Listen to a reading of this article:
❖
Friendly reminder that it’s impossible to get a clear understanding of what’s going on in the world without accounting for the fact that very powerful people within your own society are actively working very hard to manipulate your understanding in their favor.
❖
Obviously believing unproven US or Ukrainian claims about what’s happening on the ground in Ukraine is as dumb as believing unproven Russian claims about what’s happening there, and anyone advocating for direct NATO military intervention against Russia is an enemy of our species.
Advocating skepticism of unproven claims made during a war and saying nuclear superpowers should not attack one anothers’ military forces on the basis of those claims should literally be the least controversial position that anyone could possibly voice about anything.
❖
US military interventionism always makes things worse and never accomplishes what its proponents claim it will accomplish. It’s stupid to have to keep saying this year after year. There’s nothing wrong in Ukraine that direct US military intervention couldn’t make much, much worse.
❖
It’s been universally understood since Stalin got the bomb that nuclear-armed powers must never go to war with each other, but everyone’s so insane now we’re seeing daily op-eds and news segments about how NATO could attack the Russian military in Ukraine without starting a nuclear war.
Nuclear superpowers must never go to war with each other. This is the single most existentially important thing for the human species to understand. It’s been understood for generations, and it didn’t magically stop being true because you saw a bunch of Ukrainian flags and some unconfirmed pictures of alleged war crimes.
People say things like, “Putin believes he can rely on the nuclear threat to keep us from confronting him!” Yeah that’s how military strategy works, dipshit. He has a military strength that his enemies need to respect. That means you shouldn’t attack Russia, not that you should.
For years I’ve had idiot QAnon cultists telling me nuclear weapons are a hoax and they’re not real. Now all of a sudden my online notifications are full of shitlibs saying almost the same thing.
❖
Still hilarious that the United States of America thinks it has the moral authority to tell other nations how they should respond to a military invasion.
❖
Do you truly believe it’s a coincidence that mainstream Americans were made to despise Putin with a Trump-Russia collusion narrative that turned out to be pure bullshit in the years preceding an unrelated US proxy war against Putin? What would it mean if it wasn’t a coincidence?
❖
Looks like Jen Psaki’s making a major career move from spreading US government lies to spreading US government lies on cable news.
❖
If you look at the behavior of the US empire underneath all the narratives, two things become clear:
- It plans to prevent the emergence of a multipolar world by halting the rise of China.
- It can only accomplish this via actions that will massively disrupt the entire world.
The strongest argument for a multipolar world is that maintaining a unipolar one necessarily requires endless violence and continually escalating nuclear brinkmanship. It is literally unsustainable.
There’s no valid reason nations can’t just get along and collaborate toward the greater good of humanity without one of them trying to dominate all the others. The unipolarist impulse to rule the earth stops this peaceful and collaborative world from emerging. There is no “Pax Americana”. Unipolarism is the opposite of peace.
People try to argue that if the US wasn’t the unipolar world dominator then it would be China or someone else, because it’s “human nature” to want to take over the world. But there was never a unipolar world hegemon ever in human history until three decades ago; you can’t claim something that has only happened one single time is “human nature”.
Europeans set sail and conquered people around the world. China built a wall. Also the idea that China seeks to replace the US as global tyrant assumes that Beijing has been watching the US empire crush itself under its own weight and thinking “Ooh, yeah, that looks awesome. Let’s definitely do that.”
❖
It says so much about how propagandized people are and how insulated their ideological echo chambers have become that their first thought when encountering someone with a foreign policy opinion they disagree with is “I bet this person is a secret agent from a hostile government.”
I’m always like, really? That’s your go-to? That I’m saying what I’m saying because I’m an operative for a foreign intelligence agency? Can’t possibly just be that I just have different opinions about the world’s most powerful government than the ones you hear on TV? How distorted does the information landscape have to be that criticizing the most dangerous impulses of the most powerful and destructive power structure on earth is something people view as weird and suspicious?
It really tells you how powerful the empire’s narrative domination is. Even leaving aside how normal criticizing the world’s largest power structure ought to be, how homogeneous has the information environment become where any divergence of opinion sticks out so much that it’s met with such intense shock that people think you’re a foreign agent?
❖
Russian perspectives need to be banned and Germans need to be jailed for supporting Putin and the news media need to push US government narratives and Silicon Valley algorithms need to aggressively boost those government narratives, because that’s what it takes to protect the western world from tyranny.
❖
Few people sincerely want the truth about the world. Most just want politicians and pundits to whisper reassuringly in their ear, “Don’t worry. We’ve got this. Your schoolteachers told you the truth about everything, and so did the news man. You are on the side of righteousness.”
_________________________
My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here.
Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2
41 responses to “US Interventionism Always Makes Things Worse: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix”
Truth, Caitlin. One aspect of US world dominance is that it constantly portrays itself (and NATO) as the victim, in this case of Russian aggression, when the US is, in fact, the premier bully of the world. If nations have collective personalities, the US is that of a psychopath.
I want to address the question of whether a drive for world domination is human nature. the fact that no country prior to the US achieved this is not proof it isn’t true–the US happened to be the country in a position to reach for it at a time in history when global travel and propaganda was technically feasible.
But I don’t think megalomania is human nature–if it were, that would imply all of us long for world domination and fail to get it only because we haven’t the power. I don’t believe this at all. But unfortunately, there is a dynamic in human society that makes this situation somewhat inevitable; power and wealth go together and tend to go to those who reach for them, and especially those unimpeded by moral qualms. A percentage of humans is sociopaths–maybe 3 percent. Some of them want power, most of them want wealth, and the small percentage of these who happen to be white, citizens of a powerful nation, intelligent and well connected, have a chance of rising into the ranks of the powerful within a military, media, or governmental body…or a corporation, which may now dictate to governmental bodies.
This would be a manageable phenomenon except that a much larger percentage of us, more than 90%, will acquiesce to whatever those in authority or their peers support. There are only maybe 1% who will loudly point out that the emperor is starkers, who will refuse to put on a uniform and kill people on command, who will insist on guiding a corporation to doing the right thing though it costs the bottom line, until they are removed for doing so…
And this being the case, I am skeptical of the faith Caitlin and others place in China. I expect that if and when China becomes a world hegemon, it will begin imposing uniformity on all of us at it does at home, and likely get into the kind of capitalist oppression the US does now. Only difference, the assholes of the Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates ilk will have Chinese faces.
I tend to agree your point about China and I was wondering whether the Chinese Belt and road initiative would be there more subtle way towards world domination. Rather than dominating by force they’re using a debt burden
I laughed for three days straight when Biden called Putin a war criminal.
Everything you have written in this article should be obvious to all adults. The ubiquitous ignorance is almost as frightening as the nukes.
Exactly my thoughts. Short and very much to the point.
The US … “plans to prevent the emergence of a multipolar world by halting the rise of China.”
Too late.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=belm4kDAHgM
High speed rail for China is like playing with Legos. 70,000 kilometers of HSR track laid down in-country by 2035? Too fucking easy. Why not build high speed rail lines in Malaysia, Vietman, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Kenya, Morroco, Serbia, Hungary etc. and etc., while we’re at it.
I have $100 bet with a friend that Afghanistan will have an HSR line before the US does. I consider that bet a lock.
China’s banks work for China. It is that simple. I’ve spent a lot of hours of my life studying economics, way too many actually, trying to answer the question I repeatedly asked as a child, “if a 13 year long depression could end the very instant the first bomb dropped on Pearl Harbor, why can’t we just pretend every day is December 7, 1941, and instead of fighting a war, build stuff that benefits our country?”
Never got an answer. Not a good one anyway. 10,000 hours of my life down the drain right there.
Oh well. Apparently it is my fate as an adult to have to watch China follow a child’s economic playbook to multi-polar dominance.
China bestrides the United States like a colussus in all ways that matter but two, military firepower and financial hocus pocus. If we can draw one conclusion from this Ukraine crisis so far, it is that America’s financial hocus pocus is not all that it’s cracked up to be. As for military firepower, as Col. Douglas MacGregor has repeatedly pointed out, only 30% of America’s youth is physically capable of joining the Armed Services, which means dreams of a victorious land war in Asia would appear to be out.
So if we are to whup China an whup em good, what options does that leave us? Well, the usual. A no-fly zone or a nuclear first strike. Take your pick.
What percentage of the 30% of physically capable youth would be interest in joining the military? A lot of them are children of the PMC class raised with good nutrition and given the support (money and parental time) to participate in sports and fitness activities. Those kids mostly want to help run the show, not put skin in the game.
Good point. Another reason why I believe my nation should look inward, make an attempt to heal itself.
We are not going to do this however, and that is why I’m convinced our descent into madness will not only continue unabated, it will increase at an exponential rate.
How crazy is it when the US wants to ‘contain’ China while the US economy is dependent on Chinese made goods? Just believing that the US can continue to project sufficient power on the other side of the world to control China shows that the US is clinically insane. The US economy is a house of cards built on financial manipulation, primed to fall down.
“People try to argue that if the US wasn’t the unipolar world dominator then it would be China or someone else, because it’s “human nature” to want to take over the world. But there was never a unipolar world hegemon ever in human history until three decades ago; you can’t claim something that has only happened one single time is “human nature”.
I agree with so much of what this column posits and im grateful for the work..But this is where I diverge from the “multipolarists”..The idea that the “unipolar world” dominated by the US is inherently MORE dangerous than , say 2 or 3 major power blocks , all armed with nuclear weapons and space faring technology,. PLEASE recall that the world was VERY “multipolar” in 1914. There is nothing especially (uniquely) sinister about America Americans or “Americanism” (whatever that is)..I think all these phrases miss the point. The problem is monopoly capitalism -imperialism .Societies organized in this kind of survival competition will end up at war with each other…sooner or later.. The fundamental class antagonism must be resolved. It is not Russia or China that imperialist are at war with , ultimately it is the entire global working class, which they need to make their profits but which they will always fear and resent as a threat to their wealth and privilege…This fundamental class antagonism is what has been driving history for the past 400 years. As i hope you can see this is not a statement in defense of American led imperialism. Its is a statement against the domination of capital in any form or bloc.
Warren Buffet: “There’s class warfare all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”
You are nothing but a Putin stooge! How much is Putin paying you to spread your poison. In a sane society you and your kin would be sent to Russia. You are a poisonous bitch. You are truly Putin’s whore!!
Why the hatred and vitriol Nigel?
Its always good to see that your kind are constantly sharpening such powerful and persuasive arguments. I mean it sincerely when i say, that hope that you people will continue to present this level of debate
He can’t hear you. He’s just been put away by two white suits.
Ummm:
It says so much about how propagandized people are and how insulated their ideological echo chambers have become that their first thought when encountering someone with a foreign policy opinion they disagree with is “I bet this person is a secret agent from a hostile government.”
Indeed. At war with someone for almost all of its existence. Usually the aggressor too.
Russia and China want a multi-polar FAIR world order. Sounds good to me. Anything but what we have bee suffering for the last 70+ years.
We NEED it to stop the US aggression and balance things out a bit. The US right now is the largest threat in the world, with the finger of a senile old man hovering over the nuclear button, and a bunch of deranged politicians urging him on to more and more aggression.
Gee! Helen
What a reasonable couple of thoughts. Don’t you understand we live in a world, dominated, by, amomng other things: Crackpot Realism.
Crackpot Realism says, “If 10,000 nuclear weapons kept us safe, 10,000 more should keep us twice as safe.”
Of course, I am a subject of the empire where that passes for common sense.
Where it is completely inconcievable that development does not have to be a ‘0’ sum gain. You know, where compassion, sharing and compromise, are taken as evidence of weakness of character and lethal flaws.
Big fish eat little fish, who may in turn be eaten by still bigger fish, so one’s only course is to be, if not the biggest fish, the fish with the biggest mouth.
Be well,
Tony S
Hungary has joined the BRI !
Massive unrest now in Peru – Peru has joined the BRI !
This orchestrated SH!T only happens to countries that have joined the BRI !
DITTO Sri Lanka !
Ukraine is the Rothschild’s last stand – that’s why the MASSIVE resistance !
The Rothschilds criminal banking cartel won’t be required on the BELT road !
Here is a list of the 148 nations that have joined the BRI !
An essential reference if you want to understand the current geopolitics !
https://beltandroad.hktdc.com/en/country-profiles/country-profiles.aspx
Massive unrest now in Peru – Peru has joined the BRI !
This orchestrated SH!T only happens to countries that have joined the BRI !
DITTO Sri Lanka !
Ukraine is the Rothschild’s last stand – that’s why the MASSIVE resistance !
The Rothschilds criminal banking cartel won’t be required on the BELT road !
Things will unravel fast after May 9th when Russia declares victory and the Rothschilds owned media LIES are exposed !
Prepare yourselves as best you can !!!
What we’re seeing is WW2 level over-the-top staged atrocity propaganda. The Bucha story reminds me of the US media coverage of the discovery of the victims of the Katyn Forest massacre in 1943. Washington blamed Germany, of course, even though officials knew the men of the Polish officer corps had been slaughtered on Stalin’s orders. After the war, the Soviet Union tried and executed dozens of Germans for the crime. Russia did not finally admit Soviet responsibility for the massacre until 1990.
*
All wars are about economic rivalries. The world as a morality play about good and evil is a fantasy best left to the churches, in their profitable role as the compliance assurance arm of state power.
“Few people sincerely want the truth about the world. Most just want politicians and pundits to whisper reassuringly in their ear, “Don’t worry. We’ve got this. Your schoolteachers told you the truth about everything, and so did the news man. You are on the side of righteousness.””
What it boils down to really is the ego. People generally identify, especially if they’re insecure, with something bigger than themselves: their fambly, their ‘hood, their town, their country, their football team, their political party, some saint or angel or god… It makes them feel bigger than the miserable cell bags travelling at 300 km/s through the cosmos on a speck of dust that they are in reality and which they find very humiliating, especially in front of people of the other sex.
Identifying with the majority’s propaganda is a gratifying extension of the ego – which is why they get so mean with dissenters – except of course for those who, for some weird reason, prefer the truth.
the bucha-situation puts the russians in a tight spot. everywhere they retreat, they’ll have to convince at least those that somewhat tolerated them to leave their homes and retreat with the troops. anyone who stays behind and even showed a bit of sympathy for the russians will probably be slaughtered.
best case scenario for the whole situation imo: the west manages to cut off russia (maybe exit from WTO, UN, G20, …) and a new iron curtain is set up (this time without red phones on either side and nukes on a hair-trigger alert 24/7). the reorganisation of the world economy will deprioritise all other ‘priorities’ (climate, poverty, pollution, disease, …) in favor of the mic.
Agree, the Russians are in a tight spot. I believe we’ve arrived at a point were Ukraine forces can kill anyone they want and blame it on the Russians, and if that fails. well, Western propaganda will cover all their misdeeds under the rubric of, “our brave defenders of freedom occasionally make mistakes.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXSxeDAPhOk
The West hitched their wagon to the wrong team, in my opinion. They UkoNazi’s are who they said they were. They are nobody’s tool. They are going to do what they do, and if the West doesn’t like it, the West can either go fuck themselves, or join the party.
Literally.
Bucha is such an obvious lie I’m stunned that anyone would repeat it.
The bodies were killed post Russian pull out.
All are wearing white armbands or white ID … which is to tell the Russians they are civiliians. Many are holding Russian emergency rations.
The psycho Ukrainians see these folk as traitors, and therefore they are summarily executed.
The tragedy here is that the Russians didn’t foresee this and organise buses to remove those at risk, which they have done elsewhere.
This is a proxy NATO vs Russia war. The sooner it ends the better for all concerned.
One thing is certain, Ukraine is not the injured party here: they have been slaughtering the folk in the Donbass for nearly a decade. Recently NATO boosted arms deliveries and assistance to the Ukrainians, and Russia could not watch genocide of ethnic Russians. Anyone who supports the Ukrainians in this endeavour has no moral compass.
But most of the western world supports the Ukrainians–and it’s not because they have no moral compass. It’s because their information stream is completely controlled by the ‘mainstream media’/propaganda apparatus of what Caitlin calls the ’empire loosely based in Washington DC.” Which controlled and manipulated what coverage they allowed during their many aggressive attacks on Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Sudan, Libya, etc…but is now ensuring that all kinds of video evidence of Russia’s violence in Ukraine gets out (including, probably, several false-flag/staged events. Because one of the things they learned a long time ago is that an image carries ten times the impact of a set of words describing the same thing. Which is why George Floyd’s murder got the reaction it did–because everyone saw that video, and it was clear and unambiguous.
The war crimes committed in the Donbass by the Ukrainian militias have been literally disappeared. Thousands of Russian-speaking people dead and cities shelled for years, and it’s like it never even happened. One of the narratives is ‘Ukraine just wants to be free to determine its own destiny’ but hardly anyone in the US and its media asks about the right of ethnic Russians in the east to determine their own destiny.
Excellent points. The US drive for world domination is official policy and has been at least since 2002. I’m always amazed like you when I encounter Americans who think our foreign policy has anything whatsoever to do with “defense “ or “national security.” This may be the single most important issue for the world—and certainly the west— to confront now.
There is whole other way to intervene, it is known as “PEACEMAKING”.
I am of opinion that global peace and trade make better economic sense than conflict and sanctions on 1/3 of the world. But apparently not if your goal is to make everybody in the world use paper money that one government prints excessively because they cannot govern anymore, or balance their budget.
Actually learned from a lecture on inflation that having a bloated military budget leads to inflation when all the military contractors try to spend their money on products and services in that are in short supply, and especially if there is labor shortage in the country.
Much love, Caitlin. It’s so cool seeing young people embracing the hippie ideals of the greatest generation. I don’t mean the WW2 depression-era Dan Rather mythology, but the give peace a chance era. Joni Mitchell wrote ‘they won’t give peace a chance, that was just a dream some of us had.’ I’ll know we’re getting somewhere when we have Mad Mother’s Against Empire.
Not the first time that I comment…wherever the US meddles, shit is sure to follow. Hasn’t failed yet.
Your insights have become the nectar of sanity for me. It’s so reassuring to know I’m not alone in my observations.
It wasn’t until I left the USA and moved to the Philippines in 2015 that my eyes began to open, primarily thanks to President Rodrigo Duterte and his independent foreign policy. I now see America for the bully it is.
As the saying goes…better late than never! 🙂 This bully has been around since the end of the 1800’s.
Indeed. At war with someone for almost all of its existence. Usually the aggressor too.
But isn’t it true that he he is a ruthless authoritarian, with thousands executed without trial for supposed drug crimes?
That’s truly mind-boggling. So you can’t think for yourself, you need an authority figure, in this case Duterte, to tell you what’s what? I’m not American, but my husband is, and he has known what a bully the US is since he was a teenager in the 70s. He worked it out all by himself.