Have you ever seen a mainstream news report containing the phrase “the French regime”? How about “the British regime” or “the Australian regime”?
If these phrases look a bit odd, it’s because you’ve never seen them written down before. Ostensibly the word simply means “a form of government” or “a government in power”, but it’s generally understood that it’s got a kind of negative connotation to it just because of the way it tends to be used. In theory its meaning is closer to “a bad or authoritarian government”, and in practice by the western media it means “a government which disobeys the dictates of Washington”.
Just look at some recent examples of the way that word has been used in headlines by the mass media:
“Amb. Michael McFaul: Putin’s treatment of Navalny proves ‘this is a regime that is in decay’“ by MSNBC on April 8.
“Appeasing Cuba’s Regime Didn’t Work“, by The Wall Street Journal on April 2.
“Senior GOP Senators Call BBC ‘Notoriously Sympathetic to the Iranian Regime‘” by Newsweek on April 8.
“Hitting Nerve With Kim Jong Un Regime Takes Just a Few Words” by The Wall Street Journal on March 18.
“America Will Only Win When China’s Regime Fails” by Foreign Policy on March 11.
“At a Hotel in Caracas, Oil Executives Weigh a Return to Venezuela–Promises of more autonomy to tap the world’s biggest crude reserves are drawing the oil industry to meetings with the Nicolas Maduro regime” by Bloomberg on March 19.
A ‘Regime’ Is a Government at Odds With the US Empire https://t.co/4hlCM9VGaL pic.twitter.com/DE0ubiquB8
— Find Us @FAIR at Mastodon.World (@FAIRmediawatch) August 20, 2018
As Gregory Shupak documented in a 2018 Fair.org article titled “A ‘Regime’ Is a Government at Odds With the US Empire“, this label is seldom affixed to US allies–even US allies with extremely oppressive governments like Saudi Arabia–while it is used constantly on empire-targeted governments like Venezuela and Syria. Shupak notes that we even see this label abandoned after a targeted government is toppled, with nations like Iraq and Honduras magically transforming from “regimes” to “governments” after they are successfully absorbed into the imperial blob.
The immense disparity between the frequency with which this label is applied to member states of the US-centralized power alliance compared to how often it’s applied to governments which have resisted absorption into that alliance is one of the most blatant ways in which the mainstream western news media outlets help facilitate US empire building. This is because mainstream western news media outlets are propaganda. They exist to advance the agendas of the imperialist plutocratic class which controls them.
When the empire wants to topple a government, their first step is to psychologically uncouple it from the nation and its people in the eyes of the western world by consistently using labels that make it look like an alien, occupying force. It’s not Syria’s government, everybody! It’s the Assad Regime™️!
Oh no! A Regime?? How did that Regime get in where Syria’s government ought to be?? Watch out Syrians, you’ve got a Regime on your back! Don’t worry, we’ll come and rescue you from it!
Do you see how it works? If you can make a nation’s government look like an illegitimate invading force instead of the governing body which arose from that nation’s internal dynamics, you legitimize any attempt to “defend” that nation from that force. Up to and including staging coups, arming oppositional militias, airstrikes, sanctions, or full-scale ground invasions.
What We're Really Seeing With All These Anti-China Narratives
"Why are we being told that China is dangerous over and over again day in and day out all of a sudden, while, for example, Israel's constant bombing of Syria gets nary a mention?"https://t.co/jUSdFzBhJd
— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) March 19, 2021
You see this same tactic in the way anti-China spinmeisters have been training their credulous audiences to use the term “CCP” for China’s government; it’s an alien-sounding label most people won’t have grown up hearing, so it helps mentally dissociate the government from the nation and its people in the public eye. This despite the fact that the Chinese people overwhelmingly approve of their government. They even deliberately use a weird abbreviation for the party’s official English name, the Communist Party of China (CPC).
This is why you constantly hear indoctrinated automatons bleating the mantra “I don’t oppose the Chinese people, I oppose the CCP!” They’ve been trained to help spin China’s government as an illegitimate force which is occupying China against the will of its people, thereby creating the perception of legitimacy for anything that will be done in the future to target that government. Of course it can be helpful in certain instances to create such distinctions, but this mantra isn’t being mindlessly bleated ad nauseum for helpful reasons. It’s to help grease the wheels of the slow-motion third world war the US-centralized power alliance is waging upon the remaining unabsorbed nations.
Whoever controls the narrative controls the world. The agendas to secure this control and shape those narratives look different, but their purpose is always the same: to facilitate the agendas of a ruling class of sociopaths who operate the most deadly and destructive power structure of the face of the earth.
________________________
New book: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix.
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45 responses to ““Regime” And “CCP”: Propaganda Tools For Dissociating A Targeted Nation From Its Government”
…isn’t everything many of us hear ‘propaganda?’
…functional ‘politics’ amounts to ‘a competition of ideas about government’…most/all people i meet who ‘talk politics’ have a political issue they want me to consider…many people believe their ‘political’ ideas/the ideas of their favorite(s) are better than mine…while, of course, i KNOW my ideas are better than theirs.. 😉
…as one wag put it, ‘government is nothing more or less than the people who make it up’… it seems to me if we simply spend some honest energy demanding/constructing open, honest, VIGOROUS ‘competitions of ideas about government’ [essentially honest, vigorous ‘debates’] we could get [b]MUCH[/b] better, more just, more wise, more efficient, etc., ideas about government than the many stinking ideas promulgated by these republicrat-level bank$ter puppet$…..
…you’ll note that in honest competitions the actual competitors are PRIMARY to the event whereas the announcers, cheerleaders, etc., are secondary…but in these miserable, phony ‘competitions for public office’ [aka $election$] our ruler$ vomit a couple of puppets at us in a phony ‘contest’ where, LARGELY, the announcers and cheerleaders are primary to the event and the ‘competitors’ are secondary…
…as an aside, the trump dummies in the US whining about ‘voter fraud’ can’t see that the real fraud is evident in a system where our ‘choices’ for ?the most powerful political office on the planet? are puppet$ beavis biden and butthead trump… ugh..
Remember that time, when the US-centered Empire went to war against “Saddam” – and then quickly freed the Iraqi people (from the CIA asset, whom we’d previously installed as the head of their country), without killing more than a Million of them – and then quickly left that grateful nation, to thrive without us?
Me either.
After seeing all your comments, some great… I’ve decided you said it all so I will give this one a pass….
Well Done Caitlin, another insightful commentary and yes, we have a lot to thank Edward Bernays and his Uncle Sigmund Fraud . The narrative vulture’s will always be there, from the time we left the cave they were hatching their eggs.. But today, the vulture’s are evil technocrats – The USA regime will go down in history, if we all live that long, as the most egregious, the most diabolical, and the most delusional of them all.
Not the most damaging, but by far the most pathetic aspect of foreign policy of the US Psychopaths In Charge is that the very first nation it rapes, pillages and plunders is the the US. While well hidden by the bank cartel and its never ending supply of “money”, it never the less makes all of its citizens poor and ignorant, on the altar of ever improving means to kill ever more people. The US debt is not disposable, but will be kicked down the road to our great great grandchildren. If we happen to survive the reign of the psychopaths long enough to birth them. A comprehensive examination of the goals, methods, and results of the actions of the US Psychopaths In Charge clearly demonstrates they are suicidal. None of their programs are sustainable at any level. They are dying. We can only pray they don’t spasm into taking all of us with them. Its a race between their death by a thousand cuts, and their psychotic self destruction.
So, we’ve all heard of trees living for thousands of years, a bush for more than 50,000 years, a giant mushrooms for close to a quarter million years, but now bacteria living miles under ground locked in rocks have been found living off the radiation from radioactive atoms that are well over 100 million years old. Certainly an alternative life style for those who absolutely must live a long life.
Here is a story of the day – skip along if you are not interested or have already passed judgement.
~
The Queen was dignified and centile (pg. 363) in a random way – she was a rare percentile. She didn’t know she was gonna be born a queen. Her mate was likewise. A fine man. She saw one war in her youth and she saw another and another after that. They both did. Happy to survive and remain through it all as they aged, but a bit of melancholy became part of their existence – how could it not. In rare moments she wondered what it might have been had she been born a peasant, and so did he. She thought to herself – that would have been better maybe. He didn’t consider it. No matter, she was the Queen, and she had no choice, duty calls, and she answered the call. She did her best and he was her companion.
~
The years went on. She performed her duties and participated in the ceremonies. She did as expected. She was genteel.
~
She took comfort in her mate, someone to be her companion, and they lived a life of dignity and responsibility and nary did they say they would have preferred to be peasants. But sometimes, in quiet moments of honesty they wondered what was it that made them different and this wondering was founded on wisdom. Cause they knew in their heart of hearts that they weren’t different. They knew they were not any better than you or I. They were homo sapiens just like the rest of us.
~
Now her mate has passed on and a good man he was, but the Queen is alone and she knows not how to live without her longtime companion, but she will push one. Still, one might have compassion for the Queen, but another might wonder why she wasn’t a peasant from the get go. Had she been, had it started out that way, then maybe things would be so much better today than they are. Maybe, maybe not.
~
The Queen had to deal with all of this in her loneliness and she sensed a reckoning coming. She felt it in her old bones. One for which there was naught she could do, but be an old women and know the next generation will do what must be done. Perhaps she could die with dignity and hope that in her next life, if there was one to be, she could be a peasant and know their suffering. Perhaps that could be justified healing.
~
Who needs the burden of a monarchy upon their shoulders – better to live in strife than to have the weight of old history upon your back. It is time for that history to die. Die with dignity if you can. It is time for better times.
~
And then the tree the Queen was loftily sitting upon the top branches to look upon her subjects fell as the peasant’s axes swung upon the trunk. As the tree fell, the Queen finally felt peace and when she hit the ground she died with dignity as she had lived.
End of story.
~
Propaganda’s influence is diminishing day-by-day…..soon we will all be looking for some good wood to cherish.
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BK
How about this. Captain Obvious rises from the dead in the generations that follow what was so obvious to him and to her.
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In fact, rumor has it, that Captain Obvious wasn’t a he after all. He was a she.
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Riddle that.
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The Minoans knew but Mr. Volcano got rid of them and their wisdom, but lucky for us, a bit of it remained, and that my friend Khatika is what will make the difference or not – one way or the other, as it has always been it will depend on the ladies to decide.
~
I can live with that.
BK
We need to turn their language “which they change to fit the agenda” back on them. Personally, I was pleased when the the word “oligarch” was starting to be used in public to describe our ruling classes. Those who control language control the narrative, Union bosses, business leaders and that kind of thing. Problem is, it’s hiding in plain sight so it’s cloaked in invisibility.
Caitlin, I am sure you will appreciate this article.
Biden To Boost Already Bloated Pentagon Budget With Proposed $715 Billion
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/biden-boost-already-bloated-pentagon-budget-proposed-715-billion
This is how life works and I dont like it one bit. – Captain Obvious
Captain Obvious was killed in the first episode.
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He is dead.
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Now what?
Do you feel the reckoning happening or not?
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This is intended to be a scientific study even though it ain’t “double blind”.
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My daughter’s dog is about to lose it’s other eye due to a genetic defect, but guess what?
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I’d rather be with that blind dog than a pompous fool who thinks he or she has nothing left to learn.
~
RECKONING
~
bk
Very unfortunately, most of the people within these United States completely ignore the deeds of our government all over this entire planet. There is no shame or remorse felt because the general public does not give a damn about ” other people “. When the economy of the United States implodes and a loaf of bread costs $25.00 the general public will look a lot closer at the workings of ” its own government ” and its massive failures.
…i mostly agree…but in no way is it ‘OUR government’…it appears that, LARGELY, a cartel of stinking secret-squirrel bankster$/plutocrats owns/controls ‘our [goddamned] government’ lock, stock and barrel [and everyone else’s government too!]…the people who affirm/’vote’ for the likes of biden and trump and ALL the rest of these republicrat, etc., puppet$ are culpable…. republicrats!, ugh!..
Its the FED. Come on folks its obvious. It is the FED. They are the cause of these troubles. The Federal Reserve – who has no reserve cause all they own is debt.
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They commenced with a coup enacted into law in 1913 and that has sealed the fate of many generations. But, grow up – it don’t need to stay that way.
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Grow up.
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I’ll tell you this, the generations coming along, and I know cause I have two members of the next generation who were born from my sperm, and I’ve made it my mission to teach them everything I possibly could, and both they and me have lots left to learn, but I can say this with confidence. THEY KNOW.
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I know as well. The thing about knowing is that you can always get better at it. As long as you have a bit of humility and recognize from the get-go that U have more left to learn. Why would we be alive in the first place if it wasn’t about learning more based on past history. Past history is what it is, but just because it was one way once don’t mean it has to be that way forever – or have you learned nothing!
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And I will fight to the death for learning cause I know most folks want to survive day after day and they are NOT stupid or inferior – in fact, I think they are better than the pompous ones who think they know it all.
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The reckoning is upon us. It feels good to me.
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Peace,
BK
Russia and China create… VIOLA! “Global Resistance Economy”
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2021/04/05/china-russia-launch-global-resistance-economy
And there is this IED of Mass Destruction:
https://tomluongo.me/2021/04/02/from-the-notebook-archegos-bikini-atolls/
…the following is attributed to john swinton in ?1883… hardly a goddamned thing has changed:…
There is no such a thing in America as an independent press, unless it is out in country towns. You are all slaves. You know it, and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to express an honest opinion. If you expressed it, you would know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid $150 for keeping honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for doing similar things. If I should allow honest opinions to be printed in one issue of my paper, I would be like Othello before twenty-four hours: my occupation would be gone. The man who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the street hunting for another job. The business of a New York journalist is to distort the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to villify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread, or for what is about the same — his salary. You know this, and I know it; and what foolery to be toasting an “Independent Press”! We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are jumping-jacks. They pull the string and we dance. Our time, our talents, our lives, our possibilities, are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.
A fascinating story. Apparently Swinton delivered this as a speech at a press dinner as he was leaving the New York Sun to found his own paper.
Makes you cherish all the more people like Julian Assange.
…….stop focusing on what these hand-picked republicrats, etc. a$$orted puppet$ galore, are talking about…panem et circenses…
…figure out what the puppetma$ter$ [your true ruler$] don’t want discussed and you have figured out the mo$t important thing$..
…i will note that, tmk, an honest, open, transparent, etc., discussion about/expose of this hideous monetary order under which we are effectively enslaved, brain-laundered, etc., has NEVER happened…not in the US…not in britain, not in australia nor any other ‘democracy’ or non-democracy on the planet… gee, i wonder why… 😉
Yes, it is a “slow-motion third world war.” But, Russia and China are not Iraq and Afghanistan (etc,). Yes, they will push it as far as hot wars. But, Russia and China can annihilate in defense with nuclear forces. Yes, they are aware of that. No, they don’t care.
This should be the number one target of those who have any respect at all for human life on the planet. The time has come for enormous masses of people to catch on to the destructive force the propaganda-mill has become and simply turn it all off and walk away. Personally, I have been doing this for decades and have not been harmed in the slightest by not being lied to on a daily basis.
One of the problems with this approach is that nearly all people i meet can not wait to tell me the latest bull leavings they heard on cnn. Best response is probably to just ask, “so that’s what they’re telling people these days? hmm…”
I don’t disagree, I basically agree, but lucky for you and lucky for me that we have the means to do what you suggest. Consider it a blessing and then consider what to do with it. I care about a lot of things – not just my sperm.
~
So, the solution that I’m working on means others will have the means to do this and guess what – it demands a reckoning. Some things really have to change and the change has to be rapid – and why wouldn’t it be in this time of “high flux”. It will be or it won’t.
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I feel it coming do you?
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Please don’t answer this question cause it might mess up my scientific study that is intended to be unbiased. I mean the real question is – does homo sapien want to evolve or not? (Sapien or Sapian – how does one spell that?) – another rhetorical question that is fluffy at best.
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Some of us, some of us who have been studying hard know what it takes to get to the bottom of the rabbit hole and come back out alive. Funny thing is that we survived because we found some friends, and now we are a pack of wolves and we mean serious business.
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We want things to get better and we are willing to help out those who are in need only because the “system” of the “FED” seems to demand suffering of the many for the gain of the few. Well, these entities who thought they were “dominating” are fixing to meet the reckoning up close and personal. One at a time. That is my vision.
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String them up. One at a time.
~
BK
I share many of Caity’s articles on this theme because they speak the same truth in many different ways. However, I often refrain from commenting, because those of us who are regulars here, already know the truth in such things. What’s important is to keep putting the message in front of the brain-washed, skeptical and unknowing more general public and friends. One way that she says it may not impact one person’s mind, while another way might well work.
But really, who is actually calling all the shots? We want the names of the actual people printed plainly across the bottom of their photographs. Yes, we want an actual “wanted poster”. For those of us on the move a nice deck of “bad guys “ playing cards would suffice. This is of course could not be limited to political figures but inclusive of those our political puppets bow to, plus whoever it is THEY in turn are serving.
You want names. Start with the Forbes list. It is all out there for public consumption.
Take special note of those who have “moved up” on the list. Some of them, their fortune, what they were hoping to have so much effing philanthropy with, is based on nothing but leverage built upon the past, and that leverage is fixing to be lost – in a heartbeat.
~
So, mark them off the list, and then for the others go down the list one at a time and for each one ask this simple question: have they caused harm?
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If the answer is yes, the perhaps they need some therapy to help them understand what is important and what is not. Maybe, they should have a face-to-face meeting with Pope Francis and he could express to them what God wishes. Maybe, maybe not.
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Maybe, they should just be strung up on the strings they thought they were pulling. What do you think of that metaphorical idea?
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I think the reckoning is upon us. I feel it.
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But I know I could be wrong because humility demands that.
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Man, you should have felt the wind blowing yesterday where I was at.
~
BK
I’m always amazed that so many people don’t see how they’re knowledge is being manipulated.
And there’s me thinking that ‘regime’ must really mean or definitely derive from monarchy, by way of ‘rex – regis.’ ‘of a king.’ In Latin
‘Regime’ is like ‘oligarch’, in that for awhile it was applied only to certain people the US regime didn’t like. However, it has now spread out some. I see references to ‘oligarchs’ in the discussions of high-end real estate prices in Manhattan. Conceded, the MSM will resist uncanonical use until the end, for they are slow on the uptake.
Wasnt it so much easier before modern warfare. You have something I want. I am coming to get it. Try and stop me. No propaganda required. You are my friend/vassal or my enemy. Decide. No propaganda just brute force. Why do you even care about propaganda anyway. It is just foreplay prior to force. Do you really think changing propaganda changes the empire. The regime does as it sees fit. Remember Genghis Khan. The Chinese sent an emissary to him. He returned him with his head in a bag. Now that is cutting to the chase. We still do it, but we just talk alot now before we act.
Propaganda proved politically useful in the 20th century; mass movements, revolutions, wars, and genocides were sparked by radio, television, and film (the preeminent classical example being _Triumph of the Will_. The remarkable ability of the Nazis to maintain control of their subjects in spite of ongoing catastrophe and defeat must be attributed in part to their propaganda. It’s not foreplay to the use of force, it’s part of it.
Yes it is. Trying to distinguish the two as seperate entities is where people make the mistake. Propagand never stands alone, force stands with it. Thus to complain about propaganda as if it is the deciding factor is an illusion.
But the cash in your pocket from complaining about propaganda as if it is the deciding factor isn’t an illusion 😉
In fact monetizing propaganda-as-the-deciding-factor is some pretty slick capitalism…
Aka main stream media.
Time and Essence
Contemporary cynicism “an inclination to believe that people are motivated purely by self-interest” – greed!
Definitely not “of the school of thought of ancient Greek philosophy, as practiced by the Cynics.” For the Cynics, the purpose of life is to live in virtue, in agreement with nature.” Wikipedia
Perhaps this reflects the binary split, between the conscious and unconscious drives of the constantly thinking mind rather than actually being more fully human?
In both cases, the choice seems to be between the pursuits of blind ego, or a more conscious presence – of paramount necessity; focusing on what is, in each moment of the now.
Somewhere along the way of blood thirsty (cannibalistic) history, the art of political doublespeak hypocrisy – of brute power, began to hold sway.
“We still do it, but we just talk a lot now before we act.”
The idea then is to more consciously change how we act.
If humanity at large succumbs and becomes capable of adapting to the artifice of a manufactured ‘nature’, brought to us by the techno wizardry of the powers that be, then this pseudo humanity will definitely be on course to driving us all – them included, to extinction.
If the natural biological organization contained in the term “evolution” has already been modified to such a degree, through the short-sighted, so-called “genius” of man’s scientific mind; that the only remaining recourse is adapting to this insanity, or dying are humanity’s only remaining choices, given the predicament we are in, then all is in fact hopeless!
Regrettably, this writing too is an expression of cynicism!
If, what you seem to be inferring in most comments, humanity is simply spinning its wheels in the constant repetition of history – that all is predictable, then we certainly are doomed.
Pessimism or optimism are the only binary choices of the coin of life!
To a certain degree – that of being fallible humans, at differing moments and circumstance of our individual trajectories, we are all complicit.
Speaking for my ‘self’ at this precarious evolutionary moment of Sapiens’ history, either we try to rise above the limits of our individual selves, en masse, or…. we don’t!
Also, when you see it written down, CCP recalls CCCP, the Cyrillic characters familiar to anybody who still remembers the USSR.
You beat me to it.
But, it is 30 years since the “CCCP” (Союз Советских Социалистических Республик) broke up. It is unlikely that anyone younger than the current median human age (older than half of the people alive today) even retains contemporary memories of its existence.
According to the CIA, median age estimate for the United States of America in 2020 was 38.5, worldwide was 31.0.
*younger than half
You know you’re getting old when you remember seeing Yuri Gagarin in London, the streets lined with cheering people waving Soviet flags.
Kind of like how some women refer to each other with the ‘B’ word and the ‘W’ word, and men hardly any different. Just one of those animal things that animals do. Frustrating certainly and a total waste of time for having ever been born into a species of dumb animal. But what’s a woke animal going to do? LOL, great essay, but at the end of the day we all just a bunch of dumb animals.
There’s a truth in what you’re saying but in the context of who we’re talking about you’re whitewashing despicable mass scale murderous people.
magically transforming from “regimes” to “governments” after they are successfully absorbed into the imperial blob.
The Trump régime, the Biden régime, the Boris Brexit régime, the suppository-of-wisdom Abbott régime; the on-waters-matter-secrecy Morrison régime. Then there’s the Ukraine régime. The Murdoch NewsCorp Media régime! I know régimes! Thanks for pointing it out.
And then there’s the Corporate and MIC regimes.