The mainstream western worldview is like a children’s cartoon, with the Bad Guys doing Bad Things simply because they are Bad, and the Good Guys striving heroically to stop them.
By Caitlin Johnstone
Caitlin’s Newsletter
Listen to Tim Foley reading this article.
The ultimate expression of “everyone is twelve now” theory is in the mainstream worldview promoted by western pundits and politicians which holds that the world is full of evil villains doing evil things simply because they are evil, and that these Bad Guys are opposed by the virtuous Good Guys of the U.S.-led world order.
You think Hamas killed Israelis because they’re a bunch of monsters who hate Jews? Of course you do, you’re twelve.
You think Trump is trying to get rid of Maduro because Maduro is an evil dictator who wants to poison Americans with fentanyl? Hell yeah homie, you’re twelve.
You think Putin invaded Ukraine because he hates freedom and democracy and wants to conquer the world? Bless your heart my twelve year-old buddy.
You think the U.S. and Israel have been attacking and eliminating rivals in Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Palestine in order to fight terrorism, stop tyranny, and protect the world from nuclear weapons? Yeah, that checks out, you’re twelve.
The mainstream western worldview is like a children’s cartoon, with the Bad Guys doing Bad Things simply because they are Bad, and the Good Guys striving heroically to stop them. It sounds like a shitty PG-13 summer blockbuster starring The Rock, but it’s the consensus worldview of serious professional pundits and analysts who share this perspective on mainstream platforms with serious expressions on their faces, and anyone who calls any part of it into question is dismissed as an extremist or a deranged crackpot.
Because everyone is twelve now.
I said the above on Twitter and I got a reply from a guy saying “Western countries like Denmark, Holland and the U.K., U.S. and Israel too are objectively nicer and happier places than the third world ones you mentioned. You can see by walking around, looking at people and things. So we’re doing something right that they’re doing wrong.”
It always fascinates me when people think this is some kind of checkmate argument. Yes obviously it’s nicer to be in the countries doing the bombing, sanctioning, extracting and stealing than the countries being bombed, sanctioned, exploited and robbed. It’s nicer to be a mugger than the person being mugged, too. It’s always more pleasant to be the hammer than the nail.
It’s such a self-evidently stupid argument, but you see it all the time. Whenever I talk about the abusiveness of the western empire I always get empire simps in my replies all “hoho, but have you considered that it is nicer to live here than to live there?” Of course it is, dickflop. It’s always going to be easier being the abuser than the abused.
Ben-Gvir: On Shooting Kids
Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir reportedly advocated shooting children who get too close to the “Yellow Line” dividing Israel-controlled parts of Gaza from the parts under Hamas control. After a while you start understanding why so many people refer to the Israeli regime as “demonic” and “satanic” even if you’re not religious. At a certain point you just run out of strong enough adjectives.
It’s so weird how the western political/media class regards Ben-Gvir as a fringe kook whose comments should be ignored despite the fact that he (A) is Israel’s national security minister and (B) consistently ends up getting what he wants.
The Real Hate Speech in New York
Zohran Mamdani is outside my area of political interest and it’s none of my business who New Yorkers elect as their mayor, but the Islamophobic shrieking I’ve been seeing online in response to his campaign has been absolutely jaw-dropping. No one with mainstream political or media aspirations could ever get away with talking about the religion of a Jewish politician the way Zionists have been openly talking about Mamdani and his faith.
From what I can tell Mamdani is a just a regular guy and a fairly ordinary progressive Democrat with an extraordinarily high level of campaign talent, but these freaks are claiming he’s going to impose sharia law and start throwing gays off the Chrysler Building. It’s a degree of mass hysteria about Islam unlike anything I’ve seen since the immediate aftermath of 9/11, which any normal person will agree led to some extremely bad thinking and terrible decisions.
Some of it is arising from organic American racism and the knee-jerk rightist impulse to throw anyone to the left of Bill Clinton out of a flying helicopter, but a lot of it has nothing to do with Mamdani at all. As we’ve discussed previously, Zionists have been seizing on every opportunity to promote hatred of Muslims because it’s a lot easier than convincing people to like Israel.
To be clear, I am not speculating when I say this. Drop Site News published a report last month based on leaked documents which showed that the Israeli government had commissioned an American polling company to help it with the PR crisis caused by its genocidal atrocities, and the report found that the most effective strategy would be to foment fear of “Radical Islam” and “Jihadism”.
So this agenda is already in the waters of Zionist consciousness. The election of a Muslim to the most high-profile mayoral position in the United States provides Israel supporters with ample opportunity to stir up panic about Muslims in America on the assumption that Israel will benefit from such sentiments, since Israel is always killing Muslims. There is no argument to be made that Israel is a good nation that is inherently deserving of support, so they’re banking on circulating the belief that it’s good to drop bombs on Muslims instead.
Western politics is getting more and more diseased, and U.S. politics is leading the way. It’s making people dumber, crazier, and more hateful, and is preventing them from seeing that the real minority that’s been causing everyone’s problems are the rich and powerful oligarchs and empire managers who rule the western power alliance. Keep ordinary members of the public hating each other and fighting each other, and they won’t start hating and fighting their actual oppressors.
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This article is from Caitlin’s Newsletter and re-published with permission.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
The Real Hate Speech In New York, third paragraph, last sentence.
Sometimes you uncork one that blows me away. Seems to be an art to the way you interject some of your observations and I get surprised. Cracks me up. On the other hand the same ole approach has been used by them since day on. Make the ‘other’ appears to be a bad guy and benefit from the effort!
This activity is the their stock in trade. This behavior goes all the way back to the earliest days when the Zionists first returned. to what is Israel today. Some very bad behavior involved in creating the appearances of Muslims raiding and murdering new arrivals on their(?) farms in the middle of the night.
Hopefully these blood lust cowards do not get away with this genocide.
Lived for 77 years only to be totally shamed, insulted and horrified my government participated and aided the Israelis. No forgiveness will ever match the depravity. Trump and Biden both need to be exiled to Israel, in my strongly held opinion!
In a feudal system, for all its faults, literacy was actually something that could be rewarded (for example, the Clerical Exemption where an accused criminal could ask for mercy based on their ability to read the bible, and therefore be judged more leniently as “clergy” according to canon law).
However, under capitalism, deskilling & dumbing down of the population is actually desired and necessary to:
a) make jobs and employees fungible (exchangeable and easily replaceable)
b) to ensure compliance, consent and prevent critical thinking that might challenge the system.
It’s a system that creates/thrives on ignorance, illiteracy, and stupidity. Ur-Capitalist Adam Smith warned about “mental mutilation” where a person would become “as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human being to become”. There are no surprises here.
It’s not just the US:
Xxxx//www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/oct/31/government-anti-islamophobia-refused-service-shop-muslim
It goes all the way back to brit colonialism.
With regard to the thesis that everybody is now twelve, it’s worth pointing out a shift in personal nomenclature. Public officials who once styled themselves as “William P. So-and-so” or “Deborah Whoever” have become Billy and Debbie, in a formal sense. We have serving in Washington a horde of Jims, Steves, Toms, Petes, Susies, Andys, Mikes- the list comprises at least half the Congress. Far from feigning a measure of dignity, these grifters revel in a faux down home set of traits. They say “y’all” and “folks” while wiping up imaginary gravy with a slice of figurative cornbread.
And then there’s the increasing prevalence of single-name personalities led by that avatar of post-human transitioning, “Elon”- a Star Trek name if I ever heard one. [“Captain, we have a message from an entity calling itself the Elon of this planet.”] What I’m trying to get at in my own tortuous way is that Caitlin’s observation about political judgements now reflecting a pre-adolescent mentality has its analogue in the abandonment of full pedigrees that once reflected the loftiness of office, to be replaced by nicknames and diminutives adopted for no other reason than to simulate an affinity with the common man and woman.
Thus, we find ourselves in a schoolyard full of bickering twelve year-olds telling tales about Johnny or Liz and vowing never to speak to Vickie again. And that’s the Senate.
Brilliant response!
Are you aware of Sociocracy? Decisions arrived at via consent. Consent cannot be achieved unless/until every reasoned concern has been fully and satisfactorily addressed. “We the People, Toward a Deeper Democracy” by John Buck is one resource. Diana Leaf Christain, the most outstanding Sociocracy coach in US is excellent resource. I wrote: “Handbook for Small Groups Considering Sociocracy” and happy to share, via email. Founded over 100 yrs ago. Used in large businesses, corporations etc. Deep flaws in structure & process of US governance, UN etc. must be addressed.
The average western person is stupid because she/he has been breed by the system to be so. The system would not survive otherwise
Exactly right Caitlin. The media and politricksters are paid by oligarchy to divide, distract and dumb-down the public, at all times. This gives cover to their assets-stripping whatever hasn’t been stolen yet. In the US, as Carlin said many years ago, they are going to steal what is left of social security and medicare. 10s of millions of working US folk have paid their FICA deductions out of their paychecks for many years. The kleptocrat-oligarchy will get it all, but many will be too distracted, fighting among themselves to notice – until it is too late.
I could not agree more ^^
Especially with the last paragraph.
We can’t invite anyone not in our sphere’s cluster .
They may not be an exclusive like repel but surely we oppose others not n our well .
Rid them thoughts , they age , now grown out of hat and shoes .
As the new shoes are too big , now taking one step before the shoe begins to move .
I wore the hat so much , I, coven it , a small clue .
How unfitting , how mommy dresses us ,.is how ignorance grows so bold .
I listen as I’m told , the cure to growing old , keeps me safe and warm when its outside cold .
Sarcasm is the ignorance in this bliss at least thats what we were told ?
Belov-ed learn-ed age , yet the body grows on old .
A mind of Twelve now seen as a Ten , like now and not as if when .
Oh we yearn to be like Bigfoot with aboriginal shrunken skulls .
You’d be surprised at the guff you’ll get from otherwise relatively level headed liberal free-thinkers if you say a few kind words about Putin.
Many of these cretins still think he directly interfered in the 2016 election.
“Many of these cretins still think ” Please, be kind they haven’t been offered the red pill (Matrix) and realistically it’s a bad choice to take it considering there is nothing that they can do, as the truth is ugly and depressing. . P.S. We can’t vote our way out of this.
No to “…unlike anything I’ve seen since the immediate aftermath of 9/11, which any normal person will agree led to some extremely bad thinking and terrible decisions.”
It was bad thinking (aspirations) that led to 9/11 that provided the lame excuse for what happened next.
Otherwise, yes to so many being 12 years old. Thanks for a good synopsis.
George Carlin said:
“Think of how stupid the average person is, and then realize that half of them are stupider than that.”
Thank you Caitlin Johnstone for always fighting stupidity
Be careful here. “They’re stupid” is also the excuse of the Dem elite for why they lost in 2024. Not a smart way to entice us, the majority working class, back to the party that was once ours. Nor was the elitist dismissal of us as “a basket of deplorables.” Who cares how D econ policies produced the Rust Belt, which became deaths of despair central?
The D faithful seem to believe that if Trump were gone, everything would revert to beneficence. It’s as if they never noticed labor has been suffering for 40 years, the result of a D party aligned with the trickle up neolib (neoclassical) econ system. Never noticed that in ’08 the Ds bailed out Wall St. while the millions of us who lost jobs, pensions, houses got nothing. Never considered that desperate people might take the only other choice available. Or vote NO by not voting.
If we’re all so stupid, then explain what’s happening in NYC. In the Anglophoney countries the Dem, Lib, and Labour Parties are all in trouble. Good! Happening despite what Ray McGovern righteously called out as MICIMATT. Parties that, in addition to their fondness for elitist economics, have gone so far in their support for Zionism they support the persecution of people who dare speak the truth to power.
Good points, Rafi. The Dems have been living in their ideological silos for too long, failing to understand the powerful economic and political forces which have been gearing up for a major class war counter revolution. The financial elite have no further use for the working class. Workers insist that their labours and taxes be spent on health care, education and decent wages but corporate profits no longer come primarily from workers’ labour but from exorbitant rentier services payments to agencies which the elite control. Having captured government the financial elite can now smash everything with abandon. Business as usual is finished.
We have seen this before. Do people remember how US intelligence, working directly with big business, shut down the US Occupy Movement in Nov 2011?
The agency supervising that shut down process was the US Domestic Security Alliance Council (DSAC), a council of US military and intelligence agencies, the FBI, Homeland Security, US Naval Intelligence, and major US corporations set up to monitor “domestic terrorists” — you know, environmentalists, trade union officials and the like. DSAC had surveilled peaceful Occupy movement protestors in over 50 US cities and gave confidential briefings to corporations. They then shut down the movement in a nationally coordinated exercise while Pres.Obama was out of the country visiting South East Asia. US corporations and policing services are now a seamless entity with the same goal: domestic population control. Then, as now, civil protestors are ‘domestic terrorists’.
The Dems in Congress need to wake up and declare war on Trump and the Republicans. Promise to tear down all his policies and institute criminal proceedings against all of them. It’s a war.
It IS the “financial elite, rentiers.” Most likely because there is little left to extract from a shrinking middle class and environments going critical, so why bother with manufacturing or anything else physically real? (Except supplies for those endless wars and even they can’t go forever.) So best go for money manipulation.
BTW, when I researched the currently dominant Chicago School of Econ and its founder Milton Friedman, I was shocked to discover there is little, if any, empirical confirmation–it’s all assumptions and assertions. Check out Rebel economist Steve Keen’s book //Debunking Economics// and his stuff on YouTube. He dissects all the various schools in their own terms, especially the nonsense taught in econ texts. By which Dems, Libs, Labour run govt. It isn’t just the Rs and other de facto fascists.
I agree with Rafi here. There is temptation to self flattery in glibly labeling others as stupid. The issues are about simplistic beliefs and moral systems not intelligence. And labeling people stupid is not an effective way of offering persuasive alternatives. As R Simonton notes we cannot look to Democrats for realism or moral consistency anymore than MAGA. The truth is that the politicians and Media who have created this good guys vs bad guys picture of the world benefit in their careers and income by reinforcing this 12 year old superhero comics version of reality constantly. The promoters of this vision are “succeeding” and success in US mythos means you are a person of superior intelligence. We have a vast array of social reinforcements for believing simplistic nonsense and for focusing all attention on personal comfort combined with callous disregard for the humanity of anyone deemed to be in the camp of the losers.
If there is an us that is free of this nonsense how do we do what Mamdani is doing, creating a countermovement which refuses the 12 year old version of the world and puts forth a more nuanced and realistic and local vision of what we can be? Instead of nuclear chicken let’s play nuclear disarmament; instead of top down structures lets demand consensus building that addresses the basic needs of our communities; instead of destroying the earth’s ecosystems as capitalist resources let’s harmonize with millions of years of living wisdom and restore health to all, instead of filling our minds with devils let’s fill our minds with friendliness and open our minds to each others’ wisdom.