Yesterday, I talked to Dick Price, a Vietnam War veteran, at the LA Progressive about the U.S. military, the Vietnam War, the all-volunteer military, media coverage, and why America just can’t stop making war.
When no one is held accountable for failure, when lies are used as the basis for killing, when war produces colossal profits for a select few, when Congress refuses to take responsibility for oversight, when war budgets keep climbing to the trillion dollar mark, it isn’t all that surprising that wars prove essentially endless as democracy withers.
One of my favorite bumper stickers has this message: If you think you can trust the government, ask an Indian (Native American). It’s a good reminder.
Lately, the mainstream media has warned us against conspiracy theorists. Against distrusting government and media narratives. And yet recently (and finally!) the Wall Street Journal came clean in an article that probed President Biden’s declining stamina and mental health. The article is recounted here with venomous humor by Jimmy Dore.
I wrote in 2019 that Biden’s debate performance then, with his rambling about turning on record players and the like, suggested a diminishing capacity to serve as president. Many people shared those concerns, but the Democrats carefully stage-managed Biden, keeping him largely in Covid lockdown as he ran for the presidency and won. Over the last four years, we’ve witnessed many, many episodes of Biden’s continuing decline, most clearly during his debate earlier this year with President-elect Trump. Yet, until that debate, and even after in some cases, we were told not to believe our lying eyes about Biden’s sorry performance.
Now, with lame duck Biden slowly making his way out the door (assuming he doesn’t lose his way), we’re finally being told by the Wall Street Journal that he really wasn’t up to the job for the last four years.
I wonder why people don’t trust the government?
Another example: Recently, the government “discovered” the U.S. military had 2000 troops in Syria, not the 900 or so that Pentagon spokespeople had been telling us about for the last couple of years. What happened? Where did these extra 1100 troops come from? Not only can’t the Pentagon pass a financial audit (seven straight years of failures!), it can’t even count its troops.
Of course, the Pentagon knew all along that it had 2000 or so troops in Syria. They simply lied to us, full stop.
Will anyone be called on the carpet and punished for this lie? Of course not. When you lie for the government, you get promoted. When you reveal truth to the American people (Edward Snowden, for example), you get punished.
So, while not everything is a conspiracy, it’s always a good idea to question authority. Incredibly, whether led ostensibly by Biden or Trump, the federal government is something less than trustworthy. And if you don’t believe me, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to explore the white man’s many broken promises to Native Americans.
Soon after Joe Biden took office as president in 2021, I remember hearing that his VP, Kamala Harris, was put in charge of immigration, informally known as the “border czar.” Yesterday, the House passed a resolution condemning Harris for her handling of the border crisis. Yet I’ve also been hearing from Democrats and the media that Harris never was the border czar, even as there’s plenty of video evidence of networks like ABC, CBS, and NBC referring to her using that term.
Denying that Harris was the border czar is a fairly small lie immersed in much larger sea of lies, and of course it’s a bipartisan effort. Donald Trump exaggerates and lies just to stay in shape. Democrats love to attack Trump for lying even as they lie themselves. Truly, it’s hard to run a government and a country when lies confuse every issue.
Another lie being told about Kamala Harris is that her candidacy is the result of democracy in action. She’s the people’s choice! Except almost nobody voted for her as a presidential candidate. She’s been elevated and selected by the DNC and the donor class. She is a packaged product of the so-called elites within the party, the very opposite of a candidate chosen by the people. And yet I’m told this packaged product is going to “save democracy” from Trump, who was actually selected as a candidate in a more democratic process.
Of course, there are far bigger and more serious lies than whether Harris was the border czar or whether she’s the people’s choice as the savior of democracy. U.S. troops’ deadliest enemies, I’d argue, are most often the lies told by the U.S. government, abetted and amplified by senior officers in the military. Think here of Iraq and Afghanistan, or go back further to Vietnam.
Daniel Ellsberg, truth-teller about the Vietnam War and so many other things
Knowing (or sensing/feeling) you killed for lies, or knowing your friends died for lies, is surely a contributing cause to a rash of suicides in the U.S. military today. The sacrifices and horrors of war may be eased by a “just” war, like World War II, but they are aggravated by unjust wars. And they are further aggravated when you try to get help through the VA only to be turned away or stonewalled.
All this is prologue to a note I received from a regular reader of Bracing Views about lies in America. I’ve decided to retain the profanity because it’s more than appropriate:
I don’t know about you, but I find it quite amazing that, despite decades of bold-faced lying about US wars, all of it proven and even reported in the NYT and other mainstream media, the narrative of the each subsequent war is always accepted as true, until it too is exposed as being nothing but lies.
Let’s look at the recent record:
1) Vietnam–exposed as nothing but lies by the Pentagon Papers.
2) Iraq–exposed as lies when the infamous WMD were never found and there was nothing found to back up the claim of links to Al Qaeda.
3) Afghanistan–exposed as pure fiction as revealed by the Washington Post “Afghanistan Papers” which said that “senior U.S. officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan throughout the 18-year campaign, making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable.”
Add to the above list the fact that the Mueller report investigating the Russiagate hoax came up with nothing, ZERO.
Currently, there are a couple of new false narratives duly reported by the mainstream media and, for the most part, swallowed by most people. First is the false narrative about the US war in Ukraine, that NATO expansion has nothing to do with it but rather was caused by naked Russian aggression and Putin’s plans to re-create the Soviet Union and take over the rest of Eastern Europe. Second, the false narrative that Israel is just defending itself against Palestinian terrorism rather than committing grotesque war crimes, completely ignoring the fact that the Israelis have been keeping the Palestinians under illegal occupation for over 50 years, since June 1967.
Lie after lie after lie after lie. And yet none of it matters. It is all sent down the memory hole as if it never happened. And then it is on to the next war, when the official narrative spewed out by the DC blob will once again be swallowed hook, line and sinker. It appears to be never ending. No matter how much lying is exposed, it simply does not matter.
I think it is pretty fucking amazing. What will it take to get people to come out of their coma and realize what the fuck is going on?
And keep in mind…..it has nothing to do with party affiliation. The lying is endemic, it’s in the DNA of the National Security State. Presidents come and go, but the lying for war-making never stops. And no one is ever held accountable either.
It’s pretty fucking impressive, when you think about it.
Keep this is in mind……one would think that, after this abhorrent track record, the appropriate response would be to assume that the narrative justifying the new war of the moment was not true and nothing but more of the same lying. But that NEVER happens. NEVER.
How is that possible? Is it just a serious form of denial? Is it due to mental illness? Is it just some perverted form of patriotism? In what other realm is it possible to lie non-stop and never be held accountable? Even worse, to continue to have credibility despite a track record of pathological lying?
A friend of mine pointed out that, in the old USSR, people knew that the official news on their TV every night was nothing but lies.
So, this begs the question: Which system is more pernicious and has more effectively brainwashed its people? The one where people are controlled but they are aware that they are being fed nothing but lies, or the one that is constantly lied to but the people still believe they are being told the truth?
To those keen insights, I made this reply:
Our [American] system of lying is better! We have state/corporate media too, it’s just more subtle and advertised as “free.” We have our own “Pravda” except it rarely tells the truth, unless that “truth” is in the interests of the powerful.
To which our BV keen reader replied:
Exactly. But to suggest that we have our own version of “Pravda,” only worse because it has the cover of supposedly being “free,” is tantamount to treason, you realize.
This is the reason why Julian Assange/Wikileaks was such a threat…for actually challenging the right of the National Security State to lie non-stop about its war making and never be exposed for its lying or held accountable.
Of course, that is exactly why Assange was locked away in prison for so long and tortured, not because he was spreading lies but because he was revealing truths.
And we can’t have that in America!
*My hearty thanks to this Bracing Views keen reader for allowing me to cite this. I always say I learn so much from my readers, and I mean it.
It’s election time in America, meaning there are plenty of candidates wishing we’d all play the sap for them. Don’t do it. Vote for those you believe in: candidates who are principled and have a record of taking bold stances and of telling the truth. People like Matt Hoh, who’s running for the Senate as a member of the Green Party in North Carolina.
Occasionally, I need to state the obvious, if only to remind myself of the realities of this world. All governments lie and all have their instruments of repression. The most dangerous government is most likely your own government, whatever country you live in, because that governing party has direct power over you, and also because you’re likely to have some allegiance to it, perhaps even some affection for it. As an American, for example, it’s far easier to play the patriot than to act as a dissident. The patriot gets applauded and rewarded; the dissident gets attacked and punished.
The U.S. government, like any other government, lies. Think of the Pentagon papers, the Afghan War papers, the “slam dunk” case of WMD in Iraq that were never found, and so on. All governments lie, as I.F. Stone said.
The message is simple: Always question authority, whether it’s Russian or Chinese or American. Be skeptical. Don’t play the sap. Make Humphrey Bogart proud.
The best way to combat disinformation is with more and better information. Censorship isn’t the answer.
The Biden administration has reached a different conclusion, creating a “Disinformation Governance Board” under the Department of Homeland Security. This “board” is headed by Nina Jankowicz, an unelected official and an apparent partisan hack. One example: she dismissed the infamous Hunter Biden laptop story as a “fairy tale” involving a “laptop repair shop”; it’s now been confirmed that Hunter’s laptop was real, and so too was that repair shop.
Democrats, of course, don’t have exclusive rights to censorship. Republicans always seem to be calling for books to be banned or education to be policed. But the real problem is much larger than partisan hackery and bickering. Efforts at censorship are all around us, couched as a way of protecting us from harmful lies and other forms of disinformation. Yet, as the comedian Jimmy Dore points out, the government isn’t that concerned about protecting you from lies; it is, however, deeply concerned with denying you access to certain truths, truths that undermine governmental authority and the dominant narrative.
As a retired U.S. military officer and as a historian, the most insidious lies and disinformation I’ve encountered have come from the government. Consider the lies revealed by Daniel Ellsberg and his leak of the Pentagon Papers. Consider the war crimes revealed by Chelsea Manning, aided by Julian Assange and Wikileaks. Consider the lies revealed in the recent Afghan War Papers. Consider the lies about the presence of WMD in Iraq, lies that were used to justify the disastrous Iraq War. The government, in short, is a center of lies and disinformation, which is precisely why we need an adversarial media, one that is willing to ferret out truth. Instead, we’re being offered a governmental Ministry of Truth in the form of a “Disinformation Governance Board.”
All things being equal, a democratic society thrives best when speech is as free as possible, trusting in the people to sort fact from fiction, and sound theories from blatant propaganda. And there’s the rub: trusting in the people. Because the government doesn’t trust us (remember Hillary Clinton’s comment about all those irredeemable deplorables), even as the government is often at pains to mislead and misinform us. As maverick journalist I.F. “Izzy” Stone said, all governments lie. It’s truly nonsensical, then, to allow the government to police what is true and what is “disinformation.”
But don’t we need some censorship in the name of safety or security or mental health or whatever? Sorry: censorship is rarely about safety, and it most certainly doesn’t serve the needs of the vulnerable. Instead, it serves the needs of the powerful, those who already possess the loudest megaphones in the public square.
But doesn’t someone like Donald Trump deserve to be censored because he spreads disinformation? Which is the bigger problem: Trump or censorship? I happen to think Trump is a divisive con man, but it was a bad precedent for Twitter to have banned him from tweeting. The bigger problem wasn’t Trump’s tweets but the media’s obsessive coverage of them in pursuit of ratings. The way to combat a blowhard like Trump is to ignore him, and to correct him when needed. To combat his lies with the truth. We don’t need a governmental Ministry of Truth to police the tweets of a former president. Not when the government is often the biggest liar.
The solution isn’t censorship but an active, engaged, and informed citizenry, assisted by a fourth estate, the press, that is truly independent and adversarial to power. But the weakening of education in America, combined with a fourth estate that is deeply compromised by the powerful and often in bed with the government, means that these democratic checks on power are less and less effective. Hence calls for quick yet dangerous “solutions” like censorship, where the censors (governmental boards, private corporations) are opaque and almost completely unaccountable to the people.
Unless your goal is to give the already powerful a monopoly on speech, censorship is not the answer.
Readers, my memory here is a bit fuzzy, so please bear with me.
When I was at the Air Force Academy in the late 1990s, a British diplomat came to speak on Anglo-American policies and activities in the Middle East. A controversial subject was the “No-Fly” zone enforced by the U.S. Air Force as well as sanctions against Iraq, with the stated goal of encouraging the Iraqi people to overthrow Saddam Hussein. That overthrow never happened; instead, the U.S. military had to invade in 2003 with “shock and awe,” leading to war, insurgency, and torture that truly was shocking and awful.
I recall asking a question of the diplomat, a younger guy, slick and polished, probably a product of Oxbridge (and I had recently earned my D.Phil. from Oxford, so I knew the type). The gist of my question was this: Why are we continuing with sanctions when they appear not to be hurting Saddam but only ordinary people in Iraq?
The diplomat smoothly ignored the tenor of my question and instead praised Anglo-American resolve and cooperation in the struggle against Saddam and similar bad actors in the Middle East. I was nonplussed but I didn’t push the matter. I was in a classroom with a couple of dozen other AF officers and we were all supposed to be on the same team.
This all came back to me today as I listened to Army Colonel Douglas Macgregor at The Gray Zone. He recalled a British major asking similar questions of similar diplomats, but the British major went much further than I had in challenging the BS he was being fed. COL Macgregor quotes this major as saying the following in response:
If our cause is just, why do we have to lie about it?
Those words should be seared in the minds of all Americans at this perilous moment. I wish I’d had the clarity of mind and the confidence to say something similar, but I recall thinking that maybe I just didn’t know enough about what was going on in Iraq.
Of course, Madeleine Albright, asked on “60 Minutes” if the premature deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children due to sanctions was a price worth paying for Saddam’s eventual downfall, readily replied that yes, she believed this price was worth paying.
Her sociopathic calculation didn’t even work; only a massive U.S. invasion finally toppled Saddam, leading to yet more chaos and mass death in Iraq.
We need to stop lying to ourselves that America’s policies are generally noble and just or even morally defensible or forced upon us by a harsh and cruel world. In fact, perhaps that harsh and cruel world is exactly the one we’ve created for ourselves — and for so many others as well.
Americans may already be lying themselves out of what little remains of their democracy.
The big lie uniting and motivating today’s Republicans is, of course, that Donald Trump, not Joe Biden, won the 2020 presidential election. Other big lies in our recent past include the notion that climate change is nothing but a Chinese hoax, that Russia was responsible for Hillary Clinton’s electoral defeat in 2016, and that the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was necessary because that country’s leader, Saddam Hussein, had something to do with the 9/11 attacks (he didn’t!) and possessed weapons of mass destruction that could be used against the United States, a “slam dunk” truth, according to then-CIA Director George Tenet (it wasn’t!).
Those and other lies, large and small, along with systemic corruption in Washington are precisely why so many Americans have been driven to despair. Small wonder that, in 2016, those “deplorables” reached out in desperation to a figure who wasn’t a product of Washington’s mendacious Beltway culture. Desperate times engender desperate acts, including anointing a failed casino owner and consummate con man as America’s MAGA-cap-wearing savior. As the 45th president, Donald Trump set a record for lies that will likely remain unmatchable in its “greatness” — or so we must hope anyway.
Sadly, Americans have become remarkably tolerant of comfortable lies, generally preferring them to uncomfortable truths. Nowhere can this be seen more clearly than in the military realm that I’ve inhabited most of my life. The first casualty of war, so it’s said, is truth, and since this country has remained perennially at war, we continue to eternally torture the truth as well.
When it comes to war, here are just a few of our all-American falsehoods: that this country is slow to anger because we prefer peace, even if wars are often necessary, which is also why peace-loving America must have the world’s “finest” and by far the most expensive military on the planet; that just such a military is also a unique force for freedom on Planet Earth; that it fights selflessly “to liberate the oppressed” (a Special Forces motto) but never to advance imperial or otherwise selfish ambitions.
For a superpower that loves to flex its military muscles, such lies are essentially par for the course. Think of them, in fact, as government-issue (GI) lies. As a historian looking to the future, what worries me more are two truly insidious lies that, in the early 1930s, led to the collapse of a fledgling democracy in Weimar Germany, lies that in their own way helped to facilitate the Holocaust and that, under the right (that is, wrong) circumstances, could become ours as well. What were those two lies?
Germany’s Tragic Lies After World War I
During World War I, the German military attempted to defeat the combined forces of Britain, France, Russia, and later the United States, among other powers, while simultaneously being “shackled to a corpse,” as one German general described his country’s main ally, the Austro-Hungarian Empire. By the middle of 1916, the German Second Reich led by Kaiser Wilhelm II had, in essence, become a military dictatorship devoted to total victory at any cost.
Two years later, that same military had been driven to exhaustion by its commanders. When it was on the verge of collapse, its generals washed their hands of responsibility and allowed the politicians to sue for peace. But even before the guns fell silent on November 11, 1918, certain reactionary elements within the country were already rehearsing two big and related lies that would facilitate the rise of a demagogue and the onset of an even more disastrous world war.
The first big lie was that the German military, then considered the world’s finest (sound familiar?), emerged from World War I undefeated in the field, its troops a band of heroes covered in glory. That lie was tenable because Germany itself had not been invaded in World War I; the worst fighting took place in France, Belgium, and Russia. It was also tenable because its military leaders had lied to the people about the progress being made toward “victory.” (This should again sound familiar to contemporary American ears.) So, when those senior leaders finally threw in the towel in late 1918, it came as a shock to most Germans, who’d been fed a steady diet of “progress,” while news of serious setbacks on the Western Front was suppressed.
The second big lie followed from the first. For if one accepted the “undefeated in the field” myth, as so many Germans did, then who was responsible for the defeat of the world’s finest military? Not Germany’s generals, of course. Indeed, in 1919, led by Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, those same generals would maliciously claim that disloyal elements on the home front — an enemy within — had conspired to betray the country’s heroic troops. Thus was born the “stab-in-the-back” myth that placed the blame on traitors from within, while ever so conveniently displacing it from the Kaiser and his generals.
Who, then, were Germany’s backstabbers? The usual suspects were rounded up: mainly socialists, Marxists, anti-militarists, pacifists, and war profiteers of a certain sort (but not weapons makers like the Krupp Family). Soon enough, Germany’s Jews would be fingered as well by gutter-inhabitants like Adolf Hitler, since they had allegedly shirked their duty to serve in the ranks. This was yet another easy-to-disprove lie, but all too many Germans, desperate for scapegoats and undoubtedly bigoted as well, proved eager to believe such lies.
Those two big and insidious falsehoods led to an almost total lack of accountability in Weimar Germany for militarists like Hindenburg and General Erich Ludendorff who were significantly responsible for the country’s defeat. Such lies fed the anger and fattened the grievances of the German people, creating fertile ground for yet more grievous lies. In a climate of fear driven by the massive economic dislocation brought on by the Great Depression of 1929, a previously fringe figure found his voice and his audience. Those two big lies served to empower Hitler and, not surprisingly, he began promoting both a military revival and calls for revenge against the backstabbing “November criminals” who had allegedly betrayed Germany. Hitler’s lies were readily embraced in part because they fell on well-prepared ears.
Of course, a mature democracy like America could never produce a leader remotely like a Hitler or a militaristic empire bent on world domination. Right?
To read the rest of my article for TomDispatch.com, please click here. Thanks!
Note: In writing my book on Paul von Hindenburg, I was greatly helped by Dennis Showalter, a wonderful historian and a better friend. Dennis was remarkably generous to me and to so many other students of history. Dennis died at the end of 2019, and I miss his keen mind, his exceptional scholarship, but most of all his warmth and sense of humor. We joked that our work on Hindenburg represented a rare “bipartisan” collaboration between a Yankees fan (that’s him) and a Red Sox fan (that’s me). Thanks for everything, Dennis.
Dennis Showalter, a remarkable historian and a better friend
An increasingly common sight. This image is from the BLM protests in June. Note the POW/MIA flag below the American flag.
W.J. Astore
Remember when Trump said he wanted a military parade on the streets of Washington, D.C.? Looks like his dream’s come true, as the streets of Washington are filled with troops in preparation for Biden’s inauguration.
Biden’s message is supposed to stress “unity.” But unity for what? For single-payer universal health care? For an end to wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere? For much higher wages for workers? For a Green New Deal? “Unity” for “normalcy” is empty rhetoric of the worst kind. We need unity for policies that help the most vulnerable among us.
Republicans play to and favor their base. Democrats demobilize and betray their base.
Those rioters who stormed the Capitol — are they all lost causes? What would have happened if Obama had actually been a Progressive in 2008? What would have happened if Sanders had run against Trump in 2016? What I mean is this: Trump is offering a vision (even though it’s a lie) to his followers that mobilizes them. They want to “take back America,” but for the wrong reasons. What if Obama or Sanders (or someone like them) had offered a Progressive vision to “take back America”? But of course any meaningful economic reforms are blocked by the owners and donors of both parties, hence protest and its energy can be seized and directed in dark channels by charlatans like Trump.
Remember the old days when rulers — at risk of being killed or captured — led their troops into combat? And, if they refused to lead, were dismissed as cowards? We’re not living in those days.
Trump is the kind of schoolyard bully who instigates a fight but then stands on the sidelines, cheering and sneering until the teacher comes, after which he smirks and says, “It wasn’t me.”
I know 74 million Americans voted for Trump. But not all of them voted for all of the Trump circus. Many Republicans and Democrats are tribal voters — they’ll vote for their candidate no matter who he is and what he’s done. And I don’t blame all Trump voters for sticking with him when I consider the alternative choice of Joe Biden, a career pol who failed so miserably when he ran for president back in 1988 that he became a laughingstock in his own party.
I can only hope that Biden has learned something since 1988, when he stole speeches from Neil Kinnock and Bobby Kennedy and bragged he graduated near the top of his class on a full scholarship while winning a political science award. Fact is, he graduated near the bottom of his class on a half scholarship and won no such award. He also boasted about his IQ. He further falsely claimed to have participated in civil rights demonstrations and activism in the 1960s. (Bernie Sanders, by contrast, was arrested for his civil rights activism in the 1960s.)
More recently, Biden falsely claimed he’d been arrested while trying to see Nelson Mandela. In short, “alternative facts” won’t die when Trump leaves office.
All this is to say that Joe Biden is a typical politician, only more so. As Jimmy Dore says, politicians are not your friends; they are supposed to be public servants. It’s up to us to hold them to account, not to cheer for them. And if the Democratic party refuses to serve the people — as it likely will — a third party may be the only alternative.
Investigating the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion, physicist Richard Feynman reached a famous conclusion: “For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.”
The COVID-19 virus is not going to be fooled with lies. It’s not going to be fooled by a denial of medical science. You can’t “spin” the virus away with false information and happy talk. And this is precisely why President Trump (and indeed many other politicians) is uniquely unqualified to handle this crisis.
Trump is the man who sold us a fake university. Trump is the man who’s lied roughly 13 times a day since becoming president. Trump is a fantasist, a fabulist, a con man, a used car salesman, a huckster, an entertainer, take your pick. And he’s good at it. It’s a skill that got him to the White House. But it’s not a skill that works against the coronavirus.
The other day, I was listening to an interview with Noam Chomsky, and he made the point that Trump is a master propagandist. His skill is his shamelessness and sheer extent of his lying. Trump floods the market with lies, so much so that many people, and especially those sympathetic to him, lose the ability to tell truth from lies, fact from fiction. Politically, this helps Trump; but in meeting this medical crisis, it’s a skill that may cost America tens of thousands of lives, and, in worst-case scenarios, perhaps a million or more.
Living by the light of lies is a surefire way to get burned. Last night, I was reading Norman Mailer and came across this invaluable insight:
“Fascism is not a way of life but a murderous mode of deadening reality by smothering it with lies.”
The more lies we tell, the more we open ourselves to fascism. Mailer uses the word meretricious, which combines vulgarity with falseness and insincerity, and he proceeds to denounce our culture, our art, as sickening us because of its ugly dishonesty. (And Mailer was saying this in the early 1960s!)
Again, lies will not defeat COVID-19; they will only speed its spread through America. Lies will only kill us while smothering democracy.
Feynman was right: “Nature cannot be fooled.” So too was Mailer: As a leader, if you think you can deaden the reality of a pandemic with lies, you’re not thinking at all. You’re acting murderously instead.
Update (3/25): Our Dear Leader has decreed America will be open for business again by Easter. Don’t worry: the final decision will be based “on facts.”
They really felt they needed to add that coda: based on facts. And they did, because most of the Trump presidency has been based on lies.
Maybe my title should have been “The Coronavirus Feeds on Lies.” And we are giving it plenty to feed on.
Update (3/26): If America reopens by Easter with crowded churches and the like, prepare for lots of dead people, as this article and graph show (courtesy of the New York Times):
Social distancing for 14 days leads to 128 million total infections in the USA by October (curve on left). Social distancing for two months leads to 14 million total infections (curve on right). Trump appears to prefer the curve on the left in the name of boosting our economy. Which result would you choose as the leader of America?
In the South Carolina primary won on Saturday by Joe Biden, Tulsi Gabbard earned only 1.3% of the vote. Her poor showing was due in part to her outcast status among the Democratic establishment joined by mainstream media outlets like MSNBC and CNN. Speaking of CNN, I caught a few minutes of coverage last night during which its commentators confessed they couldn’t understand why Tulsi was still running. (Update: See my comment below for more details on this exchange.) One person (Anderson Cooper, the weasel) suggested she was angling for a job with Fox News. Of course, Tulsi’s principled opposition to regime-change wars and other disastrous U.S. foreign policy decisions went unmentioned. When her name is mentioned by the corporate-owned media, it’s usually in the context of the candidate most likely to succeed – in Russia.
By running in the election, Tulsi Gabbard continues to make an invaluable contribution: She highlights the power of the military-industrial-Congressional-media complex and its rejection of any candidate willing to challenge it. Gabbard’s status as a major in the Hawaii Army National Guard, her service in Congress on the House Armed Services Committee, her military deployments to Iraq: all of this is downplayed or dismissed. Meanwhile, Mayor Pete’s brief stint in Afghanistan is celebrated as the height of military service. What’s the difference between them? Mayor Pete plays ball with big donors and parrots talking points of the Complex – Tulsi doesn’t.
In a recent op-ed for The Hill, Tulsi yet again does America a service by calling out red baiting in America’s elections. Here’s how her op-ed begins:
Reckless claims by anonymous intelligence officials that Russia is “helping” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) are deeply irresponsible. So was former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s calculated decision Tuesday to repeat this unsubstantiated accusation on the debate stage in South Carolina. Enough is enough. I am calling on all presidential candidates to stop playing these dangerous political games and immediately condemn any interference in our elections by out-of-control intelligence agencies.
A “news article” published last week in The Washington Post, which set off yet another manufactured media firestorm, alleges that the goal of Russia is to trick people into criticizing establishment Democrats. This is a laughably obvious ploy to stifle legitimate criticism and cast aspersions on Americans who are rightly skeptical of the powerful forces exerting control over the primary election process. We are told the aim of Russia is to “sow division,” but the aim of corporate media and self-serving politicians pushing this narrative is clearly to sow division of their own — by generating baseless suspicion against the Sanders campaign.
Tulsi is right here – and she’s right when she says that:
The American people have the right to know this information in order to put Russia’s alleged “interference” into proper perspective. It is a mystery why the Intelligence Community would want to hide these details from us. Instead it is relying on highly dubious and vague insinuations filtered through its preferred media outlets, which seem designed to create a panic rather than actually inform the public about a genuine threat.
All this does is undermine voters’ trust in our elections, which is what we are constantly told is the goal of Russia.
She also accurately notes how the “corporate media will do everything they can to turn the general election into a contest of who is going to be ‘tougher’ on Russia. This tactic is necessary to propagandize the American people into shelling over their hard-earned tax dollars to the Pentagon to fund the highly lucrative nuclear arms race that the military-industrial complex craves.”
Tulsi Gabbard may not be in the democratic race much longer, but that’s not because she lacks guts. Indeed, her willingness to buck the system – and her commitment to making the world a less militaristic place – make her a notable candidate. She’s been a noble voice crying in a corrupt and self-serving wilderness.
Bracing Views 