But First, an Essential Explanation...
MY
APOLOGY FOR again breaking my no-more-politics promise. As I stated on 7
November 2022, my long-term intent is to repurpose this blog into an
anthology of age-appropriate autobiographical reflection and -- should
the project taking shape in my mind convince me of its worthiness for
print -- an effort at writing fiction, the latter a medium I abandoned
after Roberta Tyson, then a Viking Press editor, damned me in my mid-20s
as a presumptuous fool with no writing talent whatsoever.
The reasoning behind my attempt to divorce Dispatches from Dystopia
from politics is an apocalyptic truth that should be obvious to anyone
who's paying attention to the world beyond their cellphones and the
various other facilitators of fanatical self-obsession by which our
Masters keep us self-destructively shackled to the Ayn Rand variants of
nazism -- even as their secret-police vassals monitor our
ever-more-nazified malleability literally moment-by-moment.
And
what specifically is that apocalyptic truth? It is simply that
investigative reporting -- and thus all other forms of political writing
-- have become irrelevant.
Why?
Because the USian Empire has bred a new, utterly sociopathic subspecies
of human, apocalyptically incapable of empathy and thus purposefully
devoid of any and all of the cooperative instincts that sustained H. sapiens sapiens for at least 200,000 years.
From
this new subspecies, hybridized and conditioned as it is to maximum
heartlessness and sadism, our Masters have constructed an ecogenocidal
Moronic Majority, a population so subjugated it will obey without qualms
any order it is given, whether explicitly or implicitly, mass murder
most assuredly included. Thus it not only willingly inflicts the
innumerable atrocities mandated by the death-cult known as capitalism,
but greets them with the malignant glee exemplified by the swelling
Christonazi applause that now inevitably follows the ever-more-frequent
murders of Jewish people and any other humans our Masters target as
members of unwanted racial or sexual minorities.
In
this context, political writing is actually less energizing than the
proverbial pearls-before-swine. It is reduced to naught but delusion,
insanely repeated expression of the now entirely erroneous belief it
might yet somehow make things a bit better for those of us on the
ever-expanding rosters of targeted victims. It is especially useless in
realms such as yesteryear's Third Reich or today's USian Empire, each
defined by moral imbecility as their only allowable national ethos.
Therefore -- and I know this all too well -- the following dialogue will
improve nothing, and in that sense it is merely a squandering of effort
and electrons.
Nevertheless
it is also -- though only for those of us who embrace journalism not
merely as a job but as a way of life -- ethically mandatory.
From that one increasingly rare perspective, the suppression of an entire dialogue by Popular Resistance
early in the evening of 20 December 2022 is indeed blog-worthy, for it
illustrates better than any such obstacle I have yet encountered how the
pseudo-left collaborates with our Masters to perpetuate their
unprecedented, ever-intensifying tyrannies.
*********
Where Our Dialogue Was Going Before the Censors Shut Us Down
THE POST-CENSORSHIP remnants of that dialogue are to be found on the comment thread of "Chris Hedges: How the War Machine Took Over the Democratic Party," a thought-provoking interview with the gerrymander-ousted former congressman Dennis Kucinich.
My
suppressed response was to a poster who hides behind the pseudonym
“Calgacus.” For those unfamiliar with Roman history, the real Calgacus
was the apparently Pictish chieftain of a semi-mythical confederacy of
Celto-Pictish tribes who fought the Roman invaders c. 85 or 86 C.E. at a
now-unknown locale in northern Scotland the Roman historian Tacitus
labeled Mons Grapius; google "Calgacus" (without quotation marks) for additional details.
Because the anonymous poster's final response to me was also suppressed, I have invited him to re-post it here as a commentary.
For
contextual clarity, I am also re-posting the vital parts of the prelude
of our dialogue, text that remained uncensored as of 14:10 PST 21
December 2022. This material -- both the still-available text and the
subsequently suppressed parts -- is in italic, thus to easily
distinguish it from my post-censorship comments. Words and phrases
italicized in the original are indicated by underlining.
I wrote:
Actually, if one dares look at the historical record, the true "turning
point" was 22 November 1963, the murder of President John Fitzgerald
Kennedy, which future historians -- if indeed there is any human future
-- will undoubtedly recognize both as the date the charade of U.S.
democracy was ended forever and the date the "Democratic" (sic) Party was forever reduced to naught but the Fifth Column of our nazi-minded Masters.
"Calgacus" wrote: Kucinich
& I were referring to the change in the Congressional Democratic
party and the party in general. There isn't any doubt on this - that's
when they started taking corporate cash, instead of looking to unions
for support.
I
have to disagree about 1963 as a real turning point. Things just didn't
change much after that. Johnson continued Kennedy's policies, for good
and ill. Both were postwar cold-war liberals. Johnson managed to get a
lot of things done that Kennedy might not have been able to. The problem
was Vietnam, of course. I don't think the theories that Kennedy was
going to pull out are accepted and well-founded. It all seems like
romantic wishful thinking to me. The only thing for it is that JFK was
actually a combat veteran - which tends to make people more serious
about war.
Unquestionably,
the actual important global general turning point started in the 70s
and the capitalist empire using the oil crises to strike back, and
culminated in Reagan-Thatcher-Mitterrand welfare for the rich, austerity
for the working class...
I wrote: You're
flat wrong, Calgacus, about the real turning point: only hours after
President Kennedy was murdered, Lyndon Baines Johnson reversed JFK's
planned withdrawal from Vietnam and set the nation on its now-eternal,
follow the Original-Nazi-agenda juggernaut of perpetual war for global
conquest.
As
to the false notion Johnson "continued Kennedy's policies," that too is
cunning propaganda. LBJ seemed to do so, but as an OEO official c.
1971, I learned the hard way -- and resigned in protest -- the LBJ
variants of Kennedy's New Deal extensions were all cunningly designed
eyewash, with the mechanisms of their eventual failure carefully built
in. (Note: here I should have explained I resigned after a
superior informed me our true purpose was to foster the illusion of
progressive change while doing whatever we could to preserve the status
quo; for example, as had already occurred, by allowing the John Birch
Society to infiltrate, neutralize and eventually destroy Office of
Economic Opportunity programs ostensibly dedicated to bolstering labor
unions and revitalizing K-12 education.)
However,
to comprehend these terrible truths, one must first accept another
terrible truth: the fact that, beginning with the never-prosecuted,
too-rich-to-jail Bankers' Plot of 1933; accelerated by our Masters'
adoption of innumerable Original Nazi war criminals as brothers-in-arms
beginning in 1944; and fulfilled by the coup of 22 November 1963, the
intentional course of this Empire's owners has been and remains
fulfillment of Hitler's intent of global conquest, euphemized as "full
spectrum dominance" -- in other words, the wholesale embrace of truly
bottomless ecogenocidal Evil, no matter the human cost.
"Calgacus" wrote: By
turning point, I meant changes in people's daily lives. By that
meaning, the JFK assassination wasn't. The 70s-80s were. Chomsky for
instance and (typo) most historians are skeptical about the JFK planned
withdrawal etc. It sounds a lot like Camelot mythology, romantic,
wishful thinking. FDR's natural death had a lot more effect than the
assassination.
That
Johnson continued and enacted progressive "socialist" policies is not
false, but a matter of fact. Kennedy didn't get much through Congress.
LBJ did. Did new voters after the Voting Rights Act only seem to vote?
Did Medicaid & Medicare only seem to provide health care to
millions?
Their
design was not perfect. Galbraith & Minsky, backed by some unions
gave better plans for the Great Society, but they might have been harder
to enact. That's life. I don't know of any comparison of Kennedy's
plans with Johnson's legislation. Intellectuals should remember, but
hardly ever do, how easy - and how useless - it is to favorably compare
dreams to reality.
This sort of thinking is absolutely wrong- even if it's right:
"Calgacus" quoting me: "The
LBJ variants of Kennedy's New Deal extensions were all cunningly
designed eyewash, with the mechanisms of their eventual failure
carefully built in."
Even
if true, so what? Who cares? Everything on heaven and earth has its
mechanism of failure built in. What can be built in, can be taken out.
If
one is cunning enough to see cunning eyewash, one can expose it and
change things. This sort of stuff locates all agency in "the
conspirators", "the masters". It's nonsense. It's what "the masters"
WANT everyone to believe.
Likewise,
"masters" is a locution they WANT you to use. "They" are just a--holes,
idiots. Frederick Schuman used "morons & madmen" for such "leaders"
of the 30s-40s. Just learned that FDR similarly said "demons &
dim-wits". :-)
On
the plus side, where we likely agree, one thing that is forgotten is
just how "liberal", how "socialist" the 60s era at its best was...
***
I Replied; "Calgacus" Answered; and the Censors Hit the Kill Switch
I wrote: Apropos
"changes in people's daily lives," again you're wrong; but on this
matter, it also seems you share our Masters' ruling-class bias. Do you
not consider the approximately two million dead Vietnamese civilians
"people"? What about all the dead Cambodians and Laotians? Were they not
people?
Apparently -- and again revealingly -- you don't consider close to two million more
dead North Vietnamese, Viet Kong, South Vietnamese, U.S., South Korean,
Thailand, Australian and New Zealand soldiers "people" either.
And
that's not counting the (ongoing) deaths due to the U.S. Empire's
destruction of the Southeast Asian environment with Agent Orange. Nor is
it counting the psychological devastation of the grief and horror
inflicted on the surviving relatives of the dead, whether they were
killed in wartime or by the ecogenocidal consequences that continue even
now.
Neither
does it count the dead and wounded at Kent State University and Jackson
State College, nor the never-calculated number of lives terminated or
ruined by the penalties inflicted on other members of the resistance --
anti-war, environmental, feminist, First Nations and Black activists
included.
I
was a Regular Army soldier, active duty 1959-1962, reserves 1962-1965,
overseas duty in Korea extended by the Berlin Crisis. Truth is, I
avoided Vietnam both as an active duty soldier and a reservist only by luck of the draw. (Note:
I should have added that as a former soldier, I know it to be a fact
President Kennedy was attempting to extricate us from Vietnam.)
Too many of my generational peers were not so fortunate. Even those who made it out of the maelstrom came back scarred for life.
But
from what you wrote, you regard none of us -- victims or survivors --
worthy of being considered "people." Which, from my perspective, makes
you an entirely typical defender of LBJ and the "Democratic" (sic) Party in general.
So, by the way, does your disparagement of my use of the term "Masters." I use it because it is the one, absolute -- and absolutely terrible -- truth
of our present-day circumstances. It is therefore the only accurate
description of those who tyrannize us more viciously with every passing
hour: they are most assuredly not
"idiots"; they are in fact the most malevolently skilled, cunningly
sociopathic, bottomlessly Evil despots in our species' history, proven
so by their relentless and ongoing succession of triumphs.
And
until we recognize our Masters' as the all-time, all-species
apex-predators they are, we will remain as subjugated by their moral
imbecility as we are today; as powerless as the German people were
against Hitler before the Red Army took Berlin; as powerless as the
Russian people were against Tsar Nicholas II before the five thousand
breathtakingly courageous women of Petrograd's Lesnoy Textile Works
walked out in the wildcat strike that began the revolution rescued eight
months later from certain defeat by V.I. Ulyanov, Lev Bronstein and the
infinite bravery of their Bolshevik comrades.
Indeed
your disparagement of my truthful labeling of our oppressors ranks you
amongst our Masters' defenders. For these serial-killer-minded tyrants
will retain their unprecedented omnipotence -- the Hitler-caliber
mastery of propaganda, psychological warfare and apocalyptic technology
their ecogenocidal talent has given them -- until they either destroy
our species and reduce our Mother Earth back to a bug planet, or are
overthrown by a revolution that -- lacking the Blair-Mountain courage
of our U.S. working-class forebears, the forever-lost organizational
skills of the former Soviet Union and (especially) the discipline of its
Red Army -- will most likely never happen.
When I discovered the censorship, I wrote this: Do not for a moment doubt I will publish in Dispatches from Dystopia
every word of my suppressed response to your elitist disregard of the
millions of Johnson's Southeast Asian War victims, so its readers can
see you -- and this site -- for the pseudo-left, anti-revolutionary
collaborators you and its moderators truly are.
To which "Calgacus" answered, and did so with surprising gentility: I saw your response and wrote a response to it. It disappeared; I did not know what to do then. I will post it if you want.
It
was almost certainly not moderated out, Margaret Flowers has no time
for that. It was probably disqus, probably calling it spam. It does this
frequently, letting comments show for 15 minutes or so and then
deleting them, especially if they are too long. Sometimes splitting up
into sections gets one through permanently. I had to do that in another
thread here. Though the comment you replied to got through and is the
size I had to split before. It's the erratic behavior of some program.
I plead not guilty of showing any disregard for the millions of Southeast Asian War victims.
And I said (condensed for clarity): ...thank
you. Indeed I salute you for your courage in helping us all defying
this ever-more-encroaching censorship...past experience with this sort
of censorship -- it seems any reference to genuine revolution is now
taboo -- says I will not be allowed to repost it. Though I will try...
Turns out I'm not allowed to repost it. PR
hopelessly scrambles the text, and when I try to unscramble it, the
site deletes it immediately. As I said, I've encountered this on PR
before, though only when I write about the coup of 22 November 1963 or
examples of real revolution. Point being, it is genuine, German
Nazi-type censorship, not the intervention of anti-spam robotics.
Nevertheless, again my gratitude.
Afterthought: I'll post my suppressed text on Dispatches from Dystopia late tomorrow, and guarantee you publication there of your suppressed response as well. (BF as in original.)
*********
NOW, AWAITING A reply from "Calgacus," I would add three points:
--
That the acknowledgement by "Calgacus" of "how 'socialist' the 60s era
at its best was" illustrates precisely why our Masters -- except in
their violent suppression of anti-Vietnam-War activism (the murder of
Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. most assuredly included), also in their
suppression of certain potentially revolutionary forms of labor activism
(e.g., the Karen Silkwood case) -- chose the boiled-frog
method of inflicting tyranny, this with a gradualness that was carefully
calculated -- no doubt with the help of their Nazi-war-criminal
advisors -- to avoid arousing any substantial public alarm. Particularly
with the Soviet Union ready to come to the aid of any genuine
socialist revolution, plus a well-armed U.S. population including
innumerable veterans of World War II and Korea -- and let us not forget
the Black-Panther-predecessor Deacons for Defense -- the sort of instant
secret-police/torture-chamber/mass-murder nazification imposed by
Franco, the Shah of Iran, Diem, Ky, the Greek junta, Pinochet and all
the Empire's other overseas satrops ad nauseam would have sparked an instant revolution here at home.
--
Anyone reading the wire-service reports out of Dallas on the pivotal
afternoon of 22 November 1963, as my job required, saw repeated evidence
our president was slain by multiple shooters. But every piece of
wire-service copy was subsequently confiscated by my editor, who warned
that anyone who kept any of it -- even the smallest, most
innocuous segment -- would be fired on the spot. At the time, I assumed
this was merely an example of what in the military we called "RHIP" --
"rank has its privileges." But years later, in conversations with fellow
journalists during the '80s, I learned that same post-assassination
edict had been imposed by editors-in-chief at many (and probably all)
USian dailies. By then, it was common knowledge the Central Intelligence
Agency had secretly controlled all USian mainstream media since the
mid-1950s; thus it seemed obvious the CIA ordered confiscation of the
wire copy to suppress the proof of multiple shooters -- and therefore of
conspiracy -- contained in so many of those early reports. Difficult as
it may be for present generations to believe -- with today's reporters
reduced to algorithm-policed stenographers and the erudite diligence of
desk-editors replaced by robotics -- the reporters, photographers and
editors of the Kennedy era were among the most skilled men and women
ever to serve an USian readership; most were military veterans, many had
fought in wars or worked as war correspondents, and nearly all were at
their very best under precisely the sorts of stresses generated by the
atrocity in Dealey Plaza: those reports of multiple shooters were
therefore accurate echos of the terrible truth. (To learn from my own
experience how journalistic criticism of the Warren Report was also suppressed, go here; to anyone knowledgeable in ballistics -- as I, a former competitive shooter, most assuredly was -- the Warren Report could never be more than purposeful fiction.)
-- The "Democratic" (sic)
Party in the person of the not-entirely closeted theocrat James Earl
Carter Jr, began replacing the remnants of the New Deal with the
socioeconomic nazism euphemized as "neoliberalism" immediately after his
inauguration as president in 1977 -- in other words, while the
so-called "Reagan Revolution" was still a Christonazi/Neoconfederate wet
dream. Carter made the "Democratic" (sic) Party's reversal of the New
Deal and its betrayal of the 99 Percent a matter of policy, thus
finalizing the party's fulfillment of the pledge implicit in its
acceptance of plutocratic funding as described by Kucinich in Hedges'
interview. But why did the party suddenly reverse a longtime course and
accept such funding? While the evidence is nearly all circumstantial, I
cannot doubt the Democrats were eternally compromised by their
collaboration in the assassination, most especially in its cover-up.
Thus -- thinking like the award-winning investigative reporter I once
was -- I can only conclude the Democrats were blackmailed into becoming
what they undeniably are today: the Fifth Column of the "Republican" (sic) Christonazi/Neoconfederate Party.
LB/21 December 2022
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