths, life-long disabilities, personal displacement, plus loss of housing, agricultural and manufacturing output, employment and living wages to the Washington politicians who absolutely would not say “yes” to peace or “no” to war, no matter how hard the Russian diplomats pleaded with them. Avoiding this would have been so easy, nearly cost-free for the Great and Powerful World Hegemon. But Washington desperately wanted this war and was not going to be denied it, no matter how many Ukies and Russkies had to die as part of the deal. Just part of their grand strategy of propping their empire up on the dead bodies of yet more no count foreign nationals.
Thank you Patrick. Andrei Martyanov in his reminiscence of the future blog, often reminds us of the importance of context, and its absence from so many of the Western renditions of events.
It was often said in the years immediately before 1860 that “The ‘peculiar institution’ of slavery enslaves the master as well as the slave.”
Patrick, the only way this current enchanting spell will be broken, is when the empire is broken. Craig Murray last week opined that the west needed to provide Russia a ladder on which to climb down from the precipice. I thought then, and still do today, that Mr. Murray got it absolutely backward.
But the ladder was always there or was before Biden et. al. poured gasoline on it and burned it to a cinder: the de-militarization of Europe. The US crazy train is out of control; it is up to the Europeans to disembark, by jumping and breaking some limbs if necessary.
Jung as quoted here reminds of Rene Girard who seems very prescient now.
I appreciate your anger and concern about the U.S. role in the Ukrainian debacle. Of course the Cognitive Warfare report is a blueprint for the deployment of the propaganda emanating from the government and the MSM. They are showing an amazing discipline there, I have to admit – very few cracks in their onslaught.
I will point out, however, that the piddling protest demonstrations within the various USUK/EU countries do not show much appetite for action nor support for the UKR itself. I would probably agree that the lack of antagonism is a bit discouraging, but, as you point out, the Mighty Wurlitzer is cranked up to a volume that makes us want to plug our ears rather than contest their noise.
Great read!
Great piece! If a somewhat belated followup to Joe Lauria’s 1/28 focus on Zbig, ‘Tangled Tale of NATO Expansion at the Heart of Ukraine Crisis.’ NPR, esp. Nick Schiffrin, now beyond the Pale, if you’ll excuse the inversion of an old metaphor.
Dear Mr. Patrick Lawrence,
Thank you so much for this extraordinary article which should be read by every thinking American who has at least the minimum amount of discerning capability.
It is unbelievable, but probably not, how the Main Stream Media has twisted the facts of the whole Ukrainian situation, constantly portraying the Russians (even their cats!) and Putin as evil demons who want to take over the world and all the rest of the false hyperbole 24/7 to hype up the message of the people running this country in order to motivate the public to initiate (with the bought and paid for NATO flunkies) World War Three, in order to promote “freedom and democracy,” American style, using bombs and bullets rather than diplomacy and cooperation with our fellow citizens of the world.
The United States has become a morally bankrupt nation, wanting to control the world at any cost, and American Imperialism for the Empire will be stopped! Unfortunately, many will be killed and maimed, for sure, as all empires before have fallen violently or collapsed economically, which is inevitable, in either way. Very sad, because our fellow citizens can’t see who the “real” enemy is.
AMEN to all of that!!!! Frank. Thank you, and thank you CN for publishing . Keep it up, maybe eventually people will realize they are being “had”.
Thank you, ranney! Unfortunately, too many of my friends and acquaintances disagree with what I say about the subject, and told me “to go back to Russia” (I was never there) or “move to Russia, if you like them so much” and I just laugh it off, as I know their level of understanding in geopolitics, which is close to nil. Hey, and then I buy them a cup of coffee and we discuss something else.
I’m sorry to say, the diabolic cognitive warfare is certainly infecting the minds of people I love. At least I have Mr. Lawrence and a few others to suggest to them they expand their thinking to seek clarity beyond empire’s narrative. However, I can’t report any degree of success.
“I can’t report any degree of success.” Nor can I, TP G. Sent out emails attempting to offer other opinions / links of how we got to this point and it went over like a lead balloon. Only a few even understood what I was attempting to accomplish while one openly mocked me. Mindlessly embracing the official US narratives won’t / hasn’t changed a damn thing in god’s favorite ignorant country.
Today’s propaganda machine would make Edward Barneys and Joseph Goebbels proud. That’s a sad thing.
Thanks Mr Lawrence and CN
jo6pac, I read somewhere, many years ago, that Joseph Goebbels read the German translation of Edward Bernays book, “Propaganda”, written in the 1920’s. Bernays, the nephew of Sigmund Freud, worked in Madison Ave (New York City) advertising, and was quite successful in promoting products the manufacturers wanted consumers to purchase.
Bernays had the women “Suffragettes” in one of their marches in Washington, D.C. to, on a signal, to light up a cigarette and smoke in public as a sign of female emancipation. The trend caught on, and women started smoking in public. Needless to say, the tobacco industry paid him well for this tactic as their sales increased.
Goebbels used that type of motivation to influence the German people to support that crazed lunatic of a chancellor, and the rest is history.
Another War, 2022
TP Graf
On this safe and sunny Florida morning,
suffering in far-off lands continues unabated.
Most are ignored or forgotten.
Now, we know the constant coverage
so typical when wars commence
as this war draws us into the spectacle du jour.
With blinders on, we single out their madmen
ever ignoring our own,
though ours abound in all gender equality’s inclusion
(it must be said).
Men and women entrusted with power—
forcefully, mercilessly extracting their pound of flesh
from the poor and disenfranchised.
“All men are created equal”—
a noble sentiment, if only preserved as
some sentimental mockery
of life and liberty and justice for all.
Power decides who lives and dies—
who prospers and suffers.
My love of country does not extend
to blind allegiance.
My hope does not depend on the politicians’ lies.
My search for truth and understanding,
compassion and kindness
continues day unto day as my calling continues—
to love my neighbor as myself.
Very good ! Thank you TP G.
Context that all too few in the United States will consider, it’s too unpleasant, even if during the past six years perhaps half of the citizens in the United States have been subjected to related distortions.
I really needed to read something like this today as I opened up the editorial page of the local paper to see it filled with rage against Putin and referring to him as unhinged and all other forms of typical media induced lunacy. People’s minds have surely been hacked. The architects of this dystopia must be patting themselves on the back as they watch clueless Americans championing Ukraine’s Nazis and vilifying the Russians for their attempt to stop them in their tracks.
Thank you Patrick for helping me keep my sanity in the midst of America’s crack up.
There reasoning behind it is partially correct. Indisputably, someone, somewhere is unhinged, loosing vestiges of sanity. (On that, the consensus is very wide, not merely “the collective West”). And there are only two candidates: those that rule USA and those who rule Russia.
But we are the good guys, so the unhinged insane person must be in Russia.
As we are at it, we can prove that 1 = 0 and therefore 2 + 2 = 5. That’s what I mean by “partially correct”.
Thank you, Mr. Lawrence, for the first reflection I have read whose tone is adequate to the realities we face.
C’mon, Patrick! Get with the program! With many thanx to the Great Tom Lehrer,
When someone makes a move
of which we disapprove
who is it that always intervenes?
UN and OAS,
they have their place, I guess
but first… Send the marines!!
Of course, in this instance the marines take the form of US weapons (which the Russians claim to have destroyed along with the base that the Brits were building on the Black sea. Of course, herr Scheivelbusch predicted this in the postlogue of his book.