Very good. American elites do try to create a reality to their liking by incessantly bullshitting everyone. The thing is, they've done it so long--as you said it really escalated after 9/11/2001--that many of them actually believe it themselves.
When you think a thing too long, you start to believe that thing. That's how our brains work.
I recall Putin being quoted as saying that American officials & media lie all the time, in a surprisingly uniform way. I've since learned he was 100% correct in that assessment. It's hard to take any pride in how the West has been manipulated to believe outright lies. All the nations of the West are being stolen out from under 'the people' by a vicious elite. It's appalling.
Hmm... I suppose if the ruling elites in the West "ignore reality" and wish to brainwash us with their chosen narrative, can we of the working class "ignore their narrative" and re-establish reality as the only topic worth discussing?
Hear, Hear, sir! You eloquently wrote "In fact, in Lincoln’s 1860 there were 3000 independent newspapers operating in the United States. Today, we have only 672 major daily newspapers operating in the US, although we have over 10x the population (31 million in 1860 compared to 333 million today)." Well written, sir. Political and economic centralization strikes deeply! We were once a semi-politically decentralized, semi-economically decentralized, semi-culturally decentralized, and semi-scientifically decentralized system with a a decentralized (for domestic matters, at least) information ecosystem.....
fwiw, I'm inclined to think that the "unnamed Bush aide"responsible for the "reality-based community" quote was Robert Kagan, instead of Karl Rove. Rove is the guy who keeps getting that quote attributed to him, but it just sounds more like Kagan to me.
I agree it does sound more like Kagan, but Kagan wasn't working as a "senior aide" to Bush in 2002. He was haunting the halls of some neocon think tanks at the time.
you’re right on that. I’ve gotten to consider Kagan as a charter member of the foreign policy establishment (until quite recently; whatever happens with the Trump administration, at least the election will shut Kagan up for a while.) But it’s true, RK hasn’t held an official position in any administration since the Reagan administration, when he was a speechwriter for Secretary of State George Schultz (beginning at age 25-26, which appears to me to illustrate the sort of inside track that someone gets as the son of an Ivy League history professor.)
8.5 out of every ten German soldiers to die in combat during WWII died on the Eastern Front. But it was the economic might of the United States and the combined navel power of Great Britain and the United States that won the war and ultimately defeated Germany and Japan. The United States provided Russia with equipment, without which, it is very likely that Russia would have lost to the Germans very early in the war, they were hanging by a thread and the equipment the U.S. provided enabled them to hang on long enough for, wait for it..Mother Nature, in the form of the worst winter in centuries, to stop the Germans cold, no pun intended.
This is a strange question. You put forth the thesis that Russia won the Second World War and there is a myth, perpetuated by “Hollywood” that the United States won the war. Most historians would say that neither Germany nor Japan stood much of a chance once the full economic might of the United States was brought to bear. I read somewhere that for every Tiger Tank produced by Germany and put into the field the United States produced 20 Sherman tanks and Russia produced 10 T-34’s. The Tiger’s never stood a chance.
We are obviously not talking about total war, which was waged by all combatants during World War Two. A saying I read once was that Germany put on the the anvil by Russian manpower, but was crushed by American production.
I am not not necessarily in favor of the war in Ukraine, mostly because it was always a myth that Ukraine could “win” the war but please we both know this is not a full scale conflict, it is limited on both sides. The biggest surprise has been the ineptitude of the Russian military, not unlike the Second World War where millions of Russian troops died because of the incompetence of their officers. Also 10,000,000 Russian troops were killed by there own countrymen, soldiers who retreated when they ran into German M-42’s with no weapons and were killed for “cowardice,” what a country, what a people, maybe this is why their literature is so brilliant and insightful!
I see you have bought into the dominant Western narrative of the "inept Russian army". I would point out that the Russian army that is in Ukraine only represents a small fraction of the total Russian forces. Furthermore, as in WWII, the "arsenal of Democracy", the US and its allies, have provided Ukraine with all of their high tech weapons stockpiles, to the point where the US itself now his running low (if not running out) of everything from 155mm shells to Patriot and THAAD systems and missiles. All these wonderful weapons cannot hep the Ukrainians. They have been losing the war since 2023.
What the Ukraine war is teaching us, however, is that wars are won by boots on the ground, and not by "Wunderwaffen" (as Hitler found out). But you go on believing that the Russians are a third world backwater, don't make anything, are disorganised and unprofessional, and so on. You go on believing that. Certainly all of your political and military leaders seem to believe that. This is why they keep waiting for the "Endsieg" despite all the dismal news from the front. They won't believe that Ukraine has lost until Russian tanks are parked in downtown Kiev.
I would like to recommend that you read this article, which is a watershed piece I wrote that explains a lot:
Look my friend you seem to be very invested in this topic and that’s cool, whatever floats your boat.
Russia is a threat and dangerous because they are led by a dictator who kills his enemies and doesn’t give a shit about his people just like Stalin. The Russian economy is in disarray and the only way to be significant on the world stage is to attack the weak and pretend you are strong, why else would you bring up the nuclear option all the time.
If you want to admire a leader who uses convicts and criminals to kill women and children, who targets civilians on purpose and assassinates his political opponents because he is scared of them, be my guest and keep writing “watershed” pieces, instead of watershed I think the term you were looking for was seminal.
> 8.5 out of every ten German soldiers to die in combat during WWII died on the Eastern Front. But it was the economic might of the United States and the combined navel power of Great Britain and the United States that won the war and ultimately defeated Germany and Japan
That's the more palatable (still false) spin. That's not how the Germans or anybody else saw it at the time, including Hitler himself.
The culprit is the cult of crony capitalism. Sustaining such an illogical thing, requires a ceaseless train of lies in the political system and public discourse.
The economy of the US is now thoroughly hollowed out into crony capitalism and the US is heavily under way with doing the same in Europe, where 4-5 us crony capitalist financial institutions have significant stakes in most big European business - including the traditional media and the tech aka “social” media .They own the business and the politicians. Nearly all of them.
Thus the hall of lies in which they talk to each other.
And the surveillance state to shut down any dissent. Snowden told everyone what they needed to know over a decade ago. He sacrificed himself to warn of the danger to democracy in the “west”….no one listened or cared.
Lots of blanket statements in the article - but damned little solid support for them. Life’s too short to just take a statement as provocative as “The Washington Post is the voice of the CIA” at face value without even one supporting argument. Not saying it isn’t so - but the case definitely wasn’t made in the article - which, after all, was about the foolhardiness of the gullible taking preposterous propositions at face value - no? Lazy journalism on display here…
Yes, I missed the link - but while I don’t trust the Post, Bezos, or the CIA, I only replied because the whole article was filled with similar broad-brush statements. Sorry if that strokes your fur the wrong way…
Bob, it's fine. I strive to seek a balance between documentary exhaustion and readability. I suppose that when I make "broad-brush statements" such as "News outlets like The New York Times are well known for cheerleading war" I do not account for the sharp-eyed sceptics like yourself who may disagree.
Thus, I will understand if you decline reading my other work in which I make such sweeping, undocumented assertions as "The ruling elites are also helped in promulgating their Narrative by popular media, movies and TV."
Clearly if you reject such an assertion we have little in common, and I would no more spend my time arguing this fact than I would spend my time trying to convince you that water is, indeed, wet.
I would only ask you to note that I do not pretend to be a journalist. My articles are meant to be opinion pieces and I make no pretence to having a monopoly on truth. I try to back myself up where I can, but I am by no means a "reporter" and in fact I write about things in the world that are happening far away from where I sit.
Therefore, please do not characterise my opinion articles as "journalism", lazy or otherwise.
You can disagree and argue with me if you wish - indeed, I welcome such interactions - but do not for a moment think that I am a "journalist". I am writing about things the way I see them and nothing more.
We have much in common in outlook - it’s just that there’s so much happening these days that’s SO outrageous, apocalyptic and just plain hard to believe that I feel a need to resist being swept away in the tsunami of over-the-top commentary and while still putting one foot in front of the other, at least try to have one solidly in place before lifting the other. Thanks for taking the time to respond. Be well…
Very good. American elites do try to create a reality to their liking by incessantly bullshitting everyone. The thing is, they've done it so long--as you said it really escalated after 9/11/2001--that many of them actually believe it themselves.
When you think a thing too long, you start to believe that thing. That's how our brains work.
I recall Putin being quoted as saying that American officials & media lie all the time, in a surprisingly uniform way. I've since learned he was 100% correct in that assessment. It's hard to take any pride in how the West has been manipulated to believe outright lies. All the nations of the West are being stolen out from under 'the people' by a vicious elite. It's appalling.
Russia hasn’t won yet, sweetheart.
Once again I am forced to offer you my thanks for proving my thesis so well.
Hmm... I suppose if the ruling elites in the West "ignore reality" and wish to brainwash us with their chosen narrative, can we of the working class "ignore their narrative" and re-establish reality as the only topic worth discussing?
Hear, Hear, sir! You eloquently wrote "In fact, in Lincoln’s 1860 there were 3000 independent newspapers operating in the United States. Today, we have only 672 major daily newspapers operating in the US, although we have over 10x the population (31 million in 1860 compared to 333 million today)." Well written, sir. Political and economic centralization strikes deeply! We were once a semi-politically decentralized, semi-economically decentralized, semi-culturally decentralized, and semi-scientifically decentralized system with a a decentralized (for domestic matters, at least) information ecosystem.....
Well Lincoln shut down many opposition newspapers and jailed journalists. So there’s that. That sociopathic tyrant was the original narrative shaper.
fwiw, I'm inclined to think that the "unnamed Bush aide"responsible for the "reality-based community" quote was Robert Kagan, instead of Karl Rove. Rove is the guy who keeps getting that quote attributed to him, but it just sounds more like Kagan to me.
I agree it does sound more like Kagan, but Kagan wasn't working as a "senior aide" to Bush in 2002. He was haunting the halls of some neocon think tanks at the time.
you’re right on that. I’ve gotten to consider Kagan as a charter member of the foreign policy establishment (until quite recently; whatever happens with the Trump administration, at least the election will shut Kagan up for a while.) But it’s true, RK hasn’t held an official position in any administration since the Reagan administration, when he was a speechwriter for Secretary of State George Schultz (beginning at age 25-26, which appears to me to illustrate the sort of inside track that someone gets as the son of an Ivy League history professor.)
Can we just call them liars not reality creators.
I liked the article very much
8.5 out of every ten German soldiers to die in combat during WWII died on the Eastern Front. But it was the economic might of the United States and the combined navel power of Great Britain and the United States that won the war and ultimately defeated Germany and Japan. The United States provided Russia with equipment, without which, it is very likely that Russia would have lost to the Germans very early in the war, they were hanging by a thread and the equipment the U.S. provided enabled them to hang on long enough for, wait for it..Mother Nature, in the form of the worst winter in centuries, to stop the Germans cold, no pun intended.
So why isn't Ukraine winning now?
This is a strange question. You put forth the thesis that Russia won the Second World War and there is a myth, perpetuated by “Hollywood” that the United States won the war. Most historians would say that neither Germany nor Japan stood much of a chance once the full economic might of the United States was brought to bear. I read somewhere that for every Tiger Tank produced by Germany and put into the field the United States produced 20 Sherman tanks and Russia produced 10 T-34’s. The Tiger’s never stood a chance.
We are obviously not talking about total war, which was waged by all combatants during World War Two. A saying I read once was that Germany put on the the anvil by Russian manpower, but was crushed by American production.
I am not not necessarily in favor of the war in Ukraine, mostly because it was always a myth that Ukraine could “win” the war but please we both know this is not a full scale conflict, it is limited on both sides. The biggest surprise has been the ineptitude of the Russian military, not unlike the Second World War where millions of Russian troops died because of the incompetence of their officers. Also 10,000,000 Russian troops were killed by there own countrymen, soldiers who retreated when they ran into German M-42’s with no weapons and were killed for “cowardice,” what a country, what a people, maybe this is why their literature is so brilliant and insightful!
I see you have bought into the dominant Western narrative of the "inept Russian army". I would point out that the Russian army that is in Ukraine only represents a small fraction of the total Russian forces. Furthermore, as in WWII, the "arsenal of Democracy", the US and its allies, have provided Ukraine with all of their high tech weapons stockpiles, to the point where the US itself now his running low (if not running out) of everything from 155mm shells to Patriot and THAAD systems and missiles. All these wonderful weapons cannot hep the Ukrainians. They have been losing the war since 2023.
What the Ukraine war is teaching us, however, is that wars are won by boots on the ground, and not by "Wunderwaffen" (as Hitler found out). But you go on believing that the Russians are a third world backwater, don't make anything, are disorganised and unprofessional, and so on. You go on believing that. Certainly all of your political and military leaders seem to believe that. This is why they keep waiting for the "Endsieg" despite all the dismal news from the front. They won't believe that Ukraine has lost until Russian tanks are parked in downtown Kiev.
I would like to recommend that you read this article, which is a watershed piece I wrote that explains a lot:
"How the West Descended Into Idiocy"
https://euroyankee.substack.com/p/how-the-west-descended-into-idiocy
And now relying on troops from North Korea to their fighting for them.
LOL!!! Tell me, how many of these DPRK troops are supposed to be "helping" Russia? Where is the proof? Have any been captured?
Three questions you should be able to answer easily if what you say is true,
Look my friend you seem to be very invested in this topic and that’s cool, whatever floats your boat.
Russia is a threat and dangerous because they are led by a dictator who kills his enemies and doesn’t give a shit about his people just like Stalin. The Russian economy is in disarray and the only way to be significant on the world stage is to attack the weak and pretend you are strong, why else would you bring up the nuclear option all the time.
If you want to admire a leader who uses convicts and criminals to kill women and children, who targets civilians on purpose and assassinates his political opponents because he is scared of them, be my guest and keep writing “watershed” pieces, instead of watershed I think the term you were looking for was seminal.
Have a great day and happy holidays.
> 8.5 out of every ten German soldiers to die in combat during WWII died on the Eastern Front. But it was the economic might of the United States and the combined navel power of Great Britain and the United States that won the war and ultimately defeated Germany and Japan
That's the more palatable (still false) spin. That's not how the Germans or anybody else saw it at the time, including Hitler himself.
The T-34 won the great tank battles on the Russia. The US didn't make them. US trucks didn't win the battle at Stalingrad.
Postmodern brain infection holding discourse creates reality.
The culprit is the cult of crony capitalism. Sustaining such an illogical thing, requires a ceaseless train of lies in the political system and public discourse.
The economy of the US is now thoroughly hollowed out into crony capitalism and the US is heavily under way with doing the same in Europe, where 4-5 us crony capitalist financial institutions have significant stakes in most big European business - including the traditional media and the tech aka “social” media .They own the business and the politicians. Nearly all of them.
Thus the hall of lies in which they talk to each other.
And the surveillance state to shut down any dissent. Snowden told everyone what they needed to know over a decade ago. He sacrificed himself to warn of the danger to democracy in the “west”….no one listened or cared.
They garner outrageous salaries for their deceptions
Lots of blanket statements in the article - but damned little solid support for them. Life’s too short to just take a statement as provocative as “The Washington Post is the voice of the CIA” at face value without even one supporting argument. Not saying it isn’t so - but the case definitely wasn’t made in the article - which, after all, was about the foolhardiness of the gullible taking preposterous propositions at face value - no? Lazy journalism on display here…
I am sorry, did you not see the link in the following sentence?
"Similarly, The Washington Post has, over the years, become nothing more than the official mouthpiece of the CIA."
https://www.counterpunch.org/2013/12/18/the-cia-and-the-washington-post/
I would say that you have demonstrated some "lazy reading".
Yes, I missed the link - but while I don’t trust the Post, Bezos, or the CIA, I only replied because the whole article was filled with similar broad-brush statements. Sorry if that strokes your fur the wrong way…
Bob, it's fine. I strive to seek a balance between documentary exhaustion and readability. I suppose that when I make "broad-brush statements" such as "News outlets like The New York Times are well known for cheerleading war" I do not account for the sharp-eyed sceptics like yourself who may disagree.
Thus, I will understand if you decline reading my other work in which I make such sweeping, undocumented assertions as "The ruling elites are also helped in promulgating their Narrative by popular media, movies and TV."
Clearly if you reject such an assertion we have little in common, and I would no more spend my time arguing this fact than I would spend my time trying to convince you that water is, indeed, wet.
I would only ask you to note that I do not pretend to be a journalist. My articles are meant to be opinion pieces and I make no pretence to having a monopoly on truth. I try to back myself up where I can, but I am by no means a "reporter" and in fact I write about things in the world that are happening far away from where I sit.
Therefore, please do not characterise my opinion articles as "journalism", lazy or otherwise.
You can disagree and argue with me if you wish - indeed, I welcome such interactions - but do not for a moment think that I am a "journalist". I am writing about things the way I see them and nothing more.
Thanks.
We have much in common in outlook - it’s just that there’s so much happening these days that’s SO outrageous, apocalyptic and just plain hard to believe that I feel a need to resist being swept away in the tsunami of over-the-top commentary and while still putting one foot in front of the other, at least try to have one solidly in place before lifting the other. Thanks for taking the time to respond. Be well…