A nation that has constantly been at war throughout its entire history has no moral authority to tell other nations how to be. This should be extremely obvious to literally everyone.
❖
Liberals are much, much more comfortable thinking about the spike in anti-Asian hate crimes as a rise in white supremacism caused by Donald Trump than as the inevitable consequence of an aggressive imperialist propaganda campaign against China.
Talking about the spike in anti-Asian hate crimes as just the result of white supremacism and not imperialist propaganda against China facilitated by white supremacism is a service to white supremacism. It’s like pretending the spike in hate crimes against Muslim Americans as the propaganda engines for Bush’s wars were fanning the flames of Islamophobia was just the result of a random spontaneous increase in white supremacism. It’s irresponsible, and it serves white supremacism.
❖
Tucker Carlson is to China as Rachel Maddow is to Russia. He has some good guests and is occasionally correct on foreign policy, but watching him regularly will make you stupid.
❖
It’s absolutely stunning how many people think “But China is really bad tho” is an awesome and insightful comment to post on the internet.
❖
The US-centralized power alliance is the most powerful institution in the world. Helping it advance its narratives on the world stage (like smearing targeted governments) is as servile and power-worshipping as prostrating yourself before Joe Biden and calling him “Your Highness”.
❖
It’s not that class is the only important issue and that race is unimportant. It’s that the imperial narrative managers consistently force the conversation into being about race instead of class because the race conversation can happen without costing the ruling class anything.
❖
Imagine if France were bombing Spain every few days and the mainstream news barely reported it. https://t.co/LDf4w0hCVQ
— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) March 17, 2021
❖
The strategy of incrementalism (pursuing change in small, gradual increments over time) absolutely is effective. The problem is that when plutocrats control the government and media, the only incremental changes which actually occur are those which benefit the plutocracy. As long as the plutocratic class controls the political/media class, incremental change will only ever go one way. Politicians advocating incremental change for the benefit of the working class are actually advocating no change whatsoever, because that’s what they’ll deliver.
Incrementalism is all you’re ever seeing when, for example, the minimum wage doesn’t keep up with inflation. Or when public programs are slowly privatized. Or when more and more money is allowed to influence politics. Or when industries become more and more deregulated. Things are fucked right now exactly because the ruling class has been using the strategy of incrementalism to slowly chip away at the working class for its own benefit. Incrementalism works. It just only ever goes one way, and always will until there is revolutionary change.
Don’t say incrementalism doesn’t work. It does work. It works all the time. It just never works for you.
❖
I don’t know who needs to hear this, but you will never, ever, ever succeed in converting me to capitalism or right-wing ideology. Trying to do this will only lead to frustration. You are free to frustrate yourself in this way as much as you like, it just looks uncomfortable.
❖
If humanity miraculously survives the existential hurdles it has placed before itself as a species, future generations will scarce believe we used to actively stockpile armageddon weapons on purpose.
❖
You can tell how sincere someone’s politics are based on how much time they spend up-punching versus how much time they spend down-punching or left-punching. If they’re in it for healthy reasons they’ll focus on the former. If they’re in it for ego and/or profit their emphasis will be on the latter.
❖
Every insane thing humans have done has been the result of some dumb narrative that they believed in their minds. Some recognize this and help free humanity from its enslavement to mental narrative. Others recognize this and use this weakness to enslave humans to themselves.
❖
You are pure beauty
swimming in a yawning abyss
of pure beauty.
Only the mind obscures this.
It is not hidden.
It is not hidden.
I love you.
__________________________
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29 responses to “A Nation That’s Always At War Has No Moral Authority: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix”
Recommended reading – an essay by Kevin Tillman, U.S. veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan occupations, linking the January 6 assault on the U.S. capitol to the warlike history and interventionism around the world.
Kevin Tillman, Capitol Blowback https://tomdispatch.com/on-january-6th-the-u-s-became-a-foreign-country/
I watched Tucker Carlson’s March 16 program and learned quite a bit. For example I did not know that one-third of Salvadoran citizens live in the U.S. Whoa!
In general, the Covey has been a fine learning opportunity.
For example, after all sorts of schooling and many years of using language, I finally learned that the word “emergency” means none of the things found in the dictionary.
I also learned that Modern Science has dispensed with logic as a tool. I’d always thought it was fundamental in arriving at verifiable hypotheses. Nope …
And my ongoing study of the word “democracy” is continuously nuanced by the elasticity of ever new variants.
Caitlin, I love your commentary, it’s among the best in the word, even though you keep contradicting your own great points. These two comments are from you in the same article above:
“I don’t know who needs to hear this, but you will never, ever, ever succeed in converting me to capitalism or right-wing ideology.”
And
“Every insane thing humans have done has been the result of some dumb narrative that they believed in their minds. “
How did you miss that the Right and Left ideology is exactly the “dumb narrative” you speak of, fed to us all by an “aggressive imperialist propaganda campaign” designed exactly to keep us divided and enslaved. The propaganda of Left vs Right is the most divisive of them all. Also painfully contradictory is your support for the imperialist propaganda narratives about Socialism Good / Capitalism Bad. All these systems ever become is a method of enslavement of the masses by assuming one group can decide what’s best over the others. Why do you succumb to what you are so passionately against??
I like Ms. Johnstone’s take on politics very much, but feel she is not qualified as a spiritual teacher, which she often presents herself as.
This posting is a perfect example. After spending most of the article discussing the mass stupidity and even evil that exists in this country (which I agree with), she closes with a “spiritual” poem that ends with “I Love You”.
“…she closes with a “spiritual” poem that ends with “I Love You”.”
I’m curious, how is this an example of Caitlin presenting herself as a spiritual teacher? Given her track record of speaking freely and honestly, I just assumed it was a statement of fact.
“The evil of democracy knows no freedom. A free person has none to enslave him. Instead, democracies offer everyone the opportunity to enslave you with a vote. Everyone becomes a slave – and everyone becomes a master of slaves. Perfect evil”
—Jeremy Locke
“A nation that has constantly [created] war throughout its entire history has no moral authority.” And, a nation that laughs along with the following may believe they are acting in the Providence of God, but they are surely not Trusted (or supported) by God:
A couple of fleeting thoughts! What else are there?
What does the notion of ‘One Nation’ actually mean; when the very idea was first conceived of by ‘white’ European men, arbitrarily separating ‘one humanity’ into more manageable – malleable fractions of the sum of the whole; when the men who founded the United States – now there’s a misnomer of the first order, founded it in the aftermath of their genocidal racist atrocities.
In the same fashion did the foregoing ‘white’ European patriarchy premeditatedly linearly divide up the one world. Of more recent historical memory, Africa specifically, comes immediately to mind.
Individuals’ national ‘citizenship’ is in fact, just another overarching artifice stretched across the ‘one world’
body! American citizenship especially no-less, is not equivalent to being part of a cooperative – a unified body of individuals.
Cooperating is the antithesis of competition; the diametrical opposite, and what these diabolical minded Sapiens’ have had in mind all along. Cooperating with the other is humane. It was a necessity for human survival in bygone days; the utterly fake apotheosis of what being human means today. Contemporary capitalism (trade and exchange) is nothing, if not being all about hierarchy and greed – the division in divide and rule.
What is a society then? What is a nation? Cohesion?
What ties most of American lives together still today is, if not more so, as Henry David Thoreau stated way back when is that: “The mass of men live lives of quiet desperation… But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.” We seem to have unquestioningly accepted the status of “lemmings to the slaughter”!
The pathetic contemporary American idiom: “It is what it is!” captures this dispirited essence dramatically. What is called resignation, is this desperation confirmed. If this doesn’t define the idiom quite aptly ‘nothing’ does. The situation, circumstance, or outcome has already happened or been decided or established, so it must be accepted even if it is undesirable.
This is what it feels like having been reduced to nothing but a commodity in an egregious, covert system of manipulation – sheer pretense at actually being human.
And the appalling tragedy in this play is that most of us are utterly unaware that we are regarded by the stars, as mere spectators – the audience, who must willingly daily pay with their lives to attend and partake of this spectacle called Democracy. The closer it gets to its adulterated reflection is its mockery and humiliation of a universal ethics and morality.
Did I forget religions?
Hope I didn’t omit too much of the specific detail, but in the attempt at not being too longwinded, something had to be left for the fakers of history.
One correction. Watching television will make you stupid not just Tucker Carlson.
This just another day in the lives of Syrians – NATO and their ‘proxy’ terrorists continue the slaughter !!
At this stage – the MSN is entirely owned by the Rothschilds !!
https://syrianews.cc/syria-terrorists-martyr-soldiers-blow-up-children-in-another-bloody-day/#comments
This video is nearly old and the deception and censorship by the government is RAMPANT !
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4cyKPDqI8I
video of Mike Pompeo confessing that as CIA Director (under Trump), he (Pompeo) ” stole, cheated, and lied” — this goes back to April 2019, but Caitlin, this bears repeating — please do so!!!
Don’t worry Herb, his cute little quip has turned into his moniker … Lyin’, Cheatin’, Stealin’ Mike Pompeo
“It’s not that class is the only important issue and that race is unimportant. It’s that the imperial narrative managers consistently force the conversation into being about race instead of class because the race conversation can happen without costing the ruling class anything.”
`
Well, that’s worth repeating.
`
And this, among several other things.
`
“I don’t know who needs to hear this, but you will never, ever, ever succeed in converting me to capitalism or right-wing ideology. Trying to do this will only lead to frustration. You are free to frustrate yourself in this way as much as you like, it just looks uncomfortable.”
`
I think I know who needs to hear it: The “libertarians” (aka neocons/paid operatives/trolls) who have taken over the comments.
`
Back at ya Caitlin, love you too..
Peace.
Can you expand on Libertarians = neocons ?
Everyone needs to watch this – mankind is in serious trouble !
https://brandnewtube.com/watch/covid-19-vaccines-are-weapons-of-mass-destruction-and-could-wipe-out-the-human-race_GcjtJu9dY1RcSNh.html
This is the most pressing problem facing mankind that no one will talk sbout, not even Caitlin. As people die they will not even realize why. That is because those who take the vaccine are its biggest believers.
Caitlin, I don’t fully agree with you on some things, but if you think capitalism doesn’t work, why are you being a capitalist ? You are a quintessential capitalist selling your time and creativity in the open market for whatever the market will bear.
If you think capitalism doesn’t work give me an example of a economic system that works better. There isn’t one
There is a great and insightful book
“Basic Economics ” by Thomas Sowell that would be worth your while to read. Sowell, a black Marxist, who became a conservative
after working in the govt, is one of America’s greatest thinkers. You are way too much of an outside the box thinker and a person of principle to not read him. I would be willing to buy it and send it to you
https://www.reddit.com/r/LateStageCapitalism/comments/bsvwcx/but_you_participate_in_society/
if you’re looking for a good understanding of economics, please look at the works of Michael Hudson — also, probably Steve Keen
Capitalism is a conceptual political attitude towards commerce.
Nobody is against commerce which is the act of growing food for others, and making clothes for others, and creating goods for others to enjoy, whilst using an easy medium of exchange we call money.
Capitalism introduces the act of aggressive competition into the simple act of commerce.
It is the aggressive competition which causes all the problems. It puts farmer vs farmer and puts one person against another.
Collaborative and cooperative commerce is a far better system because it provides for all without the aggressive and damaging competition.
What we suffer is not “aggressive competition”, its predation. Competition has been largely destroyed as a component of economics, as more and more wealth is accumulated by destroying competitors than by out performing them. The state is a party to it. There is not a single major corporation it isn’t in bed with, and those corporations didn’t get to be major by building a better product for less cost with equal or better quality. They got to be major by state blessed and supported monopoly achieved by destroying competition. Once a business, or any other entity, reaches a tipping point in the amount of wealth they control, they discover that the state is a whore house where any favor can be bought. “Some are more equal than others” isn’t a flaw in socialism alone, its a flaw in our perception of the state in general, and the role it plays in economics, regardless the name tag it wears. All are based on the assumption that those in charge, whether saints, or far more often demons, have authority to kill you if you don’t comply with their opinions written down as law.
OMG, ItiaG, i’m enslaved to myself?! run, jimmy, run! the cell door is OPEN>>>!
AAAAHHH…
i free.
now what?
what about knitting? y’know knit one, pearl two…you could insert names…?
nah, too boring…
what about TV?
yeah. the pixels are good
yep. pretty…lil …lites ….ho-hum…..
zip. dead zone….
How can democracy exist in a nation where none of the mainstream media, and few even of the non-mainstream media, are reporting the realities that all of the controlling billionaires want the public not to know?
~
This excellent article can be read here:
Do U.S. and UK Have the Worlds Most-Censored Press? by Eric Zuesse
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2021/03/16/do-u-s-and-uk-have-the-worlds-most-censored-press/
https://www.democracynow.org/2021/3/16/vijay_prashad_us_china_rivalry
https://www.wamc.org/post/2034-novel-next-world-war-admiral-james-stavridis-and-elliot-ackerman
I’m not sure if the USA is “a nation” any more.
It was when I was a kid.
Not sure what to call it now, even though I live here.
🙁
Perhaps we could call it a Petri dish
training wheels…
forever.