We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Monday, April 13, 2020

Posts that I especially recommend today: Monday, April 13, 2020

This article contains the secret of the success of American capitalism, which has established the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire, and the US capitalist ruling class dominance of the world while maintaining a "humanitarian" and "democratic" image throughout much of the world. In the micro world of the Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier illustrates this carefully hidden secret.
The secret is revealed when you substitute the "pentagons bureaucracy" with America's capitalist ruling class. The secret of the latter's success is to provide ongoing management of what Caitlin Johnstone has described as control of the narrative, meaning the control of all major media corporations which provide daily news reports. Major media corporations, controlled by the ruling capitalist class, have served their masters by the re-engineering of people's consciousness of economic and political issues.
Although the capitalist ruling class (typical of all ruling classes) has from the birth of the USA (read my commentary here) has imposed their views on the rest of the population, this process of the "control of the narrative" process started deliberately and consciously by the ruling class right after WWII with the propaganda of the "Iron Curtain", attacks on labor unions, and elimination of left-wing dissenters among the Hollywood film industry. The secret and unaccountable CIA led these attacks and they have continued ever since then comprehensively among all institutions. (Read my commentaries here and here for further clarification.)
When the ship's captain (Crozier), with concern for the health of his 4000 man crew, sent a letter urging immediate action to evacuate sailors from the ship, he was summarily removed from his command by the Pentagon's bureaucracy (intimately connected to the ruling class). But the latter thought more about it and the large number of sailors involved, after which they concluded that this was too much of a threat to their legitimacy and their "control of the narrative" that they "chickened out" by removing the Sec. of Navy who fired Crozier. Thus is revealed the secret of their success: they won't allow anything to damage their control of the narrative that in the USA "democracy" and "humanitarianism" reigns. The Pentagon, which serves the ruling class and probably at the latter's direction, thought that the action of the Sec. of the Navy might stir up a storm of reaction among ordinary people of the US. They worried about 4000 sailors writing home to their parents, sisters, brothers, and sweethearts about the callous disregard for their health. If this ship had substantially fewer sailors, the ruling class would not have intervened.
Thus is illustrated the success of America's ruling class and its ideological control. They have opted for a soft fascism. They will not invoke harsh and open authoritarian measures to crush any opposition, but they nevertheless will succeed in controlling their population by controlling the narratives of sizeable minorities and majorities. This explains why sizeable, but less influential dissidents are not punished in any way, but highly influential whistleblower individuals like Julian Assange are. However, the ruling class's control of the narrative insures that their citizens, and much of the world, falsely believe that freedom of political dissent like all civil liberties is very much alive in the USA.
  • Brave New Normal by C. J. Hopkins from his weblog Consent Factory, Inc. (satire)