Real change won’t come until people rise up. People won’t rise up as long as they’re successfully propagandized. People will remain successfully propagandized until they evolve minds which can’t be manipulated. Our world will change when our relationship with narrative changes.

It only takes a rudimentary understanding of human psychology to manipulate someone. Bernays was recruited by the US government to study the science of modern propaganda in 1917. This science has been in research and development for over a century. Don’t underestimate its power.

The “Epstein didn’t kill himself” thing is an interesting example of a grassroots, populist narrative control campaign. By that I mean that people wanted it to remain a high-profile feature in the news, and they knew the mass media wouldn’t do that for them, so they’ve collectively forced it into mainstream attention and held it there by sheer collaborative force of will.

If you can come to deeply understand the nature of mental narrative, both in yourself and in the world, you’ll understand the human condition better than pretty much any teacher, preacher, philosophy professor, self-help guru or Himalayan yogi.

Gaining an understanding of what’s going on in the world is a skill, just like any other. Like any other skill you kinda suck at it at first, then you get better with practice. The trick is to keep improving; never stop, either out of frustration or because you think you’re done.

Ignore all the narratives about why things must be as they are, and you simply see things as they are: resources disappearing from the hands of the many into the hands of the few, weapons of war circling the globe, imprisonment, surveillance and censorship. That’s what’s real.

As long as money equals power and power is relative, there will be a plutocratic class with a vested interest in keeping everyone else poor. This is especially true in America, where the empire’s military is centralized. Believing you can get things like living wages and universal healthcare without first toppling the warmongering imperialist plutocracy is like believing you can eat an egg without cracking the shell.

As usual, our only “reward” for being proven right about the bogus Sweden case against Assange is yet another bitter, joyless told-you-so to the establishment loyalists who told us we were nuts. And we’ll still get called crazy conspiracy theorists the next time we try to warn everyone about the empire’s next evil agenda.

They are literally imprisoning a journalist for doing journalism, right in front of us, while telling us we live in a free society. It’s like watching a supposed friend reach down and start strangling your dog while looking you right in the eye and saying “I’m not killing your dog. I would never do that. We’re friends.”

In the wake of violent protests in Iran, we should keep in mind that the Trump administration has openly admitted that it is deliberately targeting civilians with starvation sanctions with the goal of making them so miserable they try to overthrow their government, and that the CIA is known to have ramped up covert operations in Iran since Trump took office.

One of the dumbest things about following US foreign policy analysis is how often it becomes another idiotic sectarian wedge issue. I’ve been seeing people in my news feed arguing over whether you should oppose the regime change operations in Syria OR Bolivia. I mean, for fuck’s sake.

At this point the evidence of OPCW malfeasance in Syria is too overwhelming for anyone to reasonably have any degree of confidence in the establishment Douma narrative. The only reason anyone’s still standing by it is because of the immensely consequential implications of this scandal.

Sometimes I’ll have these flashes of self-reflection where I’ll be like arguing with somebody online who’s insisting that it’s perfectly reasonable to just blatantly accuse people who disagree with them of conducting psyops for the Russian government or whatever, and I’ll pause and think, “Holy shit. This is my life now.”

Most of the arguments I get from empire loyalists rest on the unspoken premise, “Let’s pretend Iraq never happened.”

Assadist (noun): Anyone who opposes yet another regime change intervention in yet another geostrategically crucial Middle Eastern nation which refuses to be absorbed into the US-centralized empire.

The Democratic presidential primaries are a huge convoluted mess, which is exactly what you’d expect to see from a party which spent three years screaming “TRUMP!” and peddling empty Russia hysteria instead of winning back progressives’ trust and coalescing around actual popular policies.

If Mayor Pete didn’t want the votes of young people, people of color, or basically anyone cool, he could have just said so. He didn’t have to make a whole goddamn dance about it.

“Why not me?” thought the man with billions and billions of dollars. “Why shouldn’t I be president?”

The fact that Democrats are clamoring for impeachment three-quarters of the way through Trump’s term conveys the sense that they don’t feel confident they’d be able to win an election against a stupid demagogue who can’t even string a coherent sentence together.

2021: President Warren orders airstrikes on Damascus
Fox News: Warren is weak for not sending in ground troops
MSNBC: This is a great historical moment for women around the world
The Young Turks: Medicare for All is coming any minute now you guys

Still angry at the Australian government for just giving me healthcare when I could be spending my money on some of that sweet sweet Kaiser Permanente.

It’s such a delicate balancing act that US news media walk each day, having to tell people that mass murder is perfectly fine over and over and over again and then pretending to give a shit when mass shootings happen.

How to be a billionaire philanthropist:
1. Steal all the money from everyone else.
2. Share a tiny amount of it if and when it makes you feel good about yourself.
3. Receive massive worldwide accolades for your generosity and have many large buildings named after you.

Hi my name’s Leftish McPundit. I definitely totally oppose US regime change interventionism in Syria but I spend my time promoting the exact same narratives about Syria as neocons, the CIA and the US State Department.

Hi my name’s Leftish McPundit. It’s important that we oppose this US-backed coup, but first we need to talk about every single bad thing the ousted leader might possibly have done because it’s not like the entire political/media class is already doing that constantly.

Hi my name’s Leftish McPundit. Some progressives believe sane, fact-based things about Russia and others believe crazy, hysterical things about Russia, while I take the moderate position that we should believe both sane, fact-based things and crazy hysterical things about Russia.

Mainstream political commentary typically highlights the differences between Trump and his predecessors, but you can learn a lot more by examining all the things that stay the same no matter who’s in office.

How fucking pathetic is it that people’s best argument for toppling Bolivia’s government is “Oh well the courts said he could run for another term, and that’s too much”? Like, really? That’s how low the bar has sunk for when a US-backed coup is justified? What’s next? Jaywalking?

The empire just keeps attempting coups until they stick. A kickboxer throws strikes in combinations with the understanding that most will miss or do minimal damage, but eventually one will connect and score the knockout blow. Imperialist coup agendas employ the same philosophy.

All major world religions have spent centuries inseparably interlaced with powerful governments. This means they are all interlaced with ancient proto-propaganda from those governments. All that stuff glorifying meekness, obedience and poverty is made-up, power-serving hogwash.

People constantly ask me “Why don’t you ever write about the bad things Russia does, hmmm???” For the record the answer is that (A) Russia has nothing to do with me, (B) the US alliance does far, far worse things constantly; no other countries come anywhere remotely close, and (C) the entire western political/media class already pours immense wealth and resources into telling westerners how bad Russia is every single day. The world doesn’t need one extra blogger on that narrative.

A problem whose solution entails the deployment of US troops, bombs or weapons is almost certainly a made-up problem.

___________________________

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32 responses to “Bitter, Joyless Told-You-Sos: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix”

  1. Recall that one of America’s finest, Charlie Chaplin, whose final speech in The Great Dictator is one of the essentials in the Handbook of American Liberty, was silenced as a “premature Anti-Fascist.” This appellation was branded on every leftist-looking America during the Cold War.

  2. How do the plutocrats get richer by impoverishing the poor? Where will the money come from unless there is a constant supply of reasonable well off people?

  3. How do the plutocrats get richer by impoverishing the poor? Where will the money come from?

  4. > All that stuff glorifying meekness, obedience and poverty is made-up, power-serving hogwash.

    Not all of it.

  5. I recall that about ten years ago, to be effective, disinformation had to consist of 95% verifiable stuff to coat the nugget of raw bullshit you wanted everyone to swallow. These days things have progressed, and there doesn’t have to be even a single nugget of verifiable truth in a news story stew. The trick is to insist shrilly that anyone who won’t swallow it is a traitor.
    It is a miserable experience, but leaves a society a little wiser. America is too young to have gotten to this point before. It’ll do them good in the long term.
    Pathocracy is like a fever that has to run its course, becoming more and more insane until it finally collapses out of internal contradictions (Democrats)and simple incompetence (Republicans).

  6. A number of survivors of the Lusitania sinking later recalled that the German sub that torpedoed her surfaced and machine-gunned people in the lifeboats. Problem is, it never happened. Churchill’s Admiralty invented the story and Britain’s imperial fake news media endlessly repeated it. Humans are susceptible to rejecting even their own experience in favor of disinformation, when it reinforces what they have been carefully preconditioned to believe.

    Year ago I worked for a fellow who had been a Madison Avenue advertising executive. I read his copies of the trade weekly “Advertising Age” and was truly horrified at how accurately mass marketeers were able to predict the public’s reaction to new ad campaigns. It seemed inevitable to me then that these techniques would be applied in politics – as indeed they had been years before I realized it.

    Bernays is famous for this quote praising state propaganda, “the conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government, which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.”

    And it is also true that religion has long prospered in its role as the compliance assurance arm of state power. The motif of the “Good Shepherd” is a perfect metaphor for this process: the shepherd does not want his flock to become fully actualized individuals, but rather he seeks to lull them into a state of false security so they can be more easily fleeced, and ultimately, butchered.

  7. Building 7 didn’t kill itself.

  8. There is one other point where the propaganda narrative breaks down and people become free of its control. That’s the point where reality diverges so far from the propaganda that it becomes impossible to accept the propaganda. That usually involves a major war or a major economic depression.
    —————
    In the US currently, actually rather few accept the propaganda narrative. The primary one that says everything is great and we are the free-est and most advanced country and that we are number one. The MSM is largely untrusted.
    Thus, they’ve moved to a backup plan, which is to get everyone blaming different groups for why things suck. On the right, we see them using Goebbels old stand-by of blaming “immigrants” who destroy the nation from within. On the left, we see the Blame Russia technique, written by the same authors. Everybody knows the dice are loaded, and everybody knows the good guys lost. But now, the Establishment mainly tries to keep people divided and conquered by having them blame different causes and getting them to fight each other about who’s really to blame.
    Pollsters say that a majority mistrusts the MSM. But, different groups are isolated into sections where they strangely believe one propaganda channel and are convinced that any channels that disagree with their chosen channel are lying. Does Rupert Murdoch tell the truth, or does Comcast tell the truth? Few seem to guess the correct answer which is neither has the slightest interest in the truth.

  9. One small fact about Morales in Bolivia. By every right in the world, he was still the elected President of Bolivia when the military staged its coup. He’d won the previous election, and that term of office extended through the end of the year. Morales was in every sense and form the legitimate, elected President of Bolivia when the people with guns told him to leave.
    ————
    The good news is that the US government is now telling you that you are within your rights to overthrow the government should the high court in the country make a ruling that you don’t like. The bad news is, that doesn’t apply to you, unless you are a Christian-fascist billionaire.

  10. It is like we have found Caitlin’s bizarro world double – Fiona Hill.
    .
    Fiona warns us of “fictional narrative”!
    .
    I have long wondered how the MSM and the Democrats and the intelligence services will
    spin the results of IG Horowitz’s forthcoming report and in particular John Durham’s investigation.
    People are going to be indicted.
    .
    How can the MSM possibly hope to spin hard enough to satisfy Dem-ostriches?
    .
    Well, it appears that the MSM will use the tried and true “Russia Russia Russia”.
    .
    Fiona Hill is on Capital hill this morning. She gives us a sneak preview of what we can
    expect when John Durham comes to town.
    .
    https://www.zerohedge.com/political/watch-live-impeachment-hearings-farce-continues-after-great-day-gop
    .
    Hill, in advanced testimony Thursday, warned lawmakers against believing a “fictional narrative” that it was Ukraine and not Russia that interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
    .
    “This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves,” Hill said in prepared remarks.
    .
    “The unfortunate truth is that Russia was the foreign power that systematically attacked our democratic institutions in 2016. This is the public conclusion of our intelligence agencies, confirmed in bipartisan Congressional reports. It is beyond dispute, even if some of the underlying details must remain classified.”
    .
    Hill emphasized that she is a nonpartisan foreign policy expert, who has served under three different Republican and Democratic presidents and that she has “no interest in advancing the outcome of your inquiry in any particular direction, except toward the truth.”
    .
    She warned that U.S. national security has been harmed by the politicization of support for Ukraine.
    .
    “The Russian government’s goal is to weaken our country — to diminish America’s global role and to neutralize a perceived U.S. threat to Russian interests,” she said.
    .
    “President Putin and the Russian security services aim to counter U.S. foreign policy objectives in Europe, including in Ukraine, where Moscow wishes to reassert political and economic dominance.”
    .
    Hill added, “I respect the work that this Congress does in carrying out its constitutional responsibilities, including in this inquiry, and I am here to help you to the best of my ability. If the President, or anyone else, impedes or subverts the national security of the United States in order to further domestic political or personal interests, that is more than worthy of your attention. But we must not let domestic politics stop us from defending ourselves against the foreign powers who truly wish us harm.”

  11. Just exactly WHY are perpetual war and warmongers so attractive to US voters that they vote for them election after election? Google “ governmentcontractswon ”; go to that site and see that in 2018, “private” businesses in the state of Virgina (population 8.4 million) were awarded 324,283 contracts worth $46.4 billion and that there are 17,538 “private” DoD contractors in Virginia, and that from 2000 to 2018 “private” DoD contractors in Virginia were awarded over $733.9 billion for 936,040 contracts.
     
    Virginians’ economic well-being depends upon those DoD dollars continuing, year after year, decade after decade, literally forever. Therefore, no majority of voters in Virginia is EVER, and I do mean EVER, going to vote for a candidate, maybe like Gabbard, who might be promising to destroy Virginia’s war-based economy and destroy many well-paying jobs. They’re going to CONTINUE to vote for warmongers for POTUS and congress!
     
    Virginia is not alone in the war business. Check out what “private” DoD contractors in other states such as California receive annually. It’s mind boggling.
     
    Therefore, the US will never, and I do mean never, be politically capable of changing it’s “foreign policy” unless and until, once again with feeling, Virginians /Americans are given a detailed alternative to their present “war way” of making a living and no D or R candidate is spelling out such an alternative.
     
    But there is still a faint glimmer of hope.
     
    Trump proved that a complete political outsider could/can “go around” the MIC and be elected. Trump paid a helluva price when he shook hands with Putin in Helsinki. That summit proved that the US MSM is also an MIC tool and that the MIC’s pockets are very deep — in fact, infinitely deep.
     
    Antiwar candidates can be elected, but if they are elected, just like Trump they’ll be fighting the MSM and civil service and intelligence deep state every day of their political lives, which does not make for a very nice way of life for those politicians’ families. This is why a majority of congress must also be real anti-war so that they can support each other as a bloc against the unelected deep state.
     
    Present reality is that politicians are selected by voters every two or four years. None of these politicians are going to change absolutely anything about the election system or rules of campaign financing (bribery). Therefore, to stop the MIC and change the US’s war-based economy, antiwar candidates must somehow get elected within that very same system. If that does not happen, the US is doomed to suffer financial or nuclear destruction.
     
    Further, if the US cannot develop an economic system that does NOT absolutely depend upon perpetual population/economic growth, humanity will certainly suffer an environmental disaster. (IMO, designing and implementing such an alternative economic system will be far more difficult than getting antiwar POTUS and congress people elected, which is really saying something. When people cannot even agree upon the meanings of words as a vitally necessary first step, this may simply be a bridge too far for the supposedly most intelligent species on the planet.)
     
    Again, for the present moment, here in reality-land, at least the number of voters who voted for Agent Orange have to somehow be enticed into voting for an anti-war candidate for POTUS AND a majority of anti-war candidates running for seats in the legislative branch. THAT is the one and the ONLY way that the MIC is going to go away.
     
    How do antiwar candidates “entice” millions of voters all across the 50 United In Warfare States Of America, who make their living in the MIC or its spin-offs, into voting for these anti-war candidates? THAT is THE question, not whether “to be or not to be?” If those candidates can not be elected, the US, and perhaps all the other nations of the world, are not going “to be” for much longer.
     
    To entice those MIC etc. voters, those anti-war candidates are going to have to promise that if they are elected they are going to MAINTAIN the present DoD contract system, so that these millions of voters WILL NOT lose their jobs; but their jobs will be to produce all the great things that will improve the lives of all their fellow citizens. And by “improve” I mean that instead of making military aircraft that will in a few years end up sitting in a boneyard, they will make, for just one example, wind turbines, solar panels, bullet trains, etc. The services or electric power from these devices would not be “free”, just as the weapon systems of today are not free.
     
    Which would millions of voters enjoy more, the benefit they receive from weapon systems, or electric power, a trip across the country in an electric-powered bullet train, etc.? How would millions of voters feel about the US becoming energy independent in very few years of spending under a slightly-altered DoD contract system? If I were an anti-war candidate, I would propose to millions of voters that the nation create another “Liberty Ship” program (again, under the existing DoD contract system).
     
    Liberty Ships were the workhorses of World War II. They were built in 13 states by 15 companies in 18 shipyards. The first of 2,710 Liberty ships, the SS Patrick Henry, was launched in September 1941, after 150 days of construction. (The shipyard was built at the same time as the ship.) Under this highly automated ship-building system, the SS Robert E. Peary liberty ship was built in 4 Days 15 Hours 29 Minutes.
     
    These were not small boats, not by a long shot. Here are some specifications.
    Displacement: 14,245 long tons (14,474 t)[2]
    Length: 441 ft 6 in (134.57 m)
    Beam: 56 ft 10.75 in (17.3 m)
    Draft: 27 ft 9.25 in (8.5 m)
    Propulsion: Two oil-fired boilers; triple-expansion steam engine; single screw, 2,500 hp (1,900 kW)
    Range: 20,000 nmi (37,000 km; 23,000 mi)
    Capacity: 10,856 t (10,685 long tons)
     
    Again, in just a few years of assembly-line development, one of these vessels was assembled in only 4 Days 15 Hours 29 Minutes. Imagine such an assembly line system for relatively simple wind turbines, bullet trains, vehicles of all types, etc.
     
    THIS is what anti-war candidates have to promise those millions of voters in the MIC in order to capture their votes. THIS is precisely what Gabbard and other anti-war candidates have to start proposing TODAY, not 6 months down the road. If she were to do this today, she would start a firestorm of a debate, which is precisely what is needed to shake up the present arrangement. Does she have the intellectual wherewithal and “courage” to do this? We will soon find out, but I expect that she does not. But unless anti-war candidates specifically propose such a detailed transition from a war-based economy to one based upon peace, they will NOT be elected and the US MIC’s perpetual wars will go on until the nukes start dropping.
     
    The above is the one and the only realistic, practical, POLITICALLY ACCEPTABLE way that humanity has a future. But will capitalists be as eager to increase the national debt for peace as they are for war?

    1. Ishkabibble wrote:
      “How do antiwar candidates “entice” millions of voters all across the 50 United In Warfare States Of America, who make their living in the MIC or its spin-offs, into voting for these anti-war candidates? . . .
      “But unless anti-war candidates specifically propose such a detailed transition from a war-based economy to one based upon peace, they will NOT be elected and the US MIC’s perpetual wars will go on until the nukes start dropping.”
      .
      What Tulsi Gabbard is saying:
      .
      > Invest in the needs of the American people
      .
      > I will be your voice in Washington. I will put an end to the failed policy of being the world’s police and nation builder, redirecting the trillions of dollars wasted on regime change wars and weapons to meet your needs here at home. We will work side-by-side, treating others with respect, and ensure a cleaner, safer, and healthier future for all Americans.
      .
      Invest in the needs of the American people | TULSI 2020
      https://www.tulsi2020.com/issues/invest-needs-american-people

    2. You make some excellent points, and I agree 100% that until people are persuaded to demand guns beat into plowshares we will be in war 24/7- but you were badly fooled by Trump when you write “Trump proved that a complete political outsider could/can “go around” the MIC and be elected.”
      Trump vociferously attacked arms makers for price-gouging (Boeing in particular), but once elected, meekly fell into line, vetoed nothing, and signed off on one record defense bill and massive budget deficit after another. The Republican Party, which pretends to be “conservative” (which used to mean budget-conservative as well) could easily, like the Whig Party, be on the road to extinction, because it stands for nothing but exceedingly expensive lapel-pin patriotism.

  12. Caitlin, I keep reading you to find something you’re wrong about. 😉 I’ve never found anything of note. Thank you. Love.

  13. Part 2… Everyone I know believes Assad staged chemical weapons attacks. Everyone I know believes the White Helmets were a heroic civil defence group saving children.
    Everyone I know has strongly insinuated Julian Assange is a rapist. Or just straight out said it.
    Everyone I know believes Putin is a psychopathic monster.
    Everyone I know whenever I talk about Yemen, Palestine, Syria, Venezuela, and now Bolivia has point blank ignored me 95% of the time.
    As much as I’ve pointed people to a host of independent sites, even stories about the OPCW scandal, damning revelations about the Empire, people like Eva Bartlett or Max Blumenthal, 95% of the time I’m ignored. I know those people won’t even check out those articles.
    Occasionally I’m asked if I’m ‘okay’. Thankless, joyless Told You So’s indeed. I almost don’t bother anymore, it’s like trying to turn a brick wall into ice cream.
    There will be no apologies, no ‘you were right’, nothing.
    They will stay in their safe bubble world.

  14. Nice thoughts but reality says that most of the time when you rise up you get squashed. They are rising up in Hong Kong. How is that working out for them. They are rising up in France with a lot of confusion but little effect. I have no idea how to repair the system short of another system invading and replacing or complete collapse. Rising up doesn’t seem to work very often.

    1. The people of Hong Kong and France deserve immense respect. The former, living in one of the most prosperous communities on earth showed the guts to risk their comforts (Thomas Paine had something to say about the sunshine patriots) and stand up for their freedom against long odds, and the French peasants who literally took the Bastille down one stone at a time were up against a well-armed authoritarian government as well.

  15. Caitlin: check out this peice of garbage in the Sydney Morning Herald: ‘Assange Has Not Been Vindicated, He Has Merely Outwaited Justice’ by Nick Miller. Or similar title. Sorry, don’t know how to do links on my phone.
    The vile presstitutes Still…. Still continue to stick the boot in, even after the Swedish Prosecutors decision to drop the investigation. Still these creatures carry on their craven, gutless, sycophantic service to the Empire.
    So many smears and lies and bullshit. And I notice not a word on this story from the Faux Left phoneys. Zilch.
    My god, there are some incredibly shameless people in this country.

    1. I cried for Assange today, and all of us.

  16. Why not critque Russia? because it would increase the war hysteria against them, making nuclere war more likely.

  17. BDS everyday, in every way you can! boycott is the only thing that works.

  18. Ms Johnstone, this article ( to my old mind ) smells like the fuse that could eventually blow up our empire by revealing the depth of our corrupt government. Please peruse this:
    http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52585.htm

  19. The lineage of propaganda analysis I like the best traces from Tolstoy to Bernays to Huxley to Orwell to Herman & Chomsky. I’m interested in the relationship between names — terminology for categories of classification and ideologies, worldviews and identities, protagonist allies and antagonist adversaries, etc. — and deep psyops, propaganda-based indoctrination, and mind-control. We are surrounded and interpenetrated by it. AND we no longer have private communications, thus freedom of speech has diminished because it depends on freedom of thought. And we aren’t free to think under mass-surveillance where someone may always be listening and/or recording.

    So how do naming and renaming, challenging terminology and replacing terminology, contribute to freeing us from propaganda, and immunizing ourselves from it, in service of the requisite political revolutions needed nationally (in some countries) and planet wide, in service of Humanity?

    1. I think we need new words and terms to go mainstream in the intelligence area. Most words connected to intelligence are connected to gaining information: intelligence, intelligence asset/agent, spy and espionage when so much of the work done by these people is spreading disinformation. Sure we have propaganda, psyop, disinformation agent and controlled opposition but these tend not to be mainstream and are lesser known. And propaganda is thought of as a “mass” thing when propaganda is always targeted to the various groups within society – even if it is issued blanket-style it is disseminated with the intention and knowledge that the various groups will respond to it differently (often having a desired divide-and-conquer effect) and it will be known that some groups will pick up on certain propaganda while others will not.
      —–
      A good example is the 9/11 truther-targeted propaganda about Israelis. Israelis do not fit into the 19-Muslim-terrorists-armed-with-boxcutters narrative so those who believe the official story will simply ignore information about Israelis in connection to 9/11 while 9/11 truthers will go gaga over it (I did myself until I knew better) – but it’s just all distraction propaganda for the truthers to keep them away from the big lie of 3,000 dead and 6,000 injured. Sure, Israel was involved in 9/11 but the dancing Israelis story published by ABC is just a big fabrication.
      https://perma.cc/RU6N-97G6

  20. Maybe if people drank more prune juice they might give a shit, but here in the U.S. it’s just the people.

  21. Would anyone like some Bernays Sauce [sic] and some chopped red oponions with your narativewitch?
    It comes with Chicken Kiev and we will be Putin Russian dressing on it.

  22. Yes, I like your use of Bernays and the history of the manipulation of the masses. Not many people know this history. For instance, you postulated that the “Epstein didn’t kill himself” story is a grassroots conversation to keep it in the public’s mind because the ‘lie feed’ of the corporate media won’t continue the story. I think even that is a pysop. I thought immediately that Epstein was whisked back to Israel and is probably drinking a cocktail on the beach! He performed his job and compromised most of the world’s politicians. The operation was getting too ‘hot’ and had to be ended. So, lead the hoi polloi to believe he didn’t commit suicide but was assassinated. Just as long as they think he is dead. Let them think what they want. In today’s farcical political theater the word ‘coup’ is being used by politicians if the president is impeached. The sad fact is that a ‘coup’ happened in 1963. What has taken place since then is the effects of that ‘coup’. The sooner people realize that fact, the better understanding they will have of our reality. So, when I say to people “I believe everything and I believe nothing” it is from this place that I speak. A friend recently reminded me of this quote from Edward Abbey, the conservationist known as the Desert Anarchist: “When the situation is hopeless, there is no need to worry.” Every time I catch myself obsessing about the future, I am reminded of his quote. So, breath deeply and keep writing, it sounds therapeutic for you and hopefully enlightening to some.

    1. “I think even that is a pysop.”
      —–
      There’s generally another layer, isn’t there, George? You have to dig deep. It took me four years of pretty dedicated study to work out that death and injury were staged on 9/11. What delayed my realisation was the massive propaganda campaign aimed at 9/11 truthers ensuring they maintained belief in the key lie of 9/11: 3,000 died and 6,000 were injured – and this was despite the fact that I knew death and injury were staged in other events!
      —–
      Studying that propaganda campaign is a real eye-opener and unless you study it, you really don’t have a clue how propaganda works. I’m not one to have visceral feelings very often but when the propaganda strategy to keep truthers in the dark dawned on me I had one of the most visceral feelings of my life – I felt like a dumb bull being yanked this way and that by the nose ring … and then I laughed. So clever!
      https://occamsrazorterrorevents.weebly.com/blog/911-controlled-demolition-as-propaganda
      —–
      My sister dismisses everything with the word “lies!” which really annoys me, it’s not simple lies, it’s clever propaganda … and yet the astounding thing is that even though they snow us with clever propaganda, paradoxically, they also tell us the truth loud and clear. It’s really quite mind-blowing.
      https://occamsrazorterrorevents.weebly.com/they-tell-us-clearly.html

      1. Yes, without linking to your two offerings, let me first say, I appreciate their in your face brazenness (in a dark way). I mean, naming the U.S. Army Special Warfare Center after JFK is a, “hey look at us, we own you” symbol. It is hard to identify the first symbol but the FBI building being named after Hoover was a telling moment. There are many truths that must be realized and those truths lead us down many paths. But, along the way, if we realize that the path to purposeful self realization is “the way” we are comforted and ultimately we are one. It is our destiny to be better as individuals. It has come to me that karma is to be lived collectively as well as individually. My most sadness is reserved for those that participate in the madness through a sense of moral purpose because not everyone of the players realizes their part. Those of us who raised a hand or sworn an allegiance to a flag or country must certainly have to realize the debt of that morality. So, I can only say, when you want to forget your troubles, reach out and help someone else with theirs. Look around, the need is great. “There is no way to peace, peace is the way”. I must apologize to references that are germane to the US. The nazi movement used Bernays and his science. So the control is exercised (with different degrees of success) on a global pattern.

  23. Epstein didn’t kill himself sure but did he die at all? Surely, he’d have a dead man’s switch in place apart from anything else. Those who pride themselves on questioning narratives swallow too easily that when it’s said that someone has died or that they’re in jail this is fact. It’s so often not.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_man%27s_switch
    —–
    Also, those who pride themselves on questioning media narratives fail to perceive that they have their own special propaganda provided just for them, one being the Let It Happen On Purpose (LIHOP) narrative. That’s one of the 9/11 narratives that gatekeepers take to like a fish to water. The LIHOP theory is such a great way of criticising the government but not confronting the clear truth that 9/11 was a inside job and that the LIHOP narrative has as much credibility as the 19 terrorists armed with boxcutters doing it all on their own. Controlled demolition, folks! Controlled demolition fits no other narrative than inside job! Of course, the key truth of 9/11 is that death and injury were staged.
    https://occamsrazorterrorevents.weebly.com/3000-dead-and-6000-injured-a-lie.html
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    9/11 was simply a massive Full-Scale Anti-Terrorist Exercise comprising many drills (a number admitted to) pushed out as a real terror attack, no different from many other staged events except for scale and the massive propaganda campaign directed at truthers to keep them believing the key lie: 3,000 dead and 6,000 injured. This lie hamstrings truthers from getting out the truth because non-truthers simply won’t believe that the US government would have killed all those people in the buildings – and in this, ironically, the non-truthers are correct where the truthers are not – that would never be their MO.
    https://occamsrazorterrorevents.weebly.com/911.html
    —–
    I know a Balinese man who told me his dad was working next to the Sari bar when the 2002 bombing happened and he said that when he was called to help the injured there were no injured to help. When you look at the images of the injured they all look as if they’re suffering burns which doesn’t seem to mesh with bombing as bombs usually involve shrapnel and serious compromises to the body such as maiming. The seeming burns could easily be created by moulage (wound make-up). Also, when you look up the Wikipedia entry for the Bali bombing we’re told that there was a 1 tonne bomb in the van outside the Sari club which seems awfully large, no? and they tell us that at first they thought the bomb was made from military-grade C4 but then realised it was made from a potassium chlorate, aluminum powder and sulfur mixture. Firstly, C4 is very hard to get one’s hands on and secondly surely a bomb containing sulfur could be worked out by its smell. A hallmark of staged events is saying “First we thought this but then we thought that.” We have the LIHOP thing happening for Bali too – everyone was up in arms about how Australians in Australia were warned not to hang around the area where the bombing happened but not Australians in Bali. Oh pleeaase. They always feed the skeptics a little story just for them to get all upset about. It’s ALL BS.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Bali_bombings

  24. First rate article. Thanks. The only counter balance I would add would be the weakness of the USD and the control mechanisms used to try and keep it on it’s precarious perch. I would also compare utube adverts. One one hand we get the communist style China ballet and the other hand western capitalist consumer goods including sugar laden Coca Cola. yuk. This link was passed to me so hat tip to him, first half of this video.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=5&v=ela-Tyycfys&feature=emb_title

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