Empire Managers Invent Fake Threats So We Won't Fight The Real Monsters
Western politics is mostly just empire managers making up fake problems to fight so they don’t have to address the real problems.
Can’t stop waging wars or the western empire will collapse. So they make up fake threats from dictators and tyrants and take action to stop them.
Can’t stop inflating the military budget and circling the planet with more and more war machinery or the military-industrial complex will stop reaping profits. So they tell you to be afraid of Muslims and “terrorists” and Russia and China and take action to protect you from them.
Can’t stop polluting the world and destroying the biosphere or capitalism will perish. So they split us into two mainstream warring factions arguing about culture war wedge issues and promise to protect each faction from the other side.
Can’t stop supporting Israeli atrocities or they’ll hamstring their hegemonic agendas in west Asia and make an enemy of the Zionists. So they create a boogie man of “antisemitism” and set up envoys, inquiries and task forces dedicated to stopping it.
Can’t get money out of politics and stop wealthy oligarchs from using their riches to manipulate western politics to their advantage, because the oligarchs run the empire. So they fearmonger about “communism” on the right and tell the centrists that the leftists are costing them elections.
Can’t stop ramping up authoritarianism and eroding the civil liberties of the citizenry or else they won’t be able to suppress future revolutions. So they cite unpopular people and groups as reasons why the authoritarianism is necessary to protect the public while constructing a giant cage of surveillance and control around everyone.
Can’t stop coercively extracting resources and labor from the global south because that’s the whole reason the empire was set up in the first place. So they tell everyone the immigrants are the source of all their problems and make western politics revolve around immigration policy.
The empire managers make up fake problems to solve because the empire is the source of all the real problems.
They make up fake monsters to protect us from because they themselves are the real monsters.
They make up imaginary ghouls and goblins lurking around every corner because they don’t want us looking up and seeing the real bastards who are poisoning our world.
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Everything you are saying, Caitlin, is true. What I find really difficult to understand is that this earth they are destroying, this air and water they are polluting; this is their earth, water and air too. Could they possibly be so idiotic to really think that they can all head off to Mars after they have destroyed this earth? So on top of being terminally greedy, are they also terminally stupid?
I just got back from a two week trip to China. I was last in China in 1989. The progress China has made is staggering, and Nanjing compares favourably to anywhere I have visited in the USA or the EU. Nothing and nobody will convince me to be afraid of China. Envious, yes. Afraid, no.
I did suffer an unfortunate bout of food poisoning (Salmonellosis; could have happened anywhere). A day in a hospital in Nanjing, including 4 hours of IV fluids and a prescription for top-shelf antibiotics, cost me about US$70 all up.