(Headline abbreviated, original headline: The Imperial Propaganda Machine: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix)
It's important to avoid fake news, Russian media or conspiracy theorists. We must only trust those reputable news
outlets who tell us that neoliberalism is working fine, that US foreign policy is perfectly sane, and that protests are
only happening in Hong Kong and nowhere else.
The difference between state media and western media is that in state media the government controls what information the
public is given about what's going on in the world in order to prevent political dissent, whereas in western media this
is instead done by billionaires.
Any attempt to understand the world which fails to take into account the fact that extremely powerful people are pouring
massive amounts of money and resources into manipulating your understanding of the world will necessarily result in a
distorted worldview.
Whenever news media reports unsubstantiated assertions from anonymous sources in government agencies, just mentally
insert "Here is something the government told us to tell you:" into the beginning of the report, because that's all
they're doing.
Russia and China haven't become any more of a threat to you than they were three years ago, yet you think about them
many times more often than you did back then. That's propaganda at work, FYI.
All the establishment loyalists you argue with are ever really saying is, "No! The TV would NEVER lie to me!"
Sometimes all I can do is stare in awe at the power and efficiency of the imperial propaganda machine. When I first
started this gig in 2016 Assange had way more support, from Berners, Greens, Trumpers, all across the spectrum. Now a
large amount of that support has been eroded. For Trumpers Assange is being extradited for his own good to bring down
the Deep State. For liberals he's a Russian asset. For leftists he's a rapist and fascist enabler. There's a narrative
for everyone, no matter where you are on the political spectrum. It's really impressive.
I love alternative media, but we're fucking idiots sometimes. You never see MSM doing our job for us, but we do their
job for them all the time by attacking other alternative media figures, circulating CIA/CNN narratives about targeted
nations and targeted individuals, etc. The only reason to ever do mainstream media's work for them is if you're looking
for a job in MSM. If you actually want to participate in alternative media it's your job to make things harder for
establishment narrative managers, not easier. They get paid enough to do their own work.
Dominant power structures are corrupt beyond the possibility of salvation and humanity is driving itself toward miriad
cataclysmic disasters all at once, yet many are more worried about those who share their basic ideology but have
slightly different opinions. This is stupid.
There's no separation between the personal struggle to free yourself from untruth and the collective struggle to free
the world from untruth, in the same way there's no separation between an antibody attacking an individual pathogen and
the entire body recovering from a sickness.
Anyone who wants Silicon Valley oligarchs to censor the flow of information in any way is a drooling idiot.
MSM's official position appears to be that there is no ideological difference whatsoever between Bernie Sanders and
Elizabeth Warren, other than the fact that you have permission to elect Warren but not Sanders. Apart from that, though,
they're exactly the same.
There's a difference between Democrats and Republicans, in the sense that there's a difference between the jab and the
cross in boxing. The jab is often used to set up the more damaging cross, but they're both wielded by the same boxer,
and they're both punching you in the face.
The "feud" between mainstream Republican pundits and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez fits perfectly within the Overton window
of establishment-approved debate, and can therefore be safely ignored.
Remember when voters in 2016 were like "can we please have even one major candidate who doesn't have something seriously
wrong with them?", and the entire US political system was all "LOL nope," and then nobody burned that system to the
ground and flushed it down the toilet? Good times.
War is the worst thing in the world. It's worse than economic injustice. It's worse than the war on drugs. It's worse
than racism, xenophobia, homophobia and sexism. Those things are bad. War is worse. The priorities of leftists and
progressives should reflect this, as should the priorities of anyone who claims to care about their fellow humans.
Trump: I am ending wars!
Neocons/liberal hawks: Oh no it sure is bad and horrible that this isolationist president is ending all the wars!
Wars: [continue completely unabated]
Imagine someone coming up to you with a money jar saying "Excuse me, we're raising funds to build another military base
in Somalia, would you care to make a donation?" No one would ever knowingly put money toward such an endeavor. Yet
taxpayers do this unwittingly all the time.
Nobody comes out of the womb demanding to go to war. Left unmolested it would never occur to a normal human brain that
strangers on the other side of the planet need to have explosives dropped on them by overpriced airplanes. The problem
isn't democracy, it's propaganda.
Back when the wealthy had less wealth and ordinary citizens could support a family on a single income, the rich had a
concept called "noblesse oblige" meaning their status came with obligations to society. Now the wealth gap is much
greater, and the rich feel no obligation to anyone.
Less contempt for imaginary "Putin apologists", more contempt for actual billionaire apologists.
The narrative that Gabbard is preparing a third party run is revealing, in that there's zero evidence for it whatsoever
yet they keep bringing it up. It's literally just something pundits started saying in an authoritative tone of voice,
and it was magically transformed into accepted orthodoxy. It's a great illustration of how effective the establishment
narrative managers are; they can create the illusion of a fact out of thin air just by saying something over and over
again in an assertive tone.
Here's a crazy thought: If "the troops" are constantly feeling the need to commit suicide after doing what they've been
ordered to do while deployed, maybe what they're doing over there isn't so great and noble after all.
It sure is cute how we've known for years that the US and its allies armed actual, literal terrorists in Syria with the
goal of effecting regime change, yet the only Syria controversy we're ever allowed to acknowledge is whether there are
an adequate number of US troops there.
I'm still tripping on how we've been fed all these wildly different narratives about why the US needs a military
presence in Syria, from humanitarianism to Kurds to ISIS to Iran to Russia to chemical weapons to oil, yet this isn't
immediately extremely suspicious to everyone. I mean, if some guy was constantly calling me up and giving me a whole
range of wildly different reasons why he needs my bank account number, I'd immediately assume that what he actually
wants is my bank account number, you know?
So many of spiritual-type people's highest values would work fine in a world without sociopaths. Forgiveness, humility,
trust, seeing people's basic innocence, etc, they work fine until you run into a manipulator with no empathy. In this
world they require much more nuanced use.
Things are getting stranger and stranger. Things getting stranger and stranger is what it looks like when long-fixed
patterns begin to dissolve. For a species that has been on a trajectory toward self-destruction, patterns dissolving can
only be a good thing. We'll win this.
_________________________
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