JOHNSTONE

In just a few years Democrats flipped from freaking out about Nazis, shrieking that Trump was going to start a nuclear war, and denying US election results to cheering for Nazis, demanding more nuclear brinkmanship, and accusing anyone who denies election results of treason.

Reading by Tim Foley.

There's a frenzied rush by the Australian political/media class to both propagandise Australians as quickly as possible into supporting preparations for war with China, and to ram through legislation that facilitates the censorship of online speech.

Reading by Tim Foley.

"The truth will set you free" is an aphorism we've all heard so many times it's lost a lot of its meaning and doesn't sound especially profound when we hear it again, but it really does contain the answer to humanity's most difficult problems. A truth-based relationship with reality is the only way to move into peace and harmony, whether you're talking about the inner peace and harmoniousness of an individual or the peace and harmony of our entire species.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Voting in a western "democracy" is like that bit in the opening intro of The Simpsons when Marge is driving with the baby and the baby has a toy steering wheel. The baby thinks she's driving the car but it's just a fake toy to keep her busy and let her feel like she's participating.

Reading by Tim Foley.

1. Why does nothing change no matter who we vote for? 

2. Why does US foreign policy always continue along the same trajectory regardless of the president's party or platform? 

3. What keeps our voting population split right down the middle into two political factions of equal size, with neither side ever gaining enough of a majority to democratically change society in any meaningful way? 

4. Why does the stalemate described in #3 always seem to benefit the rich, the powerful, and the war-horny? 

5. Why is it that the most consequential US government policies like plutocratic influence, privatization, globalization, ecocidal capitalism and nuclear brinkmanship are never on the ballot? Why do these things keep happening, against our interests, without our ever voting for them or electing anyone who campaigned on the pledge to enact them? 

6. If our federal government's behavior never changes no matter who we elect, could it be that there are other bodies involved in government policy-setting whom we did not elect, and who remain in positions of influence regardless of the comings and goings of our official elected government? 

7. If the above is the case, then who is it? Who's really calling the shots in this country? 

8. Could it be that everything we've been told about our country, our government, our political processes and our world is untrue? 

9. If so, what are the implications of the fact that our schools and our media have been feeding us lies since we were small? 

10. What forces would be responsible for keeping all these lies flowing throughout our society? What might keep an ostensibly free press spinning more or less the same lies throughout the western world day after day, year after year, generation after generation? 

11. Is it possible that our entire electoral system is a sham designed to give the public the illusion of control so that they'll let oligarchs and empire managers run the country undisturbed? 

12. If the electoral system is a sham, then how do we enact the changes we so desperately need? 

13. Is it possible that there are other ways to effect change in the United States which don't involve casting a pretend vote in a fake election? 

14. Could it be that those other means of forcing change are precisely what the charade of casting pretend votes in fake elections is meant to divert us from? 

15. Should we perhaps spend less energy bickering about who should get sworn into the White House a year and a half from now, and more energy examining other possible avenues toward advancing meaningful change?

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Reading by Tim Foley.

They sent the soldiers back after a crazy, stupid world war

which was the sequel to another crazy, stupid world war,

sent them back with demons in their minds,

with twisted corpses in their minds,

corpses missing their parts,

corpses with their inside parts on the outside,

corpses still screaming because they did not yet know that they were corpses,

corpses who just moments before were not corpses but trusted friends.

Sent them back from the war to live in the Levittowns,
giant suburban sprawls with clean white picket fences for clean white families with clean white faces,

tidy little houses with enough space in between that a man can live like a man,

can drink enough to temporarily bury the corpses in his mind,

can beat his children and rape his wife without troubling the neighbors,
can comfortably scream PTSD screams from the depths of hell at night,

can do some home repairs and work on his car on the weekend.

The suburbs still scream those screams of unburied war corpses,
screams handed down from generation to generation by cruel hands and serrated words,
cruel hands and serrated words doled out behind closed doors in private castles separated by fences and lawns,
lawns of worthiness,

lawns of salvation,

lawns that if green enough will erase the sins of our fathers,

lawns watered with the tears of warehoused wives,
lawns watered with the sweat of the working poor,
lawns watered with the blood of indigenous gods,

overlooked by windows with snarling faces peaking through blinds

or mothers with medicated eyes spoon-feeding grains into the bellies of crying children.

After the war they went to the suburbs and pretended everything was fine
(it wasn’t fine)
and spent the 1950s pouring emotional concrete over their pain and savaging their children and pretending everything was fine
(it wasn’t fine),

and now those houses are all haunted by ghosts pretending everything is fine

(it isn’t fine)

and haunted by living people pretending everything is fine

(it isn’t fine)

as we fill our oceans and our blood with plastic
and laugh plastic laughs
at screens full of plastic people

pretending everything is fine
(it isn’t fine),

charging toward armageddon carrying the anguish of our grandfathers on our shoulders

the way they carried their fallen friends on the battlefield on their shoulders
before they realized that their friends were corpses
and fell to the ground

and cried out for their mothers,

and then got up,

and then went home,

and never breathed a word about it

to anyone.

______________

Reading by Tim Foley.

Our civilization is sick because all its systems ensure that human behavior is driven by profit, and health isn't profitable. Nobody gets rich from everyone staying healthy all the time. The gears of capitalism will still keep turning if its populace is made shallow and dull by bad education and crappy art made for profit. Billionaires aren't made by leaving forests and oceans unmolested, consuming less, mining less, drilling less, using less energy. The economy doesn't soar when the world is at peace and nations are working together in harmony.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Thank you for your service.

I say this not to the employees of the war machine, who in truth serve nothing besides imperial domination and the profit margins of Raytheon and Lockheed Martin.

I say this to the peacemakers.

To the truth-tellers.

To the defiant ones.

To those who’ve shone the light of truth upon the blood-spattered face of the empire against their own interests for the benefit of everyone.

To those who’ve stared down the barrel of the most powerful military force ever assembled and said “Do your worst.”

To the grandparents who’ve been dragged from nuclear weapons protests in handcuffs to create a safer world for their grandchildren.

To the activists whose incurable disobedience has led them to disrupt empire managers at think tank conferences or paint NO WAR across the face of the Sydney Opera House.

To the selfless martyrs who’ve exposed the abuses of the machine knowing full well that the scales of justice are weighted heavily against them.

To the hero in Belmarsh.


To the Pentagon Papers whistleblower who today closed his gentle loving eyes for a final time.

Thank you for your service.


For serving the highest interest over your own.


For pouring everything you’ve got into the hope for a better tomorrow.

For betting everything on the hope of a healthy and harmonious world.


For creating a guiding light to help humanity steer its way home.

For seizing your moment to help make things right instead of letting it pass like everyone around you.

For somehow finding the strength to swim against the current when it would be so much easier to drift along with the madness.

For somehow finding a higher calling in this wildly dysfunctional society where everything is pointed at selfishness and meaninglessness.

For somehow cultivating something profound and authentic within yourself in the midst of a civilization of the vapid and fraudulent.


For doing your very best to get a foot on the brake pedal when everything else is accelerating toward the cliff’s edge.


For listening to that small voice within which can tolerate no more.

For turning around.


For taking your stand.


For finding the courage.


For doing what is right.


For putting truth first.


For lighting the way.

Thank you for your service.

We will do our best to carry the torch forward, and finish what you started.

____________________

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Reading by Tim Foley.

In an interview shortly before his death Daniel Ellsberg said the US runs a "covert empire", which is a really good way of putting it. A giant globe-spanning cluster of nations consistently moves in alignment with the dictates of Washington, but they all keep their official flags and their official governments, so it doesn't look like an empire despite functioning as one in every meaningful way.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Our worldview is formed when we are young in the interests of our rulers, and from there cognitive biases take over which protect and reinforce that worldview, typically preserving them in more or less the same form for the rest of our lives.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Oatmeal comic: https://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe