Listen to a reading of this article: Westerners are taught that evil foreign "regimes" don't let their people criticize their government, meanwhile westerners themselves are trained to never criticize their government. They're trained instead to criticize decoy dichotomies — false partisan nonsense — not the real power.
I liked the line about how free range chickens basically all love being held captive; how people who don't criticize their government but think they have the right to do so are not thinking at all. Bravo!
But in the U.S., it was not possible to criticize:
* Ukraine being run by a rich con artist who is a puppet;
* The vaccine;
* Masks;
* The weeks it takes to run an "election" until the Democrats win;
* Woke anything;
* BLM;
* The videos that were almost immediately scrubbed from the internet where the cops let in the January 6 protestors;
and a bunch of other Soviet-Style agitprop.
It's as if Goebbels runs our media.
I am really sick of our corporatist, censorship-laden, fascist government, which is now run by a lifelong groomer, Joe Biden.
I would love any progressive who came along and condemned the U.S. funding Ukraine, and wanted this hellish war over with.
I've been thinking a lot about all of the lies we get told by: the legal and medical profession. And how many public schools are indoctrination camps that teach nothing useful. And how our media--PMSNBC and Fox--are 99% garbage. It's all soy globalism with them: they want us fat, sick, isolated, depressed, stupid, and poor. They want to extract as much economic value from us as possible, and then they want us dead. And when they kill us, they'll do it in the name of the environment. They won't mean it, our large corporations, but they'll say it.
The antidote is for us not just to wake up, but for us to create parallel societies, like the Czechs did in the 1980s. Those parallel systems helped collapse their dictatorship.
I think you should change this whole thing to state a majority of westerners. Otherwise you are stereotyping everyone of us. There are actually thinkers in the working classes. We just get banned, stuck down the news feeds, silenced, hacked, trolled, psyoped bullied, gaslit, invalidated. Benefit bashed, poverty primed. Persecuted, discriminated on. Our rights removed. Frankly if I was abled and wealthy enough and secure enough I would go live elsewhere but as I’m disabled and a none intellectually disabled autodidactic autistic with a cauda equina risk I’m trapped in this Sh*thole with a multitude of fascists and Nazi robot sheep. I’m always criticise protest campaign sign petitions etc etc to the detriment of my health. I see you on Mewe. I despise the war machine the corruption, paedophilia scamming capitalistic greed and austerity and crushing of public economies and the injustice and other peoples apathy shallowness and ignorance. There is that strongly worded enough for you. 🤣🤣🥰🥰
Prior to the Trump years I always thought that left wing sites maintained an objectivity which was compelling and interesting to read, and that was true for many years. Once Trump came into office many of those sites lost their independence and objectivity, like the Intercept, like Alternet, and Common Dreams, etc, so there were very few sites one could reference to get the news and get an objective perspective on things. Greenwald left the Intercept because they wouldn't let him publish information on Hunter's lap top, and there was a lot of contention over Russia-gate. Risen a highly respected journalist was a real Trump hater which blurred his perspective as it did with Jeremy Scahill . Video: Glenn Greenwald and James Risen Debate the Trump/Russia Investigation. Another example is Greenwald having to defend the Mueller report to David Cay Johnson on Democracy Now who also went off track during the Trump years, and I think Amy Goodman did as well. Interesting how so many who prided themselves on their objective reporting lost it, and I wonder why. Robert Parry never did, and unfortunately he died in 2017. I truly miss him. Even Chomsky went with Trump hate. I could name others, but I won't. Of course the democrats used Trump to generate a great divide in this country and they continue to do so. Democrats and their policies good, republican policies bad. When you turn things to black and white like America good, Russia bad, or use hate to discredit an opponent the world becomes a more dangerous place, and I wonder if so many didn't implement Trump hate we would be living in such a dangerous world, as we are now. Some who reference themselves as independent and objective journalists will acknowledge on some level Obama's role in orchestrating a coup in Ukraine using the driving neo-nazi force behind it, but soften that with he didn't send weapons to Ukraine and focus on the treaties broken by Trump, and the weapons sent, which is equally disingenuous, and highly biased since they don't acknowledge the highly prejudicial atmosphere the democrats and press thrust him into. Maybe they should have a chat with Chomsky who claims Trump is the only Western Statements who could help to resolve the conflict in Ukraine.
20 year Afghan’s gravy train was promptly replaced by Ukraine gravy train – to immense joy of both party and media “elites” happily grunting together at SAME donor feeding through
Gen X kids remember nights in bed worrying about sudden blinding atomic flashes, their family vaporized by the nuclear blast. Less than a generation later those same kids aren’t thinking about the horrors of feckless Armageddon. What changed?
Somewhere along the line, something’s been lost. Some connection to the world... I don’t know.
Agree that individual worship is foolishness. But communism don’t work either, and creates the worst atrocities even faster. Capitalism, where prices are set according to individual desires, coupled with strong antitrust and tort systems seems to provide the best chance at a decent life.
They make US Americans to feel the freedom of choice the same way they usher them into a buffet of bullshit so they can gorge themselves with a variety of bullshit and burp on their freedom to die early.
A week ago I had to laugh at a living example of what you are talking about here: We were at a free public Museum in Los Angeles, California with signs asking to stop the US embargo on Cuba. An old couple told us we were lucky to be against the government in the USA because here we enjoyed freedom of speech while immediately he made sure we were escorted out of the museum!
The first step in the right direction would be to start dissolving almost everything at the federal level. Government and lawmaking needs to be returned exclusively to the states. Anything beyond that is ineffective and invites usurpation of the people's will. Eliminate the political party system as it only creates discord, distraction and division. Eventually we need to have anonymous state elections based on a candidate's platform only. One 2 yr term maximum, to be recalled automatically if they do not adhere to their platform. The Senate, the office of Presidency, and the Supreme Court declared unnecessary and disbanded. No more family dynasties holding power for generations. Ideally DC will become an American Versailles --a ghostly tourist destination, maintained only for revenue to support a skeleton national budget. Its buildings and monuments allowed to remain standing as a reminder of how easily power corrupts if left unchecked and unattended by the people.
We're seeing Thucydides Trap play out in real time. The Hegemon will never give up until it is soundly defeated. I often wish that China and Russia would really lock forces, destroy the Hegemon, and be done with it.
Thanks, Caitlin for sharing your perceptions - so wise.
I am copying my Telegram post about your article:
Caitlin Johnstone may now be my favorite wordsmith. And if I hadn't gotten active on SubStack I wouldn't be aware of her. - "Westerners are "free" in the same way "free range" chickens are free; sure the door's technically open and they can technically go outside, but they're conditioned never to do so. Western so-called liberal democracy purports to offer freedom while in practice only offering the illusion of freedom." - Caitlin Johnstone, #SoTrue
She tackles the problem of 'pedestal people' as I call them - Western media makes a dichotomy of 'These are super evil people we have to hate and malign verbally daily', and 'These are the super wonderful awesome leaders that can do no wrong and who will magically save the day like super-heroes.' // This is something that happened to me, I saw it first-hand from a "What is going on?" perspective. I was 'elevated' by the controlled media and made into a pedestal person larger than life and superhero ready to save the day - and I knew I had skills but was just a person with no money and not much experience in public speaking beyond nutrition counseling. I foresaw that I was going to be pushed off the pedestal at some point. I just didn't foresee how thoroughly it would happen and how it would never end. I expected the 15 minutes of fame & then people get bored and move on style - instead the secrecy has kept it an intriguing insider joke and opportunity to have an approved of scapegoat to bash for social credit with their own fans.
Caitlin's post about double dichotomies - #veryimportant. We have a both sides problem - both R's and D's include some of the child abusing cover-up blackmailer league. And the agencies likely have more because they can stay there and not have to get re-elected every few years. https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/they-keep-us-focused-on-decoy-dichotomies
...You right 100%, but ?.... simply, education!(G. Carlin) , system is broke by Gerry Spence (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJ6oxkqJzfw&t=8s) , fat people do not strike !! ( limited mobility, itentional obesity of population, leads to lethargy) , as long as they have !> Now that no one buys our votes, the public has long since cast off its cares; for the people that once bestowed commands, consulships, legions, and all else, now meddles no more and longs eagerly for just two things - bread and circuses. for some reason I woul add beer too! JUVENAL, strange how History, remind me of 'humans' faulty chromosomes !....NO CURE , ''we'' are long time condition for this!.....
"Here I can criticize my government ... for not more closely aligning itself to the policies that the media and financial elites want, and which their army of trolls is pushing."
Burn more coal to savez Youcrane!!! Free people from being Putin puppets by liberating them with a bullet! Sending more weapons to Ukraine is like a BLM/LBGTQ parade, because I get a dopamine rush from reading about either!
Why do all large governments prioritise the wishes of the 1% globalist kleptocratic power-addicts rather than the populations they are elected to represent?
Simple. Whoever owns the economy has the power to buy governments, lawmakers, and the judiciary.
So the root cause to all corruption is the fact that the general population do not directly own and control the majority of the resources to produce wealth.
Why don’t more of us refuse to work for or buy from the 1% globalists, instead either working for ourselves with debt-free resources, or joining others to build democratic business enterprises?
If we did, politicians would answer to us rather than the current owner class (as WE would be the owner class).
I liked the line about how free range chickens basically all love being held captive; how people who don't criticize their government but think they have the right to do so are not thinking at all. Bravo!
But in the U.S., it was not possible to criticize:
* Ukraine being run by a rich con artist who is a puppet;
* The vaccine;
* Masks;
* The weeks it takes to run an "election" until the Democrats win;
* Woke anything;
* BLM;
* The videos that were almost immediately scrubbed from the internet where the cops let in the January 6 protestors;
and a bunch of other Soviet-Style agitprop.
It's as if Goebbels runs our media.
I am really sick of our corporatist, censorship-laden, fascist government, which is now run by a lifelong groomer, Joe Biden.
I would love any progressive who came along and condemned the U.S. funding Ukraine, and wanted this hellish war over with.
I've been thinking a lot about all of the lies we get told by: the legal and medical profession. And how many public schools are indoctrination camps that teach nothing useful. And how our media--PMSNBC and Fox--are 99% garbage. It's all soy globalism with them: they want us fat, sick, isolated, depressed, stupid, and poor. They want to extract as much economic value from us as possible, and then they want us dead. And when they kill us, they'll do it in the name of the environment. They won't mean it, our large corporations, but they'll say it.
The antidote is for us not just to wake up, but for us to create parallel societies, like the Czechs did in the 1980s. Those parallel systems helped collapse their dictatorship.
Be free.
I think you should change this whole thing to state a majority of westerners. Otherwise you are stereotyping everyone of us. There are actually thinkers in the working classes. We just get banned, stuck down the news feeds, silenced, hacked, trolled, psyoped bullied, gaslit, invalidated. Benefit bashed, poverty primed. Persecuted, discriminated on. Our rights removed. Frankly if I was abled and wealthy enough and secure enough I would go live elsewhere but as I’m disabled and a none intellectually disabled autodidactic autistic with a cauda equina risk I’m trapped in this Sh*thole with a multitude of fascists and Nazi robot sheep. I’m always criticise protest campaign sign petitions etc etc to the detriment of my health. I see you on Mewe. I despise the war machine the corruption, paedophilia scamming capitalistic greed and austerity and crushing of public economies and the injustice and other peoples apathy shallowness and ignorance. There is that strongly worded enough for you. 🤣🤣🥰🥰
Prior to the Trump years I always thought that left wing sites maintained an objectivity which was compelling and interesting to read, and that was true for many years. Once Trump came into office many of those sites lost their independence and objectivity, like the Intercept, like Alternet, and Common Dreams, etc, so there were very few sites one could reference to get the news and get an objective perspective on things. Greenwald left the Intercept because they wouldn't let him publish information on Hunter's lap top, and there was a lot of contention over Russia-gate. Risen a highly respected journalist was a real Trump hater which blurred his perspective as it did with Jeremy Scahill . Video: Glenn Greenwald and James Risen Debate the Trump/Russia Investigation. Another example is Greenwald having to defend the Mueller report to David Cay Johnson on Democracy Now who also went off track during the Trump years, and I think Amy Goodman did as well. Interesting how so many who prided themselves on their objective reporting lost it, and I wonder why. Robert Parry never did, and unfortunately he died in 2017. I truly miss him. Even Chomsky went with Trump hate. I could name others, but I won't. Of course the democrats used Trump to generate a great divide in this country and they continue to do so. Democrats and their policies good, republican policies bad. When you turn things to black and white like America good, Russia bad, or use hate to discredit an opponent the world becomes a more dangerous place, and I wonder if so many didn't implement Trump hate we would be living in such a dangerous world, as we are now. Some who reference themselves as independent and objective journalists will acknowledge on some level Obama's role in orchestrating a coup in Ukraine using the driving neo-nazi force behind it, but soften that with he didn't send weapons to Ukraine and focus on the treaties broken by Trump, and the weapons sent, which is equally disingenuous, and highly biased since they don't acknowledge the highly prejudicial atmosphere the democrats and press thrust him into. Maybe they should have a chat with Chomsky who claims Trump is the only Western Statements who could help to resolve the conflict in Ukraine.
They Keep Us Focused On Decoy Dichotomies -- https://substack.com/inbox/post/84405554
20 year Afghan’s gravy train was promptly replaced by Ukraine gravy train – to immense joy of both party and media “elites” happily grunting together at SAME donor feeding through
Gen X kids remember nights in bed worrying about sudden blinding atomic flashes, their family vaporized by the nuclear blast. Less than a generation later those same kids aren’t thinking about the horrors of feckless Armageddon. What changed?
Somewhere along the line, something’s been lost. Some connection to the world... I don’t know.
Agree that individual worship is foolishness. But communism don’t work either, and creates the worst atrocities even faster. Capitalism, where prices are set according to individual desires, coupled with strong antitrust and tort systems seems to provide the best chance at a decent life.
They make US Americans to feel the freedom of choice the same way they usher them into a buffet of bullshit so they can gorge themselves with a variety of bullshit and burp on their freedom to die early.
A week ago I had to laugh at a living example of what you are talking about here: We were at a free public Museum in Los Angeles, California with signs asking to stop the US embargo on Cuba. An old couple told us we were lucky to be against the government in the USA because here we enjoyed freedom of speech while immediately he made sure we were escorted out of the museum!
The first step in the right direction would be to start dissolving almost everything at the federal level. Government and lawmaking needs to be returned exclusively to the states. Anything beyond that is ineffective and invites usurpation of the people's will. Eliminate the political party system as it only creates discord, distraction and division. Eventually we need to have anonymous state elections based on a candidate's platform only. One 2 yr term maximum, to be recalled automatically if they do not adhere to their platform. The Senate, the office of Presidency, and the Supreme Court declared unnecessary and disbanded. No more family dynasties holding power for generations. Ideally DC will become an American Versailles --a ghostly tourist destination, maintained only for revenue to support a skeleton national budget. Its buildings and monuments allowed to remain standing as a reminder of how easily power corrupts if left unchecked and unattended by the people.
We're seeing Thucydides Trap play out in real time. The Hegemon will never give up until it is soundly defeated. I often wish that China and Russia would really lock forces, destroy the Hegemon, and be done with it.
Thanks, Caitlin for sharing your perceptions - so wise.
I am copying my Telegram post about your article:
Caitlin Johnstone may now be my favorite wordsmith. And if I hadn't gotten active on SubStack I wouldn't be aware of her. - "Westerners are "free" in the same way "free range" chickens are free; sure the door's technically open and they can technically go outside, but they're conditioned never to do so. Western so-called liberal democracy purports to offer freedom while in practice only offering the illusion of freedom." - Caitlin Johnstone, #SoTrue
She tackles the problem of 'pedestal people' as I call them - Western media makes a dichotomy of 'These are super evil people we have to hate and malign verbally daily', and 'These are the super wonderful awesome leaders that can do no wrong and who will magically save the day like super-heroes.' // This is something that happened to me, I saw it first-hand from a "What is going on?" perspective. I was 'elevated' by the controlled media and made into a pedestal person larger than life and superhero ready to save the day - and I knew I had skills but was just a person with no money and not much experience in public speaking beyond nutrition counseling. I foresaw that I was going to be pushed off the pedestal at some point. I just didn't foresee how thoroughly it would happen and how it would never end. I expected the 15 minutes of fame & then people get bored and move on style - instead the secrecy has kept it an intriguing insider joke and opportunity to have an approved of scapegoat to bash for social credit with their own fans.
Caitlin's post about double dichotomies - #veryimportant. We have a both sides problem - both R's and D's include some of the child abusing cover-up blackmailer league. And the agencies likely have more because they can stay there and not have to get re-elected every few years. https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/they-keep-us-focused-on-decoy-dichotomies
...You right 100%, but ?.... simply, education!(G. Carlin) , system is broke by Gerry Spence (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJ6oxkqJzfw&t=8s) , fat people do not strike !! ( limited mobility, itentional obesity of population, leads to lethargy) , as long as they have !> Now that no one buys our votes, the public has long since cast off its cares; for the people that once bestowed commands, consulships, legions, and all else, now meddles no more and longs eagerly for just two things - bread and circuses. for some reason I woul add beer too! JUVENAL, strange how History, remind me of 'humans' faulty chromosomes !....NO CURE , ''we'' are long time condition for this!.....
“ …the same tyrannical agendas march forward regardless of who sits in the White House.”
So Caitlin believes that there is a deep state?
"Here I can criticize my government ... for not more closely aligning itself to the policies that the media and financial elites want, and which their army of trolls is pushing."
Burn more coal to savez Youcrane!!! Free people from being Putin puppets by liberating them with a bullet! Sending more weapons to Ukraine is like a BLM/LBGTQ parade, because I get a dopamine rush from reading about either!
I think this line of comments has hit the finishing line.
Why do all large governments prioritise the wishes of the 1% globalist kleptocratic power-addicts rather than the populations they are elected to represent?
Simple. Whoever owns the economy has the power to buy governments, lawmakers, and the judiciary.
So the root cause to all corruption is the fact that the general population do not directly own and control the majority of the resources to produce wealth.
Why don’t more of us refuse to work for or buy from the 1% globalists, instead either working for ourselves with debt-free resources, or joining others to build democratic business enterprises?
If we did, politicians would answer to us rather than the current owner class (as WE would be the owner class).