Sam Kriss has composed an overly-retweeted essay on the psychology of nuclear annihilation. So I wanted to take a stab at examining how such perversity might come to be in the here and now. Last December, Zerohedge reported on Obama quietly signing the loaded with ramifications Countering Disinformation And Propaganda Act into law over X-mas. They detail how the bill was curiously proposed months before “fake news” had so strongly entered the public discourse, and their closing paragraph uncharacteristically sums up everything else nice and tidy-like:
And so, with the likes of WaPo having already primed the general public to equate “Russian Propaganda” with “fake news” (despite admitting after the fact their own report was essentially “fake”), while the US media has indoctrinated the public to assume that any information which is not in compliance with the official government narrative, or dares to criticize the establishment, is also “fake news” and thus falls under the “Russian propaganda” umbrella, the scene is now set for the US government to legally crack down on every media outlet that the government deems to be “foreign propaganda.”
Just like that, the US Ministry of Truth is officially born.
The most dangerously idiotic presumption of this is the idea that any commercial media is not already under the rule of thumb by the federal government. Where was the mainstream dialogue about the Pentagon losing 6.5 trillion dollars? Where was the mainstream dialogue discussing how the finally released 28 pages of the 9/11 Commission Report validated the theory of the government not only knowing about Saudi involvement beforehand, but actively shielding them after the fact? Where is the mainstream dialogue about America currently fighting as many as 74 different foreign wars? Where will the mainstream dialogue be regarding Israel’s giving the finger to the United Nations over not being endorsed to continue ethnic genocide?
The German government in Berlin was also passing similar reactionary legislation, announcing plans to establish a center of defense against fake news. This as well assumes that any group outside of western media can seriously compete in mass-producing and applying fake news on par with the propaganda of the west. Like down-playing how America has never truly been on the defensive anywhere around the globe in decades, arguably not since its own Civil War, or how what most nations experience as threats tend to be crafted and curated by the business interests of the American government. The propaganda is so strong virtually every corporate media news outlet craves it more and more like a drug addiction.
With John Pilger’s provocative film The Coming War on China still fresh on my mind, let’s use nukes as an example. In recent weeks many voices online showed deep distress over the term apparently existing in President Trump’s lexicon. Yet some argued that Obama was given a free pass for throwing a magically spare trillion dollars towards updating America’s nuclear armaments. I would argue that the only persons who gave Obama a pass were war-hawks who could look at that and still convince themselves that he had done nothing but cripple the military. In spite of maintaining and strengthening the American military presence existing in more nations than not, and primarily on stolen lands.
Despite spending a tenth as much on its own military, it is widely believed that Russia possesses more nuclear weapons than does the United States, although the states dominate in every other way, such as ten aircraft carriers to the lone Russian carrier. As nuclear warhead-carrying missiles currently run at just under two million a pop, that spare trillion should do far more than level the playing field. But China actually has the second largest military on the planet, even though it receives about a third of the funding of the American military. Yet we persist with the notion that keeping nuclear arms is a valid determent from their use. There are approximately a dozen nation-states on Earth who have nukes now that did not have them when America deployed atomics in World War Two. Nothing was deterred. As seen with gang wars, holy wars and certainly among the current nuclear powers, determent inevitably leads to escalation. And as such, weapons stockpiled as determent is a mythology. Any uncritical discussion of nukes as a determent proves only the effectiveness of state-sanctioned propaganda, the same exact state-sanctioned propaganda which the American government has now made even easier to accomplish.
As Pilger conveyed, decades of radiation tests performed on the peoples of the Marshall Islands confirm which government is susceptible to the idea that using nukes is doable. While America is the only proven nuclear threat, America’s already state-sanctioned media readily misinforms its audience that they are the real victims being threatened. Everybody awaits any validating evidence for the Countering Disinformation And Propaganda Act, while the CIA itself has a long and costly track record for media manipulation both domestic and abroad. Blaming outsiders for the nuclear terror the American government is responsible for is disinformation. Blaming outsiders for propaganda and fake news, which even if examples could be cited could not possibly match the known output of the American government, is disinformation. And it’s not like these facts are so difficult to come by. Americans just seem to prefer to be lied to. The contradictory nature of being totally exceptional but always at risk.
Meanwhile, the only ethical response all should ideally abide by:
“When I mount the scaffold at last these will be my farewell words to the sheriff: Say what you will against me when I am gone, but don’t forget to add, in common justice, that I was never converted to anything”
– H.L. Mencken