All through my life, I've had people tell me that I don't comply, that I'm not a "team player." I had a successful 7 year career as a military officer because I pretended to play the game, but I learned the second day at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy that my Myers-Briggs score would get me kicked out of the academy before I really started. I don't like things like that to control what I do or where I go, so I said the right things to the "review board" to ensure my, er, "survival."
I've had a propensity to tell the CEO's I worked for and the Boards I reported to during my ensuing 43 year career in business that, with few exceptions, THEY were the problem. Since THEY were all finance or marketing people and, therefore, wanted nothing to do with manufacturing and distribution, they let it ride...and I learned how to do this and get my way with a smile on my face.
But make no mistake: I knew I was pushing a boulder uphill. I wasn't going to be anyone's CEO unless I started my own business...which I did and built it to a nine figure international concern before I sold it in 2020.
People who go along, get along. Unfortunately, they are controlled, like most of the other worker bees who have been pushed through the American educational python to become latter-day Israelites who, instead of building pyramids for the pharaohs, build iPhones and Boeing 777s for the man.
The propaganda I have had thrown at me since that second fateful day at the Academy 54 years ago has been, for the most part, incremental and passive. But it has taken hold on so many people I used to know as singular thinkers and creative minds. Now, many of them are MAGAts and QAnons, which is hard to comprehend. While many of us have seen the wealth of the lower 95% erode consistently, some of us had the balls to do something about it. But I'll tell you what: I'm tired of fighting.
Which, I think, is the point. The empire is winning, and I can't tilt at windmills any longer, with few Sancho Panzas at my side.
We need a new system of governance and, I'm afraid, the only way we're going to get it is through anarchy.
John Ware; Whenever I heard, "You aren't or have to be a team player", I knew the business was bullshit. I quit and found another place to work. I'd do my job and help others at work, but "team"? If we are all a team, boss. How come we don't know how much money you make?
Traditionally fundamental change has come about through organizing and pushing one's issues through state legislatures. Once you get 3/4 of them it's all over. Not easy but better than anarchy. Who knows where that would go?
If you’re in a collapsing building, do you submit a few structural tweaks to the design committee, or run like hell? I suppose after too many years of submitting tweaks, I’m at least stepping outdoors.
Over countless centuries our brains have been trained to believe anarchy is chaos. But it is not. If David Graeber’s last book before his death (“The Dawn of Everything”) is correct, and it certainly seems so to me, then anarchy—leaderless organization—was historically the default across the planet, working not only for small groups of humans, but for entire civilizations, too. When the lights and Internet finally do go out, instead of an apocalypse we might just experience a renaissance.
Cooperation and collaboration are among the strongest "survival" traits in nature and human civilizations. The majority of cultures and civilizations that were corrupted by self-serving greed and lack of organization failed very quickly - as did human tribes who didn't work as a cohesive unit. Roman civilization lasted a thousand years, not because it was based on anarchy, but precisely because it was not - especially it's well oiled, highly organized Roman legions.
No military army in the world would conduct itself in an anarchic fashion without organization. It is through Unity and collaboration that an army becomes strong and deadly. There is no way in hell you could run any kind of military with anarchy. Or without some form of leadership.
The biggest myth of Ayn Randian social darwinism is the best and most fruitful trait of survival and human growth is competition and "anarchy". It's become a religious myth devoutly believed by quite a few libertarians - the whole "entrepreneurship myth"- everyone should fend for themselves, and the best civilizations have little to no governance as possible. Everyone should compete in a free-for-all culture where there are no rules except the strongest get to survive with chaos and anarchy. No one should help lead or help teach. This "libertarian" chaos ideology has been exploited ruthlessly by today's sociopathic billionaires, to justify their obscene greed - while they plunder the planet, and plunder the human spirit and hopes and dreams of so many human beings, locked in the chains of impoverishment not of their own making.
I think we have two different concepts of anarchy. My definition of anarchy is simply something like “leaderless organization.” For example, I agree completely that cooperation and collaboration are essential values for human survival. IMO, anarchy is, in fact, the best form of organization for optimizing collaboration, and the very best form of organization to ward off chaos and social collapse. If you and I decide to collaborate, we don’t need a leader. If a hundred people live in a community and want to build a barn, they don’t need an imposed or positional leader or select committee—the people who know what to do will step forward and lead, no formal election or appointment necessary. Will that community descend into chaos if there is no one to tell the other 99 what to do? Of course not. If the goal is clear and shared, it’s amazing what a hundred or a thousand or million people can do together without a single Great Leader. In "The Dawn of Everything," Graeber provides countless examples of how and why groups of humans, from small tribes to vast and complex civilizations, have more often than not in history successfully organized themselves without a “central government”, without elites, and without complex institutions (like the three branches of US government, or The Fed, or corporations) that we have been mercilessly taught to believe are essential to maintain order, prosperity, peace, and security. We are indoctrinated to believe that anarchy is chaos. If you want to see real chaos, IMO, watch what will happen when our rules-based totalitarian empire collapses. That kind of chaos would be completely prevented by constructing a more dispersed, decentralized, adaptive, and freer society.
That's a new term to me, but I like it. Obviously, "anarchy" has a lot of baggage associated with it, though, OTH, I think it is a more comprehensive term. But, point taken. In the future I might just start using the term adhocracy in polite conversation. Thanks!
Apparently the word anarchy then is a bit misleading, so why use it?
You are assuming leadership is the same as dictatorship. Plenty of leaders will take input from their followers or even allow consensus. In many organizations leadership is essential for not only intellectual direction but quick decision making. In the military, leadership is indispensable and necessary. The same can be said for many other social structures - leadership in Academia is necessary in order to select those who are proven scholars in a given field to either teach or lead in research. Leadership is not something unnatural to society or civilizations. Good leadership provides a vital role.
You also mix in leadership with "central government" as if the two are the same. This blending of words is about as mind befuddling as the use of the word "anarchy" to simply mean "leaderless organization" - which is not (obviously) how the word has been used throughout literary history.
Your argument (to me) pretty much leads down the supposed golden path of libertarianism (or the magical invisible hand of a completely unregulated free market) and smacks of Ayn Randian intellectual mumbo jumbo - much like the mumbo jumbo of Augustine in the Christian church attempting to justify all the logically circuitous reasonings that sex was evil and the Pope was the infallible hand of God himself.
Just like there can be good leadership and bad leadership. There can be good governance and bad governance. By default, government is not wrong - even a large government that provides for a large, advanced culture. You need large government to manage all that is required for a working free society. To assume otherwise is just putting your head in the sand of your ideological Ayn Randian fairy dust nonsense.
We probably both agree that the current US government is corrupt as fuck - precisely because of the assault of humane regulations and ethical rules (such as no legalized bribery) - which is far more of a problem than the need for government itself. But libertarians use the corruption of government to make their case that government itself is fundamentally wrong. And their only answer is to get rid of governance altogether - as if everything will magically work itself out by some kind of anarchic society - however you want to define it. It's all nonsense. If anything, the United States has been pushed toward this philosophy now for the last couple of decades - regulations are reduced as fuck toward corporations and their plunder, Wallstreet and the banks are plundering away with no real safety valves in place to speak of - the American working class is being fucked over by the free market ideology that is part of the libertarian fucked up ethos of what really amounts to a type of Social Darwinism, homelessness is out of control - the US infrastructure is really fucked - even the US military has now been shown to be a trillion dollar facade of corporate plunder for weapon manufactures - such as the billion dollar patriot missile systems that don't fucking work. The free for all health care system we have in the US is a kind of exploitation I never thought I'd have to live for, that no other advanced country in the world is stupid enough to adopt because most countries realize even health care needs to be organized on a universal basis for the benefit of a society as a whole.
So my thoughts an anarchy and libertarianism: it's just another new modern day religion, a justification mostly for the Elite Billionaires to keep fucking the 99% over because by shrinking government, they don't have to be at all socially responsible for the masses of Americans they are exploiting every day ruthlessly - because when they are free to own the corrupt government like they do, destroy any protective regulations of the society they are sucking the life out of - refusing to even pay into it the taxes that they ought to - given their obscene amount of the wealth - they need to come up with some kind of fucked up ideology to justify their sociopathic exploitation. And Libertarianism sure the fuck fits the bill doesn't it? No leaders - small goverment - works just great for the super rich. But look at the US today - were entering into a shitshow of poverty and injustice the likes this country has not seen in the 200 years of its existence.
What’s funny about our conversation is if you read carefully that we almost entirely agree. Let’s not underestimate just how expert The Empire is at creating division. I get that you are hung up on the term anarchy. Fine. Don’t use it. I will continue to use it in its original and proper form in my own thinking, because I’ll be damned if I’ll let the neoliberal imperial academics who are out to destroy critical thinking intentionally co-opt and destroy a term that The Empire pays them to suppress. I think if the word can be restored to its true meaning, it will be powerfully effective in resistance to totalitarianism.
I’ve read Rand because she was arguably the most influential writer of the 20th century. But that doesn’t make her right, and I’m no Randroid. Her emphasis on egoism as the highest good has excused the psychopathy, greed, and entitlement of our current crop of entrepreneurs, business leaders, billionaires, and other elites in the Davos crowd. Her philosophy seems designed mainly for narcissistic lone wolves, not for real, vibrant, lasting, human communities.
Nor am I a libertarian. Libertarianism, to me, is like a limited hangout—it is a partial, cherry picked political dead end that pretends to champion individual sovereignty but really just advances corporate interest. And that’s why it is now merely an impotent wing of the Republican Party spouting cornball corporate bromides.
Lastly, with regard to the military, being part of a well-oiled spartan machine was my preference. There are plenty of fine leaders—both enlisted and officer—in the lower ranks. As many have pointed out, the greatest quality of the U.S. military was (and maybe still is, I don’t know) that everyone is a potential leader and may need to step up. But somehow the worst “leaders” get elevated to the top. That’s intentional in our anti-human world. Even in the military—especially in the military—the best leaders think for themselves, and that, by definition, IMO, is a kind of anarchy.
Your comments have a lot to unpack. I feel your anguish and outrage.
Anarchism does NOT mean no rules, just no rulers. Why would a human culture without rulers be more chaotic, with less teaching, than the culture of any other animal species? (Maybe the first step could be to remove all traffic signs and lights from public roads.. we could re-aquire skills of self-government.)
Where does this concept of survival of 'the fittest' come from? It's not only a select few in each generation that pass on the torch, it seems to me more like a vast number of 'the good enough', passing on a tune to dance to!
At any level of technology and wealth, the larger the unit (country, business, family, Public Library, football league, etc.), the more skewed the distribution of 'valued attributes' is. It doesn't appear to require psychopaths to set this in motion, but after a certain threshold, it's like the flash freezing of a supercooled liquid. Maybe we can somehow learn to steer toward smaller units of organization..
Wow - another Ayn Randian cult member. Who wants to 1) gaslight me with framing me as someone with "anguish and outrage" 2) and instruct me in the errors of my ways i.e. leaders are bad, and we need a smaller government.
I've been hearing this philosophical bullshit now for decades. Started pretty much with Ronald Reagan.
Good thing I know when I'm being proselytized by a gang of know-it-all cult members. Probably Skeptic Atheists to boot. Take a hike.
If you get a chance, take a listen to Canadian mind control and self sabotage expert, Jason Christoffs podcasts as he has been speaking to this for years. Mind blowing stuff!
No. I told them THEY were the problem. In the interest of space and time, I excluded the dozens of convos I've had with Boards of Directors and CEO's over the years. Sorry.
Good question. Answer: My draft number was #2. Back in the '60's, we were assigned numbers based on the month/day of our birthday. Another reason: the valedictorian of our High School class of 1967 was whisked out of college in '68 and inducted as an enlisted man. He (and three others of that relatively small class) perished in Vietnam. I harbored no illusions of getting past that, so I decided to get a great education (I wanted to be an oceanographer, and the Academy had a great undergrad program for that), so I chose the USCGA.
You made a good choice. I graduated in ‘62 and helped a couple guys evade the draft. It was exciting but risky. This generation is different. For all of Caitlin’s kindness towards them, the Yuppies (born 1958 to ‘74) were a virulently narcissistic generation, who hated unions, workers, and independent thinking. I remember them well as I am all 3 of those. Now they’re between 65 and 49 and just o so confused. “Gee, I didn’t know, how was I to know?” Paleeese. I’m glad you outsmarted them.
Actually I admire those renegade guys who mess with the military. And how dare you complain about the money they waste when Lockheed Martin “wastes” trillions on its mass killing machines and nobody says a a word.
Narrative control has been going on since at least ancient Egypt. They convinced the people their leaders were gods. This lasted for thousands of years so they must have been doing a good job. This continued to work so well that it was still being practiced in the Japan of 1945 and Indonesia of 1964. Emperor worship in Thailand goes on to this day.
I'd say the big advance came not with Bernays but with the Internet. It meant that They could get immediate and accurate feedback on which lies were working and which were not. If someone made a contribution to your campaign you could trace back their web history, see what caused it, and do it more. That made the big jump I think, a huge difference.
As for use of AI, surely this is happening now in secret. Needless to say, our opinion on this practice will not be solicited. Don't like it? Tough.
You are viewing the rest of the world through the Western Liberal prism. We all aren't the same - and we all don't develop at the same rate and most importantly in the same direction. Chinese don't want to live in Western inspired Enlightenment utopia. They want a Singaporean model: security, order and prosperity. Many in the West view it as closest thing to the Fascist system. So design your system as you see it fit to your culture, and your unique history. Leave the rest of the world alone!
...and what has "the west" become? constant chest thumping bravado and bull shit, racial trolling strife encouraged for profit (except the "in" race/s), simple flag humping for war?
Caitlin writes: “The problem that underpins most other problems in modern times is that human minds are highly hackable….” I agree with her, but I agree more with your timeline. Empire and imperial rulers of ancient times may not have had the term “hackable,” but they certainly knew how to control their populations long before Bernays.
In fact, it’s my sense that an increasing number of serious, objective ancient historians are slowly coming to the conclusion that orthodox Christianity was a careful—maybe obvious—creation of the Roman Empire to control those ill tempered inhabitants of Roman Judea, whose rebellion was actually an existential threat to the entire Empire. What better way to put down rebellion than by getting your Iron Age equivalent of the CIA or FBI to infiltrate and secretly fund and organize an effective opposition? Today, some of us are just flummoxed by how much impact the psyop of Russia-gate has had on our world, but imagine a pysop that has dominated our entire reality for a couple thousand years. Those Romans! Or was Phillip K. Dick correct, “The Empire never ended.”
The early Roman empire was tolerant of all religious practices, as long as one's religion didn't try to hold itself over the others. It wasn't until Constantine decided to adopt Christianity as the official Roman faith - that it became more of a political tool for the Romans.
Today's new dominant religion is a type of scientific atheism - at least within the current intellectual orthodoxy mileau. And many get subject to similar types of psychological controls of ideological power, as in the past - if you stray too far away from the Materialism ethic and doctrines - you will be banished, find yourself on the fringes of academic life, or hounded because you commited the unforgiveable crime as Carl Jung once wrote: "I shall not commit the fashionable stupidity of regarding everything I cannot explain as fraud."
We find today, the leaders of the world's globalism dominated not by a sense of spiritual wonder and ethical responsibility for say, other creatures on the planet or even other human beings - given the horror that has been ongoing now in Ukraine for over a year - where 100s of thousands of human beings have been slaughtered by weapons that are making huge profits for General Electric, Raytheon and McDonnell Douglas among other billion dollar greedy as fuck corporations - but instead, with no other purpose but to enrich their billionaire owners at the top while at the same time subverting governance of a country so that no kind of ethical standards exist except the "greed is good" ethos that no spiritual tradition I know of would ever adopt in a million years.
It’s not a scientific aethism. Because it does not follow knowledge or logic.
Starving and depriving millions of children of food and health in rich countries is not scientific.
Rejecting trade and links as “dependency and risk”. And even blowing up a pipeline on this grounds is not logic. It’s cultism to enrich the cult leaders.
All religions claim they follow knowledge and logic, including "scientific atheism". Science itself is not a religion, but is more and more being treated like a type of religion.
I do believe, underlying many of today's global problems is a type of ideological nihilism that fundamentally comes with the strong framework of believing in the philosophy of reductive materialism - which insists we are nothing more than biological machines of evolution, soulless beings that cease to exist when the brain dies - and this soulless ideology underlies how we treat ourselves and other life on the planet - and is playing itself out clearly in Ukraine at the moment - where the United States and Britain pretend they seek peace, while refusing any kind of peace negotiations and pouring even more useless, billions of dollars of weaponry into killing more human life in a nihilistic power struggle - not based on any kind of spiritual principles of respecting life whatsoever. It's a shitshow of death - with no ethical responsibility except Might Makes Right Darwinism.
Bernays once commented that the moving picture phenomenon was the best thing ever for manipulation of the public perception. I'm sure he felt the television was superior for that purpose. He would think the internet is better still, which it is.
we look at the TV and "think" we see how "the masses" are feeling and thinking, and we align ourselves to this same "Mass"! It's all a lie. Might as well put a nose ring and harness on our faces like beasts of burden.
It (the BS) started to accelerate in 2000 with the Bush administration when Bush, Cheney wolfowitz and rumsfeld decided that they could create their own reality. That's also when the internet really took off and was tapped by the NSA et.al. Y2K was the excuse - all the computers are going to crash with financial meltdowns , nuclear power station meltdowns, airliners are going to crash and so on. So the federal government had to Save the Day by sending programmers to "reprogram" all the code because it was obsolete. The excuse was that the code was written using only the last two digits in the years ie 2000 was saved as 00 and could be interpreted incorrectly as 1900 or vice versa. Everyone I knew at the time bought into it including 2 friends who were programmers at digital equipment Corp. I don't think there were many banks at the time running mainframe computers built in 1970. Shortly after 2000 an IT engineer came out and said that internet trunks were being tapped by the government. He quickly disappeared. Then came the Patriot act. Then came Snowden. So Y2K, 911, the Patriot act all allowed the government to read our thoughts and minds and gain ultimate control over the masses via the internet. AI does not exist yet. What is called AI is nothing more than a statistical method of reading key words and compiling them to see how people are reacting to proposals or issues in the media. Google (or Go Ogle if you prefer) has done a fantastic job of keeping tabs on us. They can keep us fighting over non issues, suppress any type of unification or dissension and create policies to maintain the status quo. If anyone becomes too dangerous they will be squashed like an insect. Marginalized at the least. "Oops your bank account disappeared? We're sorry."
But, everyone I have tried to explain this to thinks I'm a nutcase. Once you've been swimming in the cesspool long enough, you no longer smell it. Welcome to Amerika.
" Step 1 is learning that minds are very hackable, and are being hacked constantly on a mass scale.
Step 2 is learning that your own mind is included in this. "
Well Caitlin, I smiled while reading your post, I realized that there is something in which we who were born behind the Iron Curtain have an advantage with "Western" people who look at the world innocently with wide eyes ! :)
We grew up under the unlimited Soviet propaganda, we don't believe anything we read in the newspaper and what well-paid announcers suggest on television ! After getting to know the operation of the Western lying machine in the last thirty years, we have little or no influence on what the BBC, the Washington Post lie, or what Anne Applebaum lied in the columns of the New York Times. We look with pity at the Western citizens who have languished in prosperity, who at the cost of robbing others were kept well according to the Roman model of "Panem et Circenses" (until now!) and they believe that this is what they deserve, and it will be like this forever and ever ! I have bad news, this will end soon, and just like the obese Roman citizens, they believed that the privilege granted by God was that slaves would bring them the selected delicacies ! And if they have already lived up to their throats, they tickle their throats with peacock feathers to vomit out what they have stuffed into themselves, to fill their bottomless stomach again and again ! Well, Odoaker is already knocking on the gates of Rome, the barbarians are already coming with a huge army and powerful hatred in their hearts, because they have not forgotten what you did to their people ! And if the people of the USA were to go and see what is happening on the southern borders, they would see the people gathering there !
This is great. Because when you were disregarding your nations media reporting, I was learning to disregard EVERYTHING the US media said about the USSR/Russia, the Viet Nam war, Dr. King, and us dirty demonstrators. Why is that so hard are stupid today because they WANT to be.
"We grew up under the unlimited Soviet propaganda, we don't believe anything we read in the newspaper ..." - you should mention, though, that we used to believe everything various "voices of freedom" were broadcasting at the time.
Also, what they used to write about the West back then was remarkably true. But nobody believed that since they lied about the internal stuff which could be easily verified. It was so idiotic but it only became clear much later, with the damage already done.
About month go, you said there is reason for hope simply because there are many more of us than there are of them ... although I've always thought this claim was a bit naive, I really want to be proven wrong ... so please consider making the case here on Substack sometime soon ...
And please remember that for your thesis to really have teeth, it must address these cold hard facts:
- they have the guns
- they have technology
- they make the laws
- they run the banks
- they own the media
- they shape the discourse
- they do not take prisoners
The ball is now in your court ... nobody has attempted to do this since the March 2023 lock downs were declared ... be the first on your block ...
I think you are a bit misleading in referring to Caitlin's previous article in conjunction with this work. Caitlin does rightly point out there are many more of us. This article explains what's needed for US to wake up and come to power in force as has happened several times in history. That is hope.
But it's about time somebody lobbied for an explanation on how and why the "More of Us than Them" thesis can actually succeed ... I have my doubts, but Caitlin is probably just as qualified as anybody ... on this point, I actually made a beginning several years ago when I wrote a piece on why the implementation of martial law here in the U.S. is improbable ... but it seems the Globalists already knew this ... that's why they are now planning to leverage technology to herd us all into compliance ...
Covid proved that and is still proving that. “See how they run…”. I don’t know about Australia but I know the US does not any longer deserve democracy. That’s why we barely have it—we have kabuki theater democracy. We can change it. We should try.
I do agree with your point, a plan of action for I will call it union of working people isn't in action now. There are many working in a small number of organizations and I understand that. What will unite working people , sadly it will be yet another global devastating financial collapse 30's style uniting people blocking the bailout of finance. I see no other way.
My impression always was that by "more of us" she meant the folks outside the categories you listed. Which is true numerically. The notion of that majority in number to become an organized force in any meaningful way is quite naive, IMO.
Thank you Caitlin, you hit the nail on the head once again! If you disagree or query the lies being pumped into us, you are considered unhinged because you don't go with the flow. It has worked so well that now in the UK our voices are being stifled by laws being passed to forbid protest, and our two main political parties supporting this.
They learned they had to keep the press under control in order to maintain support for wars. Thus embedded journalists and discouragement of independent reporters.
A thought: if Julian Assange had not been captured, and Wikileaks was still as strong as it was when he was at the helm, what new secrets would have been revealed?
Great thought! Assange was my hero for all those years, and still is, now permeated with sad pity. That he has fathered 2 children while imprisoned speaks to his strength, and his young wife is brave and strong.
"The problem, as is so often the case, is that mainstream westerners make the assumption that "If that's what was happening, we would have heard about it in the news." Not understanding that their "news" media is designed to advance the interests of the powerful, not to report the news."
It's important to also note that nearly 90% of all American news and social media platforms and outlets are owned by Jews and/or Zionists, thus they control what the narrative is and what news is (and isn't) reported on and ultimately published and broadcasted.
A lot of bullshit is disguised by sentimentality and partisanship. For instance, it is generally assumed that religion is coincidental with ethics and morality. But a closer examination reveals that religion and religious observances revolve around a code of behaviour related to club membership. Do this, do that, if you want to belong to the club, if you want to be accepted by club members. It is a faulty interpretation of love, which, in its shallow form is a nice feeling that makes you feel good, but might not be in others' best interests, or yours even, in the long run. That's why we have laws which, it they are good laws, treat everybody the same - my and your personal prejudices aside. Ethics and morality has to do with all of humanity, all of animal and plant life, and the health of the planet itself. And that's why being patriotic to the point of jingoism, or, "my country, right or wrong", is a very bad idea, and unethical and immoral. It's the source of most of the destructive bullshit.
This bullshit analogy seems so perfect. To continue it: The covid crimes were an attempt to extend the pipe directly into our noses, which gave many of us a clearer view!
“…..At first glance it looks like a violent and abusive apartheid system with one ethnicity receiving preferential treatment over the other, but people assume it can't be that simple, mistakenly thinking that if it was that clear-cut there wouldn't be so much debate about it — with their own government supporting the apartheid side….”
The greatest irony in the use of the word “apartheid” here, is that it’s taken from South African context. A context in which the US and its allies/vassals all uniformly designated the oppressed as terrorists while embracing the violent, nuclear-armed colonialist of European origin as “allies”.
You really couldn’t make up the absurdity of reality if you tried to.
And yet no no ever learns that these governments are evil and uninterested in democracy or freedom.
"All democracies turn into dictatorships - but not by coup. The people give their democracy to a dictator, whether it's Julius Caesar or Napoleon or Adolf Hitler. Ultimately, the general population goes along with the idea."
I agree. The population wants to be rewarded just for voting—all else is too much work. Besides, I gotta run off to my corporate job to make my $$$ to invest in Wall Street so I can have my designer cloths, designer coffees and imported wines, my new phone and computer every 27 seconds, my new car and house in the Hamptons—-I don’t have time to read anything but the WSJ and the NYT book review on Sunday. We love us some Caesar’s!
I want to push back on this a little. While I don’t think your analysis is wrong, I look at it from a different perspective. What you’ve described falls under 5th Generation Warfare (5GW).
I believe that 5GW is actually an insurgency of the people. The internet and its associated technologies has allowed the people to save, share, and spread the truth far faster than the State can counter it with their lies and manipulation.
They’re strategy is indeed to obfuscate the truth and make things seem more complicated in order to achieve consensus around their narrative. But this really doesn’t work on the masses. 10x as many people watch/listen to Joe Rogan than watch the top rated corporate press prime time shows.
Government and their propaganda partners in the corporate press are conducting Counter-5GW and just like their attempts at Counter-Insurgency to combat 4GW, they are failing. They’re failing because they’re trying to fight decentralized, fast, agile and adaptive forces with centralized power structures that love slow and can only counter react. They’re essentially permanently on the defensive.
This is why I have so much hope and optimism for the future. The technologies are on the side of freedom. We just need to realize and understand our own power projection against these Regimes and continue to push back.
I’ve written about this on Nostr, and specifically wrote about it there because it is a decentralized, censor resistant protocol that will become one of the main tools used for freedom.
All through my life, I've had people tell me that I don't comply, that I'm not a "team player." I had a successful 7 year career as a military officer because I pretended to play the game, but I learned the second day at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy that my Myers-Briggs score would get me kicked out of the academy before I really started. I don't like things like that to control what I do or where I go, so I said the right things to the "review board" to ensure my, er, "survival."
I've had a propensity to tell the CEO's I worked for and the Boards I reported to during my ensuing 43 year career in business that, with few exceptions, THEY were the problem. Since THEY were all finance or marketing people and, therefore, wanted nothing to do with manufacturing and distribution, they let it ride...and I learned how to do this and get my way with a smile on my face.
But make no mistake: I knew I was pushing a boulder uphill. I wasn't going to be anyone's CEO unless I started my own business...which I did and built it to a nine figure international concern before I sold it in 2020.
People who go along, get along. Unfortunately, they are controlled, like most of the other worker bees who have been pushed through the American educational python to become latter-day Israelites who, instead of building pyramids for the pharaohs, build iPhones and Boeing 777s for the man.
The propaganda I have had thrown at me since that second fateful day at the Academy 54 years ago has been, for the most part, incremental and passive. But it has taken hold on so many people I used to know as singular thinkers and creative minds. Now, many of them are MAGAts and QAnons, which is hard to comprehend. While many of us have seen the wealth of the lower 95% erode consistently, some of us had the balls to do something about it. But I'll tell you what: I'm tired of fighting.
Which, I think, is the point. The empire is winning, and I can't tilt at windmills any longer, with few Sancho Panzas at my side.
We need a new system of governance and, I'm afraid, the only way we're going to get it is through anarchy.
John Ware; Whenever I heard, "You aren't or have to be a team player", I knew the business was bullshit. I quit and found another place to work. I'd do my job and help others at work, but "team"? If we are all a team, boss. How come we don't know how much money you make?
Traditionally fundamental change has come about through organizing and pushing one's issues through state legislatures. Once you get 3/4 of them it's all over. Not easy but better than anarchy. Who knows where that would go?
"...better than anarchy."
If you’re in a collapsing building, do you submit a few structural tweaks to the design committee, or run like hell? I suppose after too many years of submitting tweaks, I’m at least stepping outdoors.
Over countless centuries our brains have been trained to believe anarchy is chaos. But it is not. If David Graeber’s last book before his death (“The Dawn of Everything”) is correct, and it certainly seems so to me, then anarchy—leaderless organization—was historically the default across the planet, working not only for small groups of humans, but for entire civilizations, too. When the lights and Internet finally do go out, instead of an apocalypse we might just experience a renaissance.
Cooperation and collaboration are among the strongest "survival" traits in nature and human civilizations. The majority of cultures and civilizations that were corrupted by self-serving greed and lack of organization failed very quickly - as did human tribes who didn't work as a cohesive unit. Roman civilization lasted a thousand years, not because it was based on anarchy, but precisely because it was not - especially it's well oiled, highly organized Roman legions.
No military army in the world would conduct itself in an anarchic fashion without organization. It is through Unity and collaboration that an army becomes strong and deadly. There is no way in hell you could run any kind of military with anarchy. Or without some form of leadership.
The biggest myth of Ayn Randian social darwinism is the best and most fruitful trait of survival and human growth is competition and "anarchy". It's become a religious myth devoutly believed by quite a few libertarians - the whole "entrepreneurship myth"- everyone should fend for themselves, and the best civilizations have little to no governance as possible. Everyone should compete in a free-for-all culture where there are no rules except the strongest get to survive with chaos and anarchy. No one should help lead or help teach. This "libertarian" chaos ideology has been exploited ruthlessly by today's sociopathic billionaires, to justify their obscene greed - while they plunder the planet, and plunder the human spirit and hopes and dreams of so many human beings, locked in the chains of impoverishment not of their own making.
I think we have two different concepts of anarchy. My definition of anarchy is simply something like “leaderless organization.” For example, I agree completely that cooperation and collaboration are essential values for human survival. IMO, anarchy is, in fact, the best form of organization for optimizing collaboration, and the very best form of organization to ward off chaos and social collapse. If you and I decide to collaborate, we don’t need a leader. If a hundred people live in a community and want to build a barn, they don’t need an imposed or positional leader or select committee—the people who know what to do will step forward and lead, no formal election or appointment necessary. Will that community descend into chaos if there is no one to tell the other 99 what to do? Of course not. If the goal is clear and shared, it’s amazing what a hundred or a thousand or million people can do together without a single Great Leader. In "The Dawn of Everything," Graeber provides countless examples of how and why groups of humans, from small tribes to vast and complex civilizations, have more often than not in history successfully organized themselves without a “central government”, without elites, and without complex institutions (like the three branches of US government, or The Fed, or corporations) that we have been mercilessly taught to believe are essential to maintain order, prosperity, peace, and security. We are indoctrinated to believe that anarchy is chaos. If you want to see real chaos, IMO, watch what will happen when our rules-based totalitarian empire collapses. That kind of chaos would be completely prevented by constructing a more dispersed, decentralized, adaptive, and freer society.
I like the concept of adhocracy.
That's a new term to me, but I like it. Obviously, "anarchy" has a lot of baggage associated with it, though, OTH, I think it is a more comprehensive term. But, point taken. In the future I might just start using the term adhocracy in polite conversation. Thanks!
Apparently the word anarchy then is a bit misleading, so why use it?
You are assuming leadership is the same as dictatorship. Plenty of leaders will take input from their followers or even allow consensus. In many organizations leadership is essential for not only intellectual direction but quick decision making. In the military, leadership is indispensable and necessary. The same can be said for many other social structures - leadership in Academia is necessary in order to select those who are proven scholars in a given field to either teach or lead in research. Leadership is not something unnatural to society or civilizations. Good leadership provides a vital role.
You also mix in leadership with "central government" as if the two are the same. This blending of words is about as mind befuddling as the use of the word "anarchy" to simply mean "leaderless organization" - which is not (obviously) how the word has been used throughout literary history.
Your argument (to me) pretty much leads down the supposed golden path of libertarianism (or the magical invisible hand of a completely unregulated free market) and smacks of Ayn Randian intellectual mumbo jumbo - much like the mumbo jumbo of Augustine in the Christian church attempting to justify all the logically circuitous reasonings that sex was evil and the Pope was the infallible hand of God himself.
Just like there can be good leadership and bad leadership. There can be good governance and bad governance. By default, government is not wrong - even a large government that provides for a large, advanced culture. You need large government to manage all that is required for a working free society. To assume otherwise is just putting your head in the sand of your ideological Ayn Randian fairy dust nonsense.
We probably both agree that the current US government is corrupt as fuck - precisely because of the assault of humane regulations and ethical rules (such as no legalized bribery) - which is far more of a problem than the need for government itself. But libertarians use the corruption of government to make their case that government itself is fundamentally wrong. And their only answer is to get rid of governance altogether - as if everything will magically work itself out by some kind of anarchic society - however you want to define it. It's all nonsense. If anything, the United States has been pushed toward this philosophy now for the last couple of decades - regulations are reduced as fuck toward corporations and their plunder, Wallstreet and the banks are plundering away with no real safety valves in place to speak of - the American working class is being fucked over by the free market ideology that is part of the libertarian fucked up ethos of what really amounts to a type of Social Darwinism, homelessness is out of control - the US infrastructure is really fucked - even the US military has now been shown to be a trillion dollar facade of corporate plunder for weapon manufactures - such as the billion dollar patriot missile systems that don't fucking work. The free for all health care system we have in the US is a kind of exploitation I never thought I'd have to live for, that no other advanced country in the world is stupid enough to adopt because most countries realize even health care needs to be organized on a universal basis for the benefit of a society as a whole.
So my thoughts an anarchy and libertarianism: it's just another new modern day religion, a justification mostly for the Elite Billionaires to keep fucking the 99% over because by shrinking government, they don't have to be at all socially responsible for the masses of Americans they are exploiting every day ruthlessly - because when they are free to own the corrupt government like they do, destroy any protective regulations of the society they are sucking the life out of - refusing to even pay into it the taxes that they ought to - given their obscene amount of the wealth - they need to come up with some kind of fucked up ideology to justify their sociopathic exploitation. And Libertarianism sure the fuck fits the bill doesn't it? No leaders - small goverment - works just great for the super rich. But look at the US today - were entering into a shitshow of poverty and injustice the likes this country has not seen in the 200 years of its existence.
What’s funny about our conversation is if you read carefully that we almost entirely agree. Let’s not underestimate just how expert The Empire is at creating division. I get that you are hung up on the term anarchy. Fine. Don’t use it. I will continue to use it in its original and proper form in my own thinking, because I’ll be damned if I’ll let the neoliberal imperial academics who are out to destroy critical thinking intentionally co-opt and destroy a term that The Empire pays them to suppress. I think if the word can be restored to its true meaning, it will be powerfully effective in resistance to totalitarianism.
I’ve read Rand because she was arguably the most influential writer of the 20th century. But that doesn’t make her right, and I’m no Randroid. Her emphasis on egoism as the highest good has excused the psychopathy, greed, and entitlement of our current crop of entrepreneurs, business leaders, billionaires, and other elites in the Davos crowd. Her philosophy seems designed mainly for narcissistic lone wolves, not for real, vibrant, lasting, human communities.
Nor am I a libertarian. Libertarianism, to me, is like a limited hangout—it is a partial, cherry picked political dead end that pretends to champion individual sovereignty but really just advances corporate interest. And that’s why it is now merely an impotent wing of the Republican Party spouting cornball corporate bromides.
Lastly, with regard to the military, being part of a well-oiled spartan machine was my preference. There are plenty of fine leaders—both enlisted and officer—in the lower ranks. As many have pointed out, the greatest quality of the U.S. military was (and maybe still is, I don’t know) that everyone is a potential leader and may need to step up. But somehow the worst “leaders” get elevated to the top. That’s intentional in our anti-human world. Even in the military—especially in the military—the best leaders think for themselves, and that, by definition, IMO, is a kind of anarchy.
Your comments have a lot to unpack. I feel your anguish and outrage.
Anarchism does NOT mean no rules, just no rulers. Why would a human culture without rulers be more chaotic, with less teaching, than the culture of any other animal species? (Maybe the first step could be to remove all traffic signs and lights from public roads.. we could re-aquire skills of self-government.)
Where does this concept of survival of 'the fittest' come from? It's not only a select few in each generation that pass on the torch, it seems to me more like a vast number of 'the good enough', passing on a tune to dance to!
At any level of technology and wealth, the larger the unit (country, business, family, Public Library, football league, etc.), the more skewed the distribution of 'valued attributes' is. It doesn't appear to require psychopaths to set this in motion, but after a certain threshold, it's like the flash freezing of a supercooled liquid. Maybe we can somehow learn to steer toward smaller units of organization..
Wow - another Ayn Randian cult member. Who wants to 1) gaslight me with framing me as someone with "anguish and outrage" 2) and instruct me in the errors of my ways i.e. leaders are bad, and we need a smaller government.
I've been hearing this philosophical bullshit now for decades. Started pretty much with Ronald Reagan.
Good thing I know when I'm being proselytized by a gang of know-it-all cult members. Probably Skeptic Atheists to boot. Take a hike.
I totally agree. Just a wild guess on where it probably would go.
If you get a chance, take a listen to Canadian mind control and self sabotage expert, Jason Christoffs podcasts as he has been speaking to this for years. Mind blowing stuff!
You said it all, right here. I hear you loud and clear
So you told them that manufacturing and distribution were the problem?
No. I told them THEY were the problem. In the interest of space and time, I excluded the dozens of convos I've had with Boards of Directors and CEO's over the years. Sorry.
Good question. Answer: My draft number was #2. Back in the '60's, we were assigned numbers based on the month/day of our birthday. Another reason: the valedictorian of our High School class of 1967 was whisked out of college in '68 and inducted as an enlisted man. He (and three others of that relatively small class) perished in Vietnam. I harbored no illusions of getting past that, so I decided to get a great education (I wanted to be an oceanographer, and the Academy had a great undergrad program for that), so I chose the USCGA.
You made a good choice. I graduated in ‘62 and helped a couple guys evade the draft. It was exciting but risky. This generation is different. For all of Caitlin’s kindness towards them, the Yuppies (born 1958 to ‘74) were a virulently narcissistic generation, who hated unions, workers, and independent thinking. I remember them well as I am all 3 of those. Now they’re between 65 and 49 and just o so confused. “Gee, I didn’t know, how was I to know?” Paleeese. I’m glad you outsmarted them.
Actually I admire those renegade guys who mess with the military. And how dare you complain about the money they waste when Lockheed Martin “wastes” trillions on its mass killing machines and nobody says a a word.
O man, this is so ugly.
Narrative control has been going on since at least ancient Egypt. They convinced the people their leaders were gods. This lasted for thousands of years so they must have been doing a good job. This continued to work so well that it was still being practiced in the Japan of 1945 and Indonesia of 1964. Emperor worship in Thailand goes on to this day.
I'd say the big advance came not with Bernays but with the Internet. It meant that They could get immediate and accurate feedback on which lies were working and which were not. If someone made a contribution to your campaign you could trace back their web history, see what caused it, and do it more. That made the big jump I think, a huge difference.
As for use of AI, surely this is happening now in secret. Needless to say, our opinion on this practice will not be solicited. Don't like it? Tough.
You are viewing the rest of the world through the Western Liberal prism. We all aren't the same - and we all don't develop at the same rate and most importantly in the same direction. Chinese don't want to live in Western inspired Enlightenment utopia. They want a Singaporean model: security, order and prosperity. Many in the West view it as closest thing to the Fascist system. So design your system as you see it fit to your culture, and your unique history. Leave the rest of the world alone!
...and what has "the west" become? constant chest thumping bravado and bull shit, racial trolling strife encouraged for profit (except the "in" race/s), simple flag humping for war?
Caitlin writes: “The problem that underpins most other problems in modern times is that human minds are highly hackable….” I agree with her, but I agree more with your timeline. Empire and imperial rulers of ancient times may not have had the term “hackable,” but they certainly knew how to control their populations long before Bernays.
In fact, it’s my sense that an increasing number of serious, objective ancient historians are slowly coming to the conclusion that orthodox Christianity was a careful—maybe obvious—creation of the Roman Empire to control those ill tempered inhabitants of Roman Judea, whose rebellion was actually an existential threat to the entire Empire. What better way to put down rebellion than by getting your Iron Age equivalent of the CIA or FBI to infiltrate and secretly fund and organize an effective opposition? Today, some of us are just flummoxed by how much impact the psyop of Russia-gate has had on our world, but imagine a pysop that has dominated our entire reality for a couple thousand years. Those Romans! Or was Phillip K. Dick correct, “The Empire never ended.”
The early Roman empire was tolerant of all religious practices, as long as one's religion didn't try to hold itself over the others. It wasn't until Constantine decided to adopt Christianity as the official Roman faith - that it became more of a political tool for the Romans.
Today's new dominant religion is a type of scientific atheism - at least within the current intellectual orthodoxy mileau. And many get subject to similar types of psychological controls of ideological power, as in the past - if you stray too far away from the Materialism ethic and doctrines - you will be banished, find yourself on the fringes of academic life, or hounded because you commited the unforgiveable crime as Carl Jung once wrote: "I shall not commit the fashionable stupidity of regarding everything I cannot explain as fraud."
We find today, the leaders of the world's globalism dominated not by a sense of spiritual wonder and ethical responsibility for say, other creatures on the planet or even other human beings - given the horror that has been ongoing now in Ukraine for over a year - where 100s of thousands of human beings have been slaughtered by weapons that are making huge profits for General Electric, Raytheon and McDonnell Douglas among other billion dollar greedy as fuck corporations - but instead, with no other purpose but to enrich their billionaire owners at the top while at the same time subverting governance of a country so that no kind of ethical standards exist except the "greed is good" ethos that no spiritual tradition I know of would ever adopt in a million years.
It’s not a scientific aethism. Because it does not follow knowledge or logic.
Starving and depriving millions of children of food and health in rich countries is not scientific.
Rejecting trade and links as “dependency and risk”. And even blowing up a pipeline on this grounds is not logic. It’s cultism to enrich the cult leaders.
It’s just money worship taken to wahabist levels.
All religions claim they follow knowledge and logic, including "scientific atheism". Science itself is not a religion, but is more and more being treated like a type of religion.
I do believe, underlying many of today's global problems is a type of ideological nihilism that fundamentally comes with the strong framework of believing in the philosophy of reductive materialism - which insists we are nothing more than biological machines of evolution, soulless beings that cease to exist when the brain dies - and this soulless ideology underlies how we treat ourselves and other life on the planet - and is playing itself out clearly in Ukraine at the moment - where the United States and Britain pretend they seek peace, while refusing any kind of peace negotiations and pouring even more useless, billions of dollars of weaponry into killing more human life in a nihilistic power struggle - not based on any kind of spiritual principles of respecting life whatsoever. It's a shitshow of death - with no ethical responsibility except Might Makes Right Darwinism.
Go baby! 🥰😜🙏
This was for Kudjoe’s comment but this reply system misplaced it.
Nobody can appreciate fully being indoctrinated until one joins the military.
Bernays once commented that the moving picture phenomenon was the best thing ever for manipulation of the public perception. I'm sure he felt the television was superior for that purpose. He would think the internet is better still, which it is.
Great commentary by Caitlin.
we look at the TV and "think" we see how "the masses" are feeling and thinking, and we align ourselves to this same "Mass"! It's all a lie. Might as well put a nose ring and harness on our faces like beasts of burden.
Also check out Canadian mind control expert Jason Christoff. He has over 170 podcasts speaking to this.
It (the BS) started to accelerate in 2000 with the Bush administration when Bush, Cheney wolfowitz and rumsfeld decided that they could create their own reality. That's also when the internet really took off and was tapped by the NSA et.al. Y2K was the excuse - all the computers are going to crash with financial meltdowns , nuclear power station meltdowns, airliners are going to crash and so on. So the federal government had to Save the Day by sending programmers to "reprogram" all the code because it was obsolete. The excuse was that the code was written using only the last two digits in the years ie 2000 was saved as 00 and could be interpreted incorrectly as 1900 or vice versa. Everyone I knew at the time bought into it including 2 friends who were programmers at digital equipment Corp. I don't think there were many banks at the time running mainframe computers built in 1970. Shortly after 2000 an IT engineer came out and said that internet trunks were being tapped by the government. He quickly disappeared. Then came the Patriot act. Then came Snowden. So Y2K, 911, the Patriot act all allowed the government to read our thoughts and minds and gain ultimate control over the masses via the internet. AI does not exist yet. What is called AI is nothing more than a statistical method of reading key words and compiling them to see how people are reacting to proposals or issues in the media. Google (or Go Ogle if you prefer) has done a fantastic job of keeping tabs on us. They can keep us fighting over non issues, suppress any type of unification or dissension and create policies to maintain the status quo. If anyone becomes too dangerous they will be squashed like an insect. Marginalized at the least. "Oops your bank account disappeared? We're sorry."
But, everyone I have tried to explain this to thinks I'm a nutcase. Once you've been swimming in the cesspool long enough, you no longer smell it. Welcome to Amerika.
Perfect!!!
" Step 1 is learning that minds are very hackable, and are being hacked constantly on a mass scale.
Step 2 is learning that your own mind is included in this. "
Well Caitlin, I smiled while reading your post, I realized that there is something in which we who were born behind the Iron Curtain have an advantage with "Western" people who look at the world innocently with wide eyes ! :)
We grew up under the unlimited Soviet propaganda, we don't believe anything we read in the newspaper and what well-paid announcers suggest on television ! After getting to know the operation of the Western lying machine in the last thirty years, we have little or no influence on what the BBC, the Washington Post lie, or what Anne Applebaum lied in the columns of the New York Times. We look with pity at the Western citizens who have languished in prosperity, who at the cost of robbing others were kept well according to the Roman model of "Panem et Circenses" (until now!) and they believe that this is what they deserve, and it will be like this forever and ever ! I have bad news, this will end soon, and just like the obese Roman citizens, they believed that the privilege granted by God was that slaves would bring them the selected delicacies ! And if they have already lived up to their throats, they tickle their throats with peacock feathers to vomit out what they have stuffed into themselves, to fill their bottomless stomach again and again ! Well, Odoaker is already knocking on the gates of Rome, the barbarians are already coming with a huge army and powerful hatred in their hearts, because they have not forgotten what you did to their people ! And if the people of the USA were to go and see what is happening on the southern borders, they would see the people gathering there !
This is great. Because when you were disregarding your nations media reporting, I was learning to disregard EVERYTHING the US media said about the USSR/Russia, the Viet Nam war, Dr. King, and us dirty demonstrators. Why is that so hard are stupid today because they WANT to be.
That should have a people in there. “People are so stupid today etc”
"We grew up under the unlimited Soviet propaganda, we don't believe anything we read in the newspaper ..." - you should mention, though, that we used to believe everything various "voices of freedom" were broadcasting at the time.
Also, what they used to write about the West back then was remarkably true. But nobody believed that since they lied about the internal stuff which could be easily verified. It was so idiotic but it only became clear much later, with the damage already done.
Hey Caitlin ...
About month go, you said there is reason for hope simply because there are many more of us than there are of them ... although I've always thought this claim was a bit naive, I really want to be proven wrong ... so please consider making the case here on Substack sometime soon ...
And please remember that for your thesis to really have teeth, it must address these cold hard facts:
- they have the guns
- they have technology
- they make the laws
- they run the banks
- they own the media
- they shape the discourse
- they do not take prisoners
The ball is now in your court ... nobody has attempted to do this since the March 2023 lock downs were declared ... be the first on your block ...
I think you are a bit misleading in referring to Caitlin's previous article in conjunction with this work. Caitlin does rightly point out there are many more of us. This article explains what's needed for US to wake up and come to power in force as has happened several times in history. That is hope.
I know damn well I'm a bit off-point Landru ...
But it's about time somebody lobbied for an explanation on how and why the "More of Us than Them" thesis can actually succeed ... I have my doubts, but Caitlin is probably just as qualified as anybody ... on this point, I actually made a beginning several years ago when I wrote a piece on why the implementation of martial law here in the U.S. is improbable ... but it seems the Globalists already knew this ... that's why they are now planning to leverage technology to herd us all into compliance ...
WE ARE LIVESTOCK!
Covid proved that and is still proving that. “See how they run…”. I don’t know about Australia but I know the US does not any longer deserve democracy. That’s why we barely have it—we have kabuki theater democracy. We can change it. We should try.
Ps, somehow my name got changed but I’m the same bigmouth radical misfit that you’ve all come to know and love as Jean. 😵💫
Thanks for clarifying! I was about to engage but now I know better ;)
I do agree with your point, a plan of action for I will call it union of working people isn't in action now. There are many working in a small number of organizations and I understand that. What will unite working people , sadly it will be yet another global devastating financial collapse 30's style uniting people blocking the bailout of finance. I see no other way.
My impression always was that by "more of us" she meant the folks outside the categories you listed. Which is true numerically. The notion of that majority in number to become an organized force in any meaningful way is quite naive, IMO.
Yes, and when referred to "they" in my comment above, I was speaking of the globalists.
Thank you Caitlin, you hit the nail on the head once again! If you disagree or query the lies being pumped into us, you are considered unhinged because you don't go with the flow. It has worked so well that now in the UK our voices are being stifled by laws being passed to forbid protest, and our two main political parties supporting this.
It is as if the 20th century never happened.
Fascism is the default ideology for leaders lacking the virtue, discipline, and humanism the practice of democracy requires.
"It is as if the 20th century never happened."
As ex-CIA John Stockwell said, "We learned a lesson from Vietnam. They learned one too. But it wasn't the same lesson."
Talk about those lessons learned......
They learned they had to keep the press under control in order to maintain support for wars. Thus embedded journalists and discouragement of independent reporters.
And what, according to Stockwell, was the lesson learned by the Vietnamese?
We was peace people, they was war people, all in the USA.
A thought: if Julian Assange had not been captured, and Wikileaks was still as strong as it was when he was at the helm, what new secrets would have been revealed?
Great thought! Assange was my hero for all those years, and still is, now permeated with sad pity. That he has fathered 2 children while imprisoned speaks to his strength, and his young wife is brave and strong.
"The problem, as is so often the case, is that mainstream westerners make the assumption that "If that's what was happening, we would have heard about it in the news." Not understanding that their "news" media is designed to advance the interests of the powerful, not to report the news."
It's important to also note that nearly 90% of all American news and social media platforms and outlets are owned by Jews and/or Zionists, thus they control what the narrative is and what news is (and isn't) reported on and ultimately published and broadcasted.
A lot of bullshit is disguised by sentimentality and partisanship. For instance, it is generally assumed that religion is coincidental with ethics and morality. But a closer examination reveals that religion and religious observances revolve around a code of behaviour related to club membership. Do this, do that, if you want to belong to the club, if you want to be accepted by club members. It is a faulty interpretation of love, which, in its shallow form is a nice feeling that makes you feel good, but might not be in others' best interests, or yours even, in the long run. That's why we have laws which, it they are good laws, treat everybody the same - my and your personal prejudices aside. Ethics and morality has to do with all of humanity, all of animal and plant life, and the health of the planet itself. And that's why being patriotic to the point of jingoism, or, "my country, right or wrong", is a very bad idea, and unethical and immoral. It's the source of most of the destructive bullshit.
This bullshit analogy seems so perfect. To continue it: The covid crimes were an attempt to extend the pipe directly into our noses, which gave many of us a clearer view!
Spot on!
“…..At first glance it looks like a violent and abusive apartheid system with one ethnicity receiving preferential treatment over the other, but people assume it can't be that simple, mistakenly thinking that if it was that clear-cut there wouldn't be so much debate about it — with their own government supporting the apartheid side….”
The greatest irony in the use of the word “apartheid” here, is that it’s taken from South African context. A context in which the US and its allies/vassals all uniformly designated the oppressed as terrorists while embracing the violent, nuclear-armed colonialist of European origin as “allies”.
You really couldn’t make up the absurdity of reality if you tried to.
And yet no no ever learns that these governments are evil and uninterested in democracy or freedom.
"All democracies turn into dictatorships - but not by coup. The people give their democracy to a dictator, whether it's Julius Caesar or Napoleon or Adolf Hitler. Ultimately, the general population goes along with the idea."
― George Lucas
Contemplate The Iron Law Of Oligarchy.
I agree. The population wants to be rewarded just for voting—all else is too much work. Besides, I gotta run off to my corporate job to make my $$$ to invest in Wall Street so I can have my designer cloths, designer coffees and imported wines, my new phone and computer every 27 seconds, my new car and house in the Hamptons—-I don’t have time to read anything but the WSJ and the NYT book review on Sunday. We love us some Caesar’s!
"Napoleon first seized political power in a coup d’état in 1799." -- Encyclopedia Britannica.
I want to push back on this a little. While I don’t think your analysis is wrong, I look at it from a different perspective. What you’ve described falls under 5th Generation Warfare (5GW).
I believe that 5GW is actually an insurgency of the people. The internet and its associated technologies has allowed the people to save, share, and spread the truth far faster than the State can counter it with their lies and manipulation.
They’re strategy is indeed to obfuscate the truth and make things seem more complicated in order to achieve consensus around their narrative. But this really doesn’t work on the masses. 10x as many people watch/listen to Joe Rogan than watch the top rated corporate press prime time shows.
Government and their propaganda partners in the corporate press are conducting Counter-5GW and just like their attempts at Counter-Insurgency to combat 4GW, they are failing. They’re failing because they’re trying to fight decentralized, fast, agile and adaptive forces with centralized power structures that love slow and can only counter react. They’re essentially permanently on the defensive.
This is why I have so much hope and optimism for the future. The technologies are on the side of freedom. We just need to realize and understand our own power projection against these Regimes and continue to push back.
I’ve written about this on Nostr, and specifically wrote about it there because it is a decentralized, censor resistant protocol that will become one of the main tools used for freedom.
Please check out my Notes on 5GW!
https://damus.io/note1pgk4g9v4xmvlsax70tfdgnkjmldfrruqpujkcrlv383yatsezn7srlaszz
The imperial machine can go march its dumb ass right off the edge of the flat earth.