It's Official: We Live In The U.S.S.A (United Sociopathic States Of America)
The US Is So Dysfunctional That The Best Counseling Won't Save The Average Citizen From Power Elites Quest To Harm Us For Profit
“Survival kit contents check. In them you'll find: one forty-five caliber automatic; two boxes of ammunition; four days' concentrated emergency rations; one drug issue containing antibiotics, morphine, vitamin pills, pep pills, sleeping pills, tranquilizer pills; one miniature combination Russian phrase book and Bible; one hundred dollars in rubles; one hundred dollars in gold; nine packs of chewing gum; one issue of prophylactics; three lipsticks; three pair of nylon stockings. Shoot, a fella' could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff.”
SLIM PICKENS - Maj. 'King' Kong in Dr. Strangelove
It’s really hot here in Florida.
It’s not completely atypical for there to be warm weather as Spring moves towards Summer, but the lack of rain, in comparison to this time last year (and I remember because I was desperately working between rainstorms to do a DIY roof repair at that time) is distressing. Just weeks ago we had plenty of drenching rain, the plants perked up, and this week temps are hitting the 90s. The plants are browning out and drooping. It gives me a sense of foreboding.
Drought is now a way of life. It’s part of the unaddressed Climate Crisis. These headlines are, at this moment, overshadowed by political controversy, the removal of women’s rights to bodily autonomy, and war. The naturally occurring events are distressing enough, but they are more so combined with deliberately engineered political and media chaos. All of us are like hapless marks at a pea under cup game on a gritty sidewalk in New York City. We think we know which cup the pea is under, but then, the razzle-dazzle begins, and the cups are shuffled so fast, that we end up dizzy and completely uncertain, and predictability for the outcome is reduced to our best guess. Keeping the public uncertain, unsteady on their feet, and uninformed is a deliberate strategy.
You don’t have to look far to see the headlines: Drought is definitively affecting food production. In Idaho, a few short weeks ago, an orchard owner/farmer named Mike Williamson said: “I don’t know that there’s a single thing, either from my own personal household or for the farm that isn’t more expensive than it was last year.”
This isn’t isolated to the United States of course. President Biden’s overreach on financial sanctions is going to do irrevocable damage to hungry populations in Europe and elsewhere. Russia produces 30 percent of global wheat exports, which are now cut off with the imposition of sanctions. Russia also is one of the world’s largest producers of critical fertilizer, also, of course, banned. Punishing Putin is one thing, but the consequences of financial sanctions have far-reaching negative effects, mainly, an increase in hunger and starvation, and not just in Europe. Social unrest, rioting, and chaos are inevitable.
I went to ALDI last night and saw a 25 percent increase in my typical grocery budget. Increasing inflation is also now a way of life, part of the “new normal” I suppose. Because Russian oil is also subject to export bans, much of Europe, as Winter inevitably approaches, will be freezing. Biden has asserted that the gaping deficit left by this embargo can be made up for by shipping Natural Gas from the US back to Europe. This is not only more expensive but completely impractical, as the US is already stretched in its capacity to export. We’re maxed out. Never mind that, as is the case with most government folly, the details remain undisclosed.
How the plan to fill the void left by Russian oil bans would work in a practical application doesn’t matter, because we’re defending democracy again. The American President and his NATO allies are insistent, in a global economy whose very systemic structure and function is based on interdependence, that Europe, like a drug addict, must be “weaned” off of Russian oil. The only difference is cheaper and plentiful methadone, in the form of American Natural Gas exports to ease the pain and withdrawals, won’t be available. The average European citizen, not global elites and politicians, will feel the pain of this “Cold Turkey” enforced “rehab”.
The US and Western nations, as they create this chaos, also are implementing even deeper levels of the same with the lack of response to COVID. The “strategy” if there ever was one, is the pretense of “Victory”, returning to “living your best life”, and the assumption that people can make individual decisions to protect public health at their whim and discretion.
The US just passed a grim milestone: One Million Plus Deaths Due to COVID, with at least half, if not more, under the current administration. This has been barely acknowledged by the media and government, but when it is acknowledged, it’s only because a million people is just a nice round number. The continued pain and suffering from the ignored effects of Long COVID, the grief of kids without parents who died from COVID, the anxiety of parents with children under 5 who still can’t get them a vaccine, and the widows without husbands, are simply folded into 15 seconds of trite, fake hand wringing, by a corporate media that bemoans that 1,000,000 deaths are “unfathomable”, but smile and quickly move on to other numbers: war funding and the stock market. The 24-hour news hole is a voracious beast that needs to be filled, and details hold no one’s attention for long.
There is no better example of governmental sociopathy than the recent mask free, filtration-free, “Hunger Games” style circus known as The White House Correspondents Dinner. This orgy of wealthy politicians, celebrities, and elites, crammed into a venue devoid of masking and air filtration is surreal. The sponsors of the dinner even went as far as refusing free modifications to the venue’s air filtration system! As with previous occasions, jokes in poor taste were made at the expense of people who continue to suffer due to US policies at home and abroad. There is no better example of this than the occasion when another wartime President, GW Bush, and The First Lady, joked about stopping tyranny and not being able to find weapons of mass destruction.
Comedian/Actor Trevor Noah, the latest in a rotating wheel of comedic hosts for the WHCD was apparently a huge hit. This was in no small part due to his experience as a seasoned performer, but more importantly, because he didn’t cross the line and use this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to speak actual truth to power. The gushing praise he lavishly gifted to a gaggle of corporate media hacks and political stenographers was sincerely delivered, but ironically, far removed from actual reality.
Noah could have mentioned that press freedom was more on the line than ever, especially for Independent journalists who have been jailed, censored, and demonetized, but instead, he chose to remain in the career protecting safety bubble of polite decorum, talking about the “courage” of corporate talking heads and foreign correspondents. The thought occurred that his colleague, and former host of The Daily Show Jon Stewart, may have spoken out on this hypocrisy in a similar situation as he has done for victims of the 9/11 rescue workers.
Journalists like Julian Assange remain imprisoned for revealing government subterfuge and atrocities, Journalist Chris Hedges and his archive of shows on RT were disappeared, and whole news organizations, who actually DO speak Truth To Power, like Mint Press News and Consortium News are, as documented in a recent article by journalist Matt Taibbi, (linked above) now being financially sanctioned.
As Taibbi notes: “While companies like Facebook, Google, and Twitter at least occasionally explain why prominent accounts have been suspended, neither PayPal nor the ADL will comment about how suspensions and confiscations of companies like MintPress and Consortium fit into their efforts to head off “criminal activity.” I reached out this week not just to the media relations offices of PayPal and the ADL, but to figures quoted in last year’s announcement, including ADL’s Jonathan Greenblatt and PayPal Chief Risk officer Aaron Karczmer, getting no response anywhere.
The ADL’s silence is particularly galling because some of the suspended accounts have written extensively about neo-Nazi movements not just in Ukraine, but in the U.S. and in other countries, including Russia. MacLeod only just recently published a thread on the Nazi symbols worn by soldiers on both sides of the Ukraine conflict:”
If there is any good news in these scenarios, it’s within the exclusive, elite domain of the companies that make up the Military-Industrial Complex. In a Psy-Op that closely resembles the tough-talking, but clearly insane dialog of the Slim Pickens character in the movie “Dr. Srangelove”, Major “King” Kong, there is no doubt that the US is fully, actively involved in the war in Ukraine.
Diplomacy is clearly no longer possible, as massive amounts of weapons flowing into Ukraine are sanctioned by both Biden as Commander-In-Chief, and a compliant Congress, who know who butters their bread. With the 2022 midterms months away, especially.
The bizarre, in-person visitations to Ukraine, almost like audiences with The Pope, see US military advisors and Congresspeople stream in on weekend visits to pay tribute to Zelensky. The US is not alone in offering these tributes. The fawning and sycophantic propaganda is then echoed and rehashed by a willing and compliant media. In Schiff’s case, his dream of fighting Russia in Ukraine (over there) so we don’t fight them in America (over here) is now fully realized with across the board, bipartisan support.
These visits are obviously staged propaganda, and unsettling at that. The depictions of the progress of the war according to the “courageous” US corporate media is that Russia is in unrelenting, brutal attack mode, yet, online depictions of downtown Kyiv, as in the photo above, or the refugee hub of Lviv, where tens of thousands are supposedly passing through to Poland, are surprisingly tranquil. House Democratic leader Pelosi is serenely and casually walking in the open and smiling, and the actor Angelina Jolie casually strolls into a coffee shop in Lviv, allegedly as a UN envoy.
The point is this: for a hub where thousands are passing through in allegedly desperate flights, in a war zone with compromised infrastructure, this is surprisingly casual.
In the meantime, citizens on Twitter and other media outlets react with justified skepticism, anger, and alarm, at a President who has failed the United States in terms of social benefits, policies, and public health, in order to serve the elite campaign donors of the Military-Industrial Complex that profit from his war policies. Just a day ago, Biden flew to Lockheed Martin in Troy, Alabama, again, with overtones of a religious pilgrimage, to “Thank You, Thank You, Thank You” for the corporations’ willingness to help turn Ukraine into a warzone and potential nuclear hot spot. Keeping with mainstream Democratic messaging and virtue signaling, with an extra helping of identity politics, an African American, female missile assembler “steals the show”. After all, without the entertainment value, you can’t really sell death and war as a positive, can you? Missile launchers, American flags, and cheering abound. This is the Democrat’s version of Blue MAGA.
The woman warms up the crowd with hyper enthusiasm that her efforts have helped directly: “I have touched every single one of the 50,000 JAVELIN missiles that have been built in Troy. FIFTY THOUSAND!” she screams in triumph, as the crowd madly cheered in support, as if the end result of all this has no grievous and tragic consequences. Sociopathy implies I suppose, a certain level of disconnection and denial.
The President grabs the woman’s hand in a symbolic gesture of victory and shared partnership. I can almost hear Biden saying Lady, you provide me those JAVELINS, and I’ll make sure there’s a war to use them in. No “courageous journalist” is there, of course, to push back on the narrative, otherwise, the very existence of corporations like Lockheed Martin and Raytheon would be called into question. They manufacture death, and that is simply not something that can be brought to the conscious attention of the public. The narrative must remain platable for public consumption.
I was a teenager when I first saw and laughed at the comedic actor Larraine Newman in the classic first seasons of Saturday Night Live. That seemed like a far more innocent time. I was struck by a sobering, and philosophical tweet she posted. I haven’t been able to think of much else. This distress is cross-generational. We can only hope that there are enough reasonable people with humanitarian motives to save us from disaster.
Update 05/08/2022 : As I mentioned above, the sacrifice demanded of Europeans by Biden and NATO to go “Cold Turkey”, and cut themselves off from Russian Oil is already receiving pushback, according to this article from antiwar.com Hungary’s Prime Minister Orban compared it to dropping an “atomic bomb” on Hungary’s economy.
“On Friday, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said the EU was dropping an “atomic bomb” on Hungary’s economy by trying to ban Russian oil in its next round of sanctions.
The EU on Wednesday proposed a plan that would phase out the use of Russian oil by EU members by the end of 2022. Due to Hungary’s objections, Budapest would have until the end of 2023 to phase out Russian oil, but Orban has rejected the plan.
“This is an atomic bomb they want to drop on the Hungarian economy,” Orban said. The EU has already enacted a phased ban on Russian coal, and Orban said the bloc shouldn’t go further than that.
“They have crossed this red line, coal may not affect Hungary. But they just keep coming, you have to stop here,” he said. According to the International Energy Agency, nearly 60% of Hungary’s oil imports in 2021 came from Russia.”
Additional Update 05/06/2022: Consortium News permanently banned without reason by PayPal :
“ PayPal said it mistakenly informed Consortium News that its account could be restored, saying instead it was shut forever, without ever giving any reasons for it, reports Joe Lauria.”