My next door neighbors here in CA are brilliant Chinese immigrants. Per their repeated stories, there truly is no freedom in China, none; even here the long authoritarian arm of the Chinese regime claws at them. That doesn’t unsettle the thesis here that we are far from free ourselves. If we want to spread freedom to the world, the best way to do that is to fix our own myriad shortcomings and set a blinding example.
I would take immigrant stories with a lot of salt. First, there are cultural differences, then they might want to say what they think is expected of them based on the environment. And finally, they may not be true representatives of the majority of where they came from.
I believe it makes sense to allow for the possibility that they are, in fact, telling the truth. Because just as it doesn't make sense to believe the US is pure good and the enemy of the day is pure evil, it likewise doesn't make sense to believe that any enemy of the US is pure good either. Some horror stories we've heard about conditions in those countries may be fabricated or exaggerated, and people certainly ought to have their BS detectors turned on when listening to politicians or pundits with a long history of lying. Other horror stories, though, may very well be true.
And this is coming from somebody who is actually glad that China and Russia are in positions to defy the US despite any oppression or censorship they may do to their people; I don't approve of oppression or censorship anywhere, and certainly not in the US or Canada either. So I'm not gonna stan any country that does it to any degree, but I can't help but sort of root for Russia and China to win their conflicts with the US for the simple reason that I'm sick of seeing the US going around fucking up the world completely unchecked. No matter what the enemies of the US might be doing that are also war crimes or human rights abuses, at least they're standing up to the world's bully.
I never suggested they were lying. High probability though they were "adjusting" to what is expected to be heard, in their opinion. Being cautious as immigrants and rightly so.
And even if 100% truth then it would be their truth as they cannot claim to speak for the whole people.
Good points. Even they can only tell us what they've seen themselves and what they've heard secondhand, assuming that they aren't scared of what may happen if they say the wrong thing as you theorize...
I'm inclined to think of stories painting China in nothing but a positive light (nothing here, but there do exist people who describe it that way) as too good to be true. But perhaps that's at least partly because I used to hear America described that way and I had a very rude awakening in the end. So it could be that I don't want to get fooled again. Also, I kind of wonder whether being a superpower is like being a billionaire, i.e. that any person or nation wanting to attain either status can't get there without doing immoral shit sometimes.
Sociopaths and reactionaries know they will be well-received by the USA ruling class, so those rejected by their societies for those qualities tend to come here.
Operation Paperclip hung out the welcome sign for at least one ethnonation's bourgeoisie. There is also a general tendency for Latin Americans who have overstepped their rightful authority at home to exile themselves and their butthurt to Florida where the political climate is better suited to reaction.
It's pretty clear from the cost structure of Western life alone that people don't immigrate here for an affordable retirement.
In the arena of nation-states, no state can be freer than the strongest. Take Cuba as an example, extreme, but illustrative. When Castro and his committed band of guerrilla fighters ousted the puppet Batista, Castro was open to an agreement with the U.S., but it was made clear early on, that seizing property and nationalizing resources like sugar were not going to be tolerated. In other words, Cuba would have sovereignty as long as it towed the American line. So Castro enlisted the muscle of the USSR to have a very compromised version of sovereignty. This is all down to the U.S.
"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum...."
I miss that guy. The Chomsky who was against keeping people passive and obedient, I mean. The current one demanded that the unvaccinated be forced to obey. Ah well, at least his takes on Ukraine and Russia have remained consistent.
Are you an expert on infectious disease? Are individual freedoms rights that always trump collective safety? This is right-wing bullshit dressed up as idealism. Chomsky hasn’t lost his intellectual edge, but the carping about conspiratorial exploitation of Covid to enslave the masses is way over the top.
I beg to differ. The evidence is overwhelming. People who distrust the government and the multinationals stepped right in line with the Covid narrative from the government and the criminal pharmaceutical corporations. I did not doubt at first but when I saw data manipulation, censorship at an unprecedented scale, unbelievable wealth transfer from lockdowns and vaccines, the changing of definitions like pandemic and vaccine, the removal of people in government who questioned, the prohibition of any debate, the demonization of the nonbelievers, and further division of the people, the manipulation by FEAR, the lies (about the origin of the virus, discarding natural immunity, all kinds of early treatment options--so they could have their EUA and no liability --, the lie that they tested for transmission prevention which was the cause of hate, the lie that there were only minor side effects), asking for 75 years before having to release Pfizer trial data, and what is coming out in the Twitter files... the marginalization of many prominent doctors and scientists and censorship of any facts (even their own data) that might impede their goals of wealth and increasing CONTROL over the world to name just a few problems with the NARRATIVE. You are missing how easy it will be to control the world with pandemics, passports and lockdowns. The WHO is pushing a treaty to give them these and more powers.
The Great Barrington Declaration, written by public health pros from Harvard, Stanford and Oxford in the summer of 2020, was signed by a million people including tens of thousands of medical professionals. Everyone should read it.
Has the pandemic been a windfall for a system infected by money? No question. But that in no way negates the virulence of a virus that took the lives of a billion globally. So Chomsky wasn’t defending the corruption, and to argue that the vaccine was dangerous, to me is not an excuse for pointing to the corruption and concluding that the cure is worse than the disease. If there had not been a concerted push to vaccinate the population, a hell of a lot more protesters would have grounds for rage and vitriol toward the government, and doubtless many more Covid deaths would have been documented.
Good grief unwarranted. Where do you get your info? According to Google, 6.7 million died worldwide and 1.1 million in the US. So the US had about one sixth or 16 percent of the deaths when we have about 5 percent of the global population and we had more vaccinated than most.
Of course the truth is our death rate was inflated by counting those who died from or with Covid. And many who died from other causes had been labeled Covid death because the PCR test gave a lot of false positives. And people were scared to death and did not get good treatment. One doctor in Houston treated 2000 people with Covid and did not lose one.
Omicron is like a mild cold for most people, my dude. I haven't heard of anyone getting myocarditis from THAT, but lots of people have gotten it from the jabs.
We know the so-called vaccines don't stop the spread. Even the very people who told us to get them have been admitting that! So if they don't stop the spread, then it makes no sense to treat unvaxxed as dangerous plague carriers and vaxxed as completely harmless.
Yes, my poor thoughtless friend, you were born with the inalienable right to decide what penetrates your skin. That's why they call them rights: they adhere in each human being and are not subject to the whims or frenzies of the state and its tools. That's why every woman has a right to terminate her pregnancy, whether the stupid law has been written or not.
Brother, I grew up in the 70s: Trust me, skepticism is healthier than skin-popping stuff you don't know anything about.
No. No. You do not know anything about it. Those of us who have bothered to ask questions and learn anything about it are all too familiar with the instant reaction that must smear, reject, and silence any contradiction to the propaganda narrative we've had crammed down our gullets for the past three years. You're heavily invested in the lies you've been told, that's what makes you mad when others suggest the profit motive is still driving the system. That third digit in the old IQ score should be doing you more good, brother. Peace and good will.
Love, they know we hate them. They know we know they’re exploiting us. They know they are criminals.
They don’t care one whit and so long as they have the power and control all the resources, they can link the water hose and force us to kneel. That’s what this recession they’re forcing is all about. They’re wanting to bring us to heel. Bend the knee. Accept them as our Supreme Overlords. That’s it. That’s what all this theatre and posturing are about. And everyone hating them isn’t going to affect any change. Only one thing will, and nobody wants to have that conversation.
I have that conversation because I focus on solutions. It sounds like you are advocating revolution? A violent overthrow of the most powerful military and police force and security agencies in the world? A bloody civil war? That is no solution. And you think you could get the peoples of the world to agree to the replacement?
Change happens from the inside out. Everything is waves of energy in constant motion vibrating at different frequencies. Positive higher frequency vibrations are more powerful than negative lower frequencies which have been shown to rise upon coming into contact with the higher frequencies. Each individual healing their shadow sides has a spreading effect on the consciousness of the species worldwide. That is the solution and will gradually help people make better choices and the "powerful" will realize they have nothing to fear. Love is the highest vibration. It is the only win-win solution.
You’re advocating talking ad nausaoum and doing nothing. That’s all anyone has been doing this entire time and it’s only getting worse. Your cowardice condemns you to this state of living. So keep talking and doing nothing. It’s been working wonders so far.
You make many assumptions. I was in the streets protesting the military dictator in Chile in the 80s. It actually was quite dangerous and I was threatened with deportation or disappearance, and I had a baby.
I have protested in many arenas in the US. I worked for the Green Party and the Nader candidacy. I have contributed untold hours to volunteerism and activism. I have paid attention, questioned, written letters and then emails.
Protests are pressure relief valves for the poor to blow off steam. They affect nothing, at least not in the US. But then, we don’t protest the same way they do in central and South America. Those are more like skirmishes with the authorities, and people die. Until the US is in a wide spread similar state nationwide, there won’t be any concessions. People here are too cowardly.
All governments and hierarchical organizations like unions, churches, and corporation's are inherently dominated by self serving leadership and prone to corruption. Power corrupts yet those being deceived ignore it as long as they are not directly threatened. Democrats or Republicans are two sides of the same coin both themselves manipulated and deceived by their very own bureaucrats. You couldn’t make this shit up it’s too absurd to be believed and obviously destructive to those instigating the deception as whitenesses by the feeding frenzy when one of their own makes a mistake, attacking like cannibals to devour the heretic. So it’s not believed and the destruction continues.
Free your mind, and the rest will follow...It helps if you are creative and imaginative. There is a reason art, creativity, and imagination are being quashed in the young (and the old).
I enjoy your work. One quibble. From my perspective, new platforms become a “wack-a-mole” problem for the surveillance state, and are therefor a credible tactic for the dissident left. On the other hand, “loud aggressive actions” are unlikely to deter the government, as they already don’t care how it looks, as they have their talking head shills, even in independent media, who run interference and narratives that “justify” their intrusions and muddy the waters in general. This squishy liberal professional class seem all too willing to suspend their state of belief, and ride the authoritarian waves of war mongering, censorship, and the largest upward transfers of wealth in the history of our species.
I think it’s easy to dismiss or ignore the material conditions that enable the state to have total control. I just read this thorough essay on the pervasive reach of the MIC. To me this is what aggrieved Americans need to come together on. It is the dynamo of state oppression.
The left/right continuum of political views has always been a psyop. Anarchism and totalitarianism have nothing in common? Socialism and capitalism are not cousins separated by a mere inch on some controlling entity’s goddamned linear measuring tape. Communism and fascism are not two species of government sharing 98% of the same genes. Democrats and Republicans are not even two sides of the same coin; they are the same side of a one-sided coin in a politically artificial two-dimensional universe. Democrats are not to the left of Republicans. Democrats are Republicans. D = R.
But, for obvious reasons, we humans love our dichotomies: our bodies (and brains) have two sides, our world has night and day, we think in terms of good (God) and evil (devil), we get up and we fall down, and so forth. This left/right psyop isn’t just an invention of the latest propagandist or emperor, it’s the brick and mortar of our materialist cosmic prison cell.
To escape this mind rape, perhaps we can contemplate those things that have no material spatial existence, no left or right, like peace, for example, or love, or beauty. There is, after all, no left or right side of truth.
Many of our distinctions are bogus, and we often make no distinction between completely separate and even opposing categories. It isn't that we aren't capable of rationality, but more that we are captured by shallow, easy ways of thinking because that's what makes us comfortable: we don't fight the tide of popular fables. We want to be liked, and we aren't good at handling tensions. So we just delay the inevitable because we have to face facts sooner or later, the easier way, or the harder way.
Is the American aversion to discussing death with children perhaps a factor? It’s probably more difficult to indoctrinate young minds to any doctrine when the painful truths of life are introduced before soothing myths.
That could be a facto - overprotection, although there is a fine line between that and stressing all the gruesome, although totally avoidable problems of life as we know it. Doing the latter presents life as unavoidably grim, and induces fatalism and quietism, neither of which I would endorse. My view is that religions that present a negative view and are intrinsically defeatist and even sadomasochist, have done immeasurable harm. Life should be seen as a unique gift, and it is ungracious to demand of the giver that the gift be endless. Why fear death more than having been born? Most of the evil of the world is done in imitation of the nasty character we have given to the God we have created. Much irrational and negative indoctrination can be traced to this source.
The mainstream of the English language recently lost the ability to express the distinction between contingency, "is", and permanence, "be". The latter is now seen as a peculiarity of AAVE, its archaic sense having been lost. That has obviously inspired confusion about individual subjectivity and its relation to time and dialectic, casting the individual into a form of capital, with all the general obligations etc. that entails.
We "are" only insofar as others do, or can, recognize us as such. We would do better to "be" less and not reify ourselves as moral capitalists. Puritanism never made anyone happy but the scolds.
So knowing yourself which is freedom and bliss is puritanism? We are infinite souls and a part of us is inhabiting these temporary bodies for many reasons and purposes. We are, whether any other human recognizes us or not. It also has nothing to do with moral capitalism.
Some immigrants are dissidents because a country with few if any financial regulations and monstrous disparities in wealth and income is more to their interest. Doesn't mean a thing. Many Westerners like the Chinese style of life, less pressure, better cultural values, almost no crime. In any case it's None of Our Business. If you can convince 40 million US citizens that having no health insurance, and an accident or prolonged sickness is the end of them financially - is not oppression: if you can convince 60 millions more that not having $1000 in an emergency is not oppression: if you can convince 325 million that a serious hit on their standard of living is worth it - if it's in the cause of wrecking Ukraine - then folks, you have the propaganda game working for you: it doesn't get better than that.
"We're told we're freer than other countries so that we won't see how unfree we are. You can't look down your nose at countries like China or North Korea and still clearly see how controlled and homogenized your own country is."
Analogy for the best case scenario: it's like watching video of somebody stuck in a cage and thinking "That poor person, I'm lucky I have more freedom. MY cage has like a whole 'nother 1/2 square foot!"
At the end of the day, it doesn't matter whether China is the more authoritarian and oppressive country or whether the United States is, because they're both authoritarian, and that's unacceptable. Acknowledging that China may not be exactly a utopia shouldn't be taken as a sign I would support another proxy war there over Taiwan, by the way, let alone a hot war or regime change.
Everybody has to answer to somebody, and, to quote Bob Dylan, “...you’re gonna have to serve somebody...” From this perspective I would argue that there are degrees of pain associated with differing examples of authoritarianism, but it isn’t easy to rank pain. China has made great strides in reducing starvation, and the wealthy U.S. has failed to eliminate it. (Not that it’s really trying). Most people that I know believe that China’s big sin is not granting its citizens individual freedom that many Chinese don’t covet.
I don’t think any of us can escape authoritarian governments, but democracy can confer a strong sense of legitimacy. Democracy is, to me, the greatest legacy of western enlightenment. The term “democracy” has been bastardized to be understood as liberal capitalism, but it really is the only means of achieving social justice. And if we ever get it, neocons will have no following worth mentioning.
People are constantly being told to choose between a turd hotdog and chili diarrhea. And they will happily munch the turd hot dog and tell you that they think someone peed in the chili. And it works both ways. Democrats vs Republicans and Republicans vs. Democrats.
I am always baffled by this. Why willingly eat shit?
Once again, the contents of my deeper thoughts have been articulated to perfection. Are younsure you're not AI that has a neurolink in to my brain that I am not aware of, and that Substack is not just another peice of a holographic representation of the world I create for myself while tucked in to a pod producing energy for the actual matrix. Weird
The problem is how to bring about a different state of things than what we now observe. It is pretty clear from both common reason and history that force does not do the trick. It also seems obvious that metaphorical violence like elections and tax-deductable charity organizations are either support for the existing system or are easily suborned. It is also true (as far as I can see) that our problem is collective and therefore can't be solved through isolated individual virtue. Under present conditions, then, our actions must take place on a small scale and, if possible, almost out of sight. Lead by example, even ambiguous example. Move into the gaps, the interstices. Be harmless as doves and subtle as serpents. There may be other ways -- diversity will confuse the opposition -- but generally this seems to be to be the only way forward.
Let us also collectively imagine the other world which is said to be possible.
My next door neighbors here in CA are brilliant Chinese immigrants. Per their repeated stories, there truly is no freedom in China, none; even here the long authoritarian arm of the Chinese regime claws at them. That doesn’t unsettle the thesis here that we are far from free ourselves. If we want to spread freedom to the world, the best way to do that is to fix our own myriad shortcomings and set a blinding example.
I would take immigrant stories with a lot of salt. First, there are cultural differences, then they might want to say what they think is expected of them based on the environment. And finally, they may not be true representatives of the majority of where they came from.
I believe it makes sense to allow for the possibility that they are, in fact, telling the truth. Because just as it doesn't make sense to believe the US is pure good and the enemy of the day is pure evil, it likewise doesn't make sense to believe that any enemy of the US is pure good either. Some horror stories we've heard about conditions in those countries may be fabricated or exaggerated, and people certainly ought to have their BS detectors turned on when listening to politicians or pundits with a long history of lying. Other horror stories, though, may very well be true.
And this is coming from somebody who is actually glad that China and Russia are in positions to defy the US despite any oppression or censorship they may do to their people; I don't approve of oppression or censorship anywhere, and certainly not in the US or Canada either. So I'm not gonna stan any country that does it to any degree, but I can't help but sort of root for Russia and China to win their conflicts with the US for the simple reason that I'm sick of seeing the US going around fucking up the world completely unchecked. No matter what the enemies of the US might be doing that are also war crimes or human rights abuses, at least they're standing up to the world's bully.
I never suggested they were lying. High probability though they were "adjusting" to what is expected to be heard, in their opinion. Being cautious as immigrants and rightly so.
And even if 100% truth then it would be their truth as they cannot claim to speak for the whole people.
Good points. Even they can only tell us what they've seen themselves and what they've heard secondhand, assuming that they aren't scared of what may happen if they say the wrong thing as you theorize...
I'm inclined to think of stories painting China in nothing but a positive light (nothing here, but there do exist people who describe it that way) as too good to be true. But perhaps that's at least partly because I used to hear America described that way and I had a very rude awakening in the end. So it could be that I don't want to get fooled again. Also, I kind of wonder whether being a superpower is like being a billionaire, i.e. that any person or nation wanting to attain either status can't get there without doing immoral shit sometimes.
Machiavelli teaches us to be wary of the tales borne by exiles.
Sociopaths and reactionaries know they will be well-received by the USA ruling class, so those rejected by their societies for those qualities tend to come here.
Quite a leap you took there.
Operation Paperclip hung out the welcome sign for at least one ethnonation's bourgeoisie. There is also a general tendency for Latin Americans who have overstepped their rightful authority at home to exile themselves and their butthurt to Florida where the political climate is better suited to reaction.
It's pretty clear from the cost structure of Western life alone that people don't immigrate here for an affordable retirement.
In the arena of nation-states, no state can be freer than the strongest. Take Cuba as an example, extreme, but illustrative. When Castro and his committed band of guerrilla fighters ousted the puppet Batista, Castro was open to an agreement with the U.S., but it was made clear early on, that seizing property and nationalizing resources like sugar were not going to be tolerated. In other words, Cuba would have sovereignty as long as it towed the American line. So Castro enlisted the muscle of the USSR to have a very compromised version of sovereignty. This is all down to the U.S.
"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum...."
N. Chomsky
I miss that guy. The Chomsky who was against keeping people passive and obedient, I mean. The current one demanded that the unvaccinated be forced to obey. Ah well, at least his takes on Ukraine and Russia have remained consistent.
Are you an expert on infectious disease? Are individual freedoms rights that always trump collective safety? This is right-wing bullshit dressed up as idealism. Chomsky hasn’t lost his intellectual edge, but the carping about conspiratorial exploitation of Covid to enslave the masses is way over the top.
I beg to differ. The evidence is overwhelming. People who distrust the government and the multinationals stepped right in line with the Covid narrative from the government and the criminal pharmaceutical corporations. I did not doubt at first but when I saw data manipulation, censorship at an unprecedented scale, unbelievable wealth transfer from lockdowns and vaccines, the changing of definitions like pandemic and vaccine, the removal of people in government who questioned, the prohibition of any debate, the demonization of the nonbelievers, and further division of the people, the manipulation by FEAR, the lies (about the origin of the virus, discarding natural immunity, all kinds of early treatment options--so they could have their EUA and no liability --, the lie that they tested for transmission prevention which was the cause of hate, the lie that there were only minor side effects), asking for 75 years before having to release Pfizer trial data, and what is coming out in the Twitter files... the marginalization of many prominent doctors and scientists and censorship of any facts (even their own data) that might impede their goals of wealth and increasing CONTROL over the world to name just a few problems with the NARRATIVE. You are missing how easy it will be to control the world with pandemics, passports and lockdowns. The WHO is pushing a treaty to give them these and more powers.
The Great Barrington Declaration, written by public health pros from Harvard, Stanford and Oxford in the summer of 2020, was signed by a million people including tens of thousands of medical professionals. Everyone should read it.
Has the pandemic been a windfall for a system infected by money? No question. But that in no way negates the virulence of a virus that took the lives of a billion globally. So Chomsky wasn’t defending the corruption, and to argue that the vaccine was dangerous, to me is not an excuse for pointing to the corruption and concluding that the cure is worse than the disease. If there had not been a concerted push to vaccinate the population, a hell of a lot more protesters would have grounds for rage and vitriol toward the government, and doubtless many more Covid deaths would have been documented.
Good grief unwarranted. Where do you get your info? According to Google, 6.7 million died worldwide and 1.1 million in the US. So the US had about one sixth or 16 percent of the deaths when we have about 5 percent of the global population and we had more vaccinated than most.
Of course the truth is our death rate was inflated by counting those who died from or with Covid. And many who died from other causes had been labeled Covid death because the PCR test gave a lot of false positives. And people were scared to death and did not get good treatment. One doctor in Houston treated 2000 people with Covid and did not lose one.
Omicron is like a mild cold for most people, my dude. I haven't heard of anyone getting myocarditis from THAT, but lots of people have gotten it from the jabs.
We know the so-called vaccines don't stop the spread. Even the very people who told us to get them have been admitting that! So if they don't stop the spread, then it makes no sense to treat unvaxxed as dangerous plague carriers and vaxxed as completely harmless.
Yes, my poor thoughtless friend, you were born with the inalienable right to decide what penetrates your skin. That's why they call them rights: they adhere in each human being and are not subject to the whims or frenzies of the state and its tools. That's why every woman has a right to terminate her pregnancy, whether the stupid law has been written or not.
Brother, I grew up in the 70s: Trust me, skepticism is healthier than skin-popping stuff you don't know anything about.
No. No. You do not know anything about it. Those of us who have bothered to ask questions and learn anything about it are all too familiar with the instant reaction that must smear, reject, and silence any contradiction to the propaganda narrative we've had crammed down our gullets for the past three years. You're heavily invested in the lies you've been told, that's what makes you mad when others suggest the profit motive is still driving the system. That third digit in the old IQ score should be doing you more good, brother. Peace and good will.
Love, they know we hate them. They know we know they’re exploiting us. They know they are criminals.
They don’t care one whit and so long as they have the power and control all the resources, they can link the water hose and force us to kneel. That’s what this recession they’re forcing is all about. They’re wanting to bring us to heel. Bend the knee. Accept them as our Supreme Overlords. That’s it. That’s what all this theatre and posturing are about. And everyone hating them isn’t going to affect any change. Only one thing will, and nobody wants to have that conversation.
I have that conversation because I focus on solutions. It sounds like you are advocating revolution? A violent overthrow of the most powerful military and police force and security agencies in the world? A bloody civil war? That is no solution. And you think you could get the peoples of the world to agree to the replacement?
Change happens from the inside out. Everything is waves of energy in constant motion vibrating at different frequencies. Positive higher frequency vibrations are more powerful than negative lower frequencies which have been shown to rise upon coming into contact with the higher frequencies. Each individual healing their shadow sides has a spreading effect on the consciousness of the species worldwide. That is the solution and will gradually help people make better choices and the "powerful" will realize they have nothing to fear. Love is the highest vibration. It is the only win-win solution.
You’re advocating talking ad nausaoum and doing nothing. That’s all anyone has been doing this entire time and it’s only getting worse. Your cowardice condemns you to this state of living. So keep talking and doing nothing. It’s been working wonders so far.
You make many assumptions. I was in the streets protesting the military dictator in Chile in the 80s. It actually was quite dangerous and I was threatened with deportation or disappearance, and I had a baby.
I have protested in many arenas in the US. I worked for the Green Party and the Nader candidacy. I have contributed untold hours to volunteerism and activism. I have paid attention, questioned, written letters and then emails.
I have learned what changes minds and hearts.
Protests are pressure relief valves for the poor to blow off steam. They affect nothing, at least not in the US. But then, we don’t protest the same way they do in central and South America. Those are more like skirmishes with the authorities, and people die. Until the US is in a wide spread similar state nationwide, there won’t be any concessions. People here are too cowardly.
The very fact protests in the US are allowed means they are harmless. Even useful to promote the "freedom and democracy" narrative.
All governments and hierarchical organizations like unions, churches, and corporation's are inherently dominated by self serving leadership and prone to corruption. Power corrupts yet those being deceived ignore it as long as they are not directly threatened. Democrats or Republicans are two sides of the same coin both themselves manipulated and deceived by their very own bureaucrats. You couldn’t make this shit up it’s too absurd to be believed and obviously destructive to those instigating the deception as whitenesses by the feeding frenzy when one of their own makes a mistake, attacking like cannibals to devour the heretic. So it’s not believed and the destruction continues.
Contemplate The Iron Law Of Oligarchy.
I agree 100% there's no other way. People are just frozen powerless, they have to unplug from the imperialist drama and wake up to their power.
Sure, I appreciate it.
Fuck you fed boi
Free your mind, and the rest will follow...It helps if you are creative and imaginative. There is a reason art, creativity, and imagination are being quashed in the young (and the old).
I enjoy your work. One quibble. From my perspective, new platforms become a “wack-a-mole” problem for the surveillance state, and are therefor a credible tactic for the dissident left. On the other hand, “loud aggressive actions” are unlikely to deter the government, as they already don’t care how it looks, as they have their talking head shills, even in independent media, who run interference and narratives that “justify” their intrusions and muddy the waters in general. This squishy liberal professional class seem all too willing to suspend their state of belief, and ride the authoritarian waves of war mongering, censorship, and the largest upward transfers of wealth in the history of our species.
I think it’s easy to dismiss or ignore the material conditions that enable the state to have total control. I just read this thorough essay on the pervasive reach of the MIC. To me this is what aggrieved Americans need to come together on. It is the dynamo of state oppression.
https://covertactionmagazine.com/2023/01/06/the-trillion-dollar-silencer/
? Is this you, or spam?
I'm seeing this sprinkled across this post. It looks like a hack to me.
thanks. the phone number was the first hint. strange.
Just to be safe, I've reported it to Substack support.
The left/right continuum of political views has always been a psyop. Anarchism and totalitarianism have nothing in common? Socialism and capitalism are not cousins separated by a mere inch on some controlling entity’s goddamned linear measuring tape. Communism and fascism are not two species of government sharing 98% of the same genes. Democrats and Republicans are not even two sides of the same coin; they are the same side of a one-sided coin in a politically artificial two-dimensional universe. Democrats are not to the left of Republicans. Democrats are Republicans. D = R.
But, for obvious reasons, we humans love our dichotomies: our bodies (and brains) have two sides, our world has night and day, we think in terms of good (God) and evil (devil), we get up and we fall down, and so forth. This left/right psyop isn’t just an invention of the latest propagandist or emperor, it’s the brick and mortar of our materialist cosmic prison cell.
To escape this mind rape, perhaps we can contemplate those things that have no material spatial existence, no left or right, like peace, for example, or love, or beauty. There is, after all, no left or right side of truth.
Many of our distinctions are bogus, and we often make no distinction between completely separate and even opposing categories. It isn't that we aren't capable of rationality, but more that we are captured by shallow, easy ways of thinking because that's what makes us comfortable: we don't fight the tide of popular fables. We want to be liked, and we aren't good at handling tensions. So we just delay the inevitable because we have to face facts sooner or later, the easier way, or the harder way.
Is the American aversion to discussing death with children perhaps a factor? It’s probably more difficult to indoctrinate young minds to any doctrine when the painful truths of life are introduced before soothing myths.
That could be a facto - overprotection, although there is a fine line between that and stressing all the gruesome, although totally avoidable problems of life as we know it. Doing the latter presents life as unavoidably grim, and induces fatalism and quietism, neither of which I would endorse. My view is that religions that present a negative view and are intrinsically defeatist and even sadomasochist, have done immeasurable harm. Life should be seen as a unique gift, and it is ungracious to demand of the giver that the gift be endless. Why fear death more than having been born? Most of the evil of the world is done in imitation of the nasty character we have given to the God we have created. Much irrational and negative indoctrination can be traced to this source.
Idealism is exactly what led us to where we are. It's all a psyop to get us to consent to having our food stolen and blackmailed back to us.
Since when is knowing who you are idealism?
The mainstream of the English language recently lost the ability to express the distinction between contingency, "is", and permanence, "be". The latter is now seen as a peculiarity of AAVE, its archaic sense having been lost. That has obviously inspired confusion about individual subjectivity and its relation to time and dialectic, casting the individual into a form of capital, with all the general obligations etc. that entails.
We "are" only insofar as others do, or can, recognize us as such. We would do better to "be" less and not reify ourselves as moral capitalists. Puritanism never made anyone happy but the scolds.
So knowing yourself which is freedom and bliss is puritanism? We are infinite souls and a part of us is inhabiting these temporary bodies for many reasons and purposes. We are, whether any other human recognizes us or not. It also has nothing to do with moral capitalism.
"The illusion of freedom is precisely where the reality of our imprisonment hides."
Exactly. There are none so blind as those who believe the shadows have substance and the walls of their blue-painted cage are the sky.
Some immigrants are dissidents because a country with few if any financial regulations and monstrous disparities in wealth and income is more to their interest. Doesn't mean a thing. Many Westerners like the Chinese style of life, less pressure, better cultural values, almost no crime. In any case it's None of Our Business. If you can convince 40 million US citizens that having no health insurance, and an accident or prolonged sickness is the end of them financially - is not oppression: if you can convince 60 millions more that not having $1000 in an emergency is not oppression: if you can convince 325 million that a serious hit on their standard of living is worth it - if it's in the cause of wrecking Ukraine - then folks, you have the propaganda game working for you: it doesn't get better than that.
"We're told we're freer than other countries so that we won't see how unfree we are. You can't look down your nose at countries like China or North Korea and still clearly see how controlled and homogenized your own country is."
Analogy for the best case scenario: it's like watching video of somebody stuck in a cage and thinking "That poor person, I'm lucky I have more freedom. MY cage has like a whole 'nother 1/2 square foot!"
At the end of the day, it doesn't matter whether China is the more authoritarian and oppressive country or whether the United States is, because they're both authoritarian, and that's unacceptable. Acknowledging that China may not be exactly a utopia shouldn't be taken as a sign I would support another proxy war there over Taiwan, by the way, let alone a hot war or regime change.
Everybody has to answer to somebody, and, to quote Bob Dylan, “...you’re gonna have to serve somebody...” From this perspective I would argue that there are degrees of pain associated with differing examples of authoritarianism, but it isn’t easy to rank pain. China has made great strides in reducing starvation, and the wealthy U.S. has failed to eliminate it. (Not that it’s really trying). Most people that I know believe that China’s big sin is not granting its citizens individual freedom that many Chinese don’t covet.
I don’t think any of us can escape authoritarian governments, but democracy can confer a strong sense of legitimacy. Democracy is, to me, the greatest legacy of western enlightenment. The term “democracy” has been bastardized to be understood as liberal capitalism, but it really is the only means of achieving social justice. And if we ever get it, neocons will have no following worth mentioning.
Dear Caitlin -- can you send me a link or something where you explain your use of word "matrix" - as in narrative matrix? I don't understand it
Many thanks in advance
Likely an allusion to the movie "The Matrix".
People are constantly being told to choose between a turd hotdog and chili diarrhea. And they will happily munch the turd hot dog and tell you that they think someone peed in the chili. And it works both ways. Democrats vs Republicans and Republicans vs. Democrats.
I am always baffled by this. Why willingly eat shit?
Once again, the contents of my deeper thoughts have been articulated to perfection. Are younsure you're not AI that has a neurolink in to my brain that I am not aware of, and that Substack is not just another peice of a holographic representation of the world I create for myself while tucked in to a pod producing energy for the actual matrix. Weird
"It's possible to saturate a civilization so thoroughly with propaganda that"
the appearance of a new cold virus can be used to excuse a dozen quantum leaps in the enslavement and degradation of the world's population.
The problem is how to bring about a different state of things than what we now observe. It is pretty clear from both common reason and history that force does not do the trick. It also seems obvious that metaphorical violence like elections and tax-deductable charity organizations are either support for the existing system or are easily suborned. It is also true (as far as I can see) that our problem is collective and therefore can't be solved through isolated individual virtue. Under present conditions, then, our actions must take place on a small scale and, if possible, almost out of sight. Lead by example, even ambiguous example. Move into the gaps, the interstices. Be harmless as doves and subtle as serpents. There may be other ways -- diversity will confuse the opposition -- but generally this seems to be to be the only way forward.
Let us also collectively imagine the other world which is said to be possible.