A year and a half after 9-11, this is one of the most liberal journalists at one of the most liberal papers carrying water for the big lie of ’03, and for the big liars who cynically foisted it on us for their own gain. It’s a screengrab from Glenn Greenwald’s show last night.
This is probably the very least among the many examples GG offers on the same theme, from the Bush years right down to today. I picked it because of the snide little dig at France, thrown in there purely to show you how witty and au courant the author wants you to think he is.
Here’s the thing. You can be both urbane and smart as fuck, hyper-educated; you can be hip and liberal and well-dressed and successful and pretty and relatable and spout all the correct opinions on social issues, and still be an absolute psychopathic monster–a servant of the Lie.
I really wish I’d figured that out sooner. Earlier in the episode there’s an even better example of the phenomenon, involving the esteemed pundit Thomas Friedman, and another involving one of your favorite CNN chirpers.
Break. Stop. Turn off the TV a minute, Alex V …
In my mind right now I am holding pictures of two women of color.
Yesterday, at one point in Briahna’s interview with the Ancient Sage, he turned things around and asked her a question.
At what point, he said, will even you, my dear, make a deal with the Devil? I hope it never happens. But the odds are that it will. Eventually.
I see Bri’s face trying to take that in and answer honestly, because she’s never quite yet been co-opted, but she knows all too well how tempting it is.
The second one.
I see, through the eyes of C-Span a Puerto Rican congressperson standing on the floor of the House. The bony finger of Nancy Pelosi is being waved in her face. The beautiful young Latina’s face is stained with real tears, because her white mama bear is telling her to stop with this humanitarian nonsense she’s been spouting and get in line with yet another military funding vote.
The real tears are being shed for the loss of her own soul.
Later, we see what she got in exchange for it.
She’s smiling this time, and holding on to the hand of a new, equally beautiful and rich boyfriend, who has made his own set of deals with the lovely and satanic liars. It is the night of the Met Gala.
The dress she is wearing costs more than any of her voter-peasants make in a year, but she didn’t pay a dime for it. It was a gift, not from the Nancy, but from a Nancy.
The dress bears a message. In bold red letters, the message reads, “Tax The Rich”.
The words are not there to have a meaning.
The words are simply there for branding, which is a thing you do to cattle to prove that you own them.
Which, now, she does. Get a piece of the rock.
I’m not a Sage yet, but I’m writing my thesis paper to get there. So I can tell you honestly, that I tried to sell out myself once upon a time–tried to sell just a tiny piece of my soul, in exchange for a tiny piece of the rock. I figured that was better than going all in like AOC, and also better than the economically brutal alternative.
I did it for one natural reason. I was very afraid of becoming what I am right now today.
Afraid, in other words, of being old and not having money. That’s how they hook even the best of us, with that specific and barely speakable fear. You feel it, or you felt it at some point. You’re a human in the Empire.
You’re … civilized.
In case you try to stop feeling it, they’ve put slave drones on the street to remind you. The problem of homelessness could be quickly and simply fixed across the country for about what it costs to shoot down a balloon. Why isn’t it?
Simply because the ranchers who own the homeless, and own you, and own me, don’t think having broken people scattered everywhere you look is a problem at all. Those wretched slobs are not a bug, in the capitalist software. They’re a feature.
They are there to bring you back to the fear, of getting older every day and having less and less money.
Go ahead, if you want, and foam at the mouth awhile about the immorality of laziness. Quote me the scripture as if you still believed in any other part of the Testaments old or new. Explain patiently that my ranting about why they don’t just give the poorest people tiny homes is just another paranoid conspiracy theory.
I have a patient explaining of my own, a like gift in return. From the conclusion of my sage thesis. It’s this.
The only thing we actually have to fear, is the Fear itself.
The one the bosses are so invested in us feeling, every day of our lives.
It’s been three years now since I hit the wall the second time, got spun around, crashed, burned, and listened to the awful silence of a dead motor, to the menace of napalm trickling out wickedly onto the pavement and threatening to damn my soul to the spot in hell next to the pallet of pellets. In a snowstorm, in a pandemic, oh jesus have mercy no.
I testify. I’m still here, and I am, in every way, better than I have ever been before.
The Fear too is a vicious and cynical lie, told for the sole purpose of mind control. It’s not enough, they own the labor of your body. They want your brain and your soul too.
Resist it because you love yourself and respect the miracle of the conscious life you’ve been given free.
I love you too.
The Lie on the domestic front is simple and straightforward.
Who knows if even Social Security will be there when you need it! So set your alarm, and be a good drone (in a white collar if you’re smart about it), and lay your life blood down on the altar of The Job … or else. It’s the offer almost no one can refuse. Either your signature, or your brains, will be on this contract by the time we take our leave.
Greenwald’s video is mostly about the Lie as it applies overseas. But don’t worry. You’ll still be a main character in that plot too.
The ranchers could not give two shits about the noble sovereignty of Ukraine, and they don’t care even a little about maimed babies or homeless grandmas. (Like dear Albright said, half a million dead ones? Totally worth it.) Just as in Iraq, caring is YOUR job, and you’ll be given all the tools to do that job by the CNNs and NPRs of the world.
GG points out that the RAND corp came out with a little study the other day, and it said–we’re reaching the limits of what we can expect in Ukraine, in a return-on-investment way. The Germans don’t buy Russian gas anymore; they buy ours instead. We blew up the Nordstream. We’ve isolated Europe from Russia diplomatically. It might just be time to call it a day and let the remaining bodies fall as they might.
So–expect your media sources to shortly begin talking you off the ledge when it comes to the evil Russian threat, and further expect that as the attention of the Leviathan shifts away from the hapless Ukrainians, it will turn more and more to the evil Chinese threat–a fresh new profit center. Your job will be to hate that Xi like you hated Vlad. To weep for, I dunno, Taiwanese babies being tossed from their incubators or some made-up shit like that, because Anderson Cooper and Rachel Maddow told you to. To put whatever colors are on the island flag up on your Twitter bio and wave them proudly.
All in the grand tradition that seemed to start with Bush in Iraq, but has in fact been going on since at least the invention of the three letter agencies right after the One Decently Good War. The ones who gunned down JFK and functional democracy in one high-powered rifle shot in Dallas, all those years ago. Ne pas oublier, and I say it only to prove how suavely continental I really am, my Darlings.