JOHNSTONE

We are marching toward dystopia and oblivion, and we are doing it in ways that have no historical precedent. We're in completely uncharted waters, and things are only getting crazier and crazier.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Anything you can do to help make humanity a little more aware of the abusive nature of the systems which drive the problems we now face makes a difference, even if it's a difference as small as making one single person a little bit more aware of one specific aspect of the tyranny we're being subjected to. It doesn't make a huge difference, but it does make a difference. And as long as it makes the slightest bit of difference, it is worth doing, because a lot of slight differences adds up to a massive difference. And there are a whole lot of people who have the ability to do this.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: what is a Chinese navy vessel doing in the Taiwan Strait, right where US and Canadian warships are peacefully conducting routine navigation exercises?

Reading by Tim Foley.

If you watch western news media with a critical eye you eventually notice how their reporting consistently aligns with the interests of the US-centralized empire, in almost the same way you'd expect them to if they were government-run propaganda outlets.

The New York Times has reliably supported every war the US has waged. Western mass media focus overwhelmingly on foreign protests against governments the United States dislikes while paying far less attention to widespread protests against US-aligned governments. The only time Trump was universally showered with praise by the mass media was when he bombed Syria, while the only time Biden has been universally slammed by the mass media was when he withdrew from Afghanistan. US media did such a good job deceitfully marrying Saddam Hussein to the September 11 attacks in the minds of the public in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq that seven in ten Americans still believed he was connected to 9/11 months after the war began. 

That this extreme bias occurs is self-evident and indisputable to anyone who pays attention, but why and how it happens is harder to see. The uniformity is so complete and so consistent that when people first begin noticing these patterns it's common for them to assume the media must be controlled by a small, centralized authority much like the state media of more openly authoritarian governments. But if you actually dig into the reasons why the media act the way they act, that isn't really what you find.

Instead, what you find is a much larger, much less centralized network of factors which tips the scales of media coverage to the advantage of the US empire and the forces which benefit from it. Some of it is indeed conspiratorial in nature and happens in secret, but most of it is essentially out in the open.

Here are 15 of those factors.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Republican politicians have found a way to reconcile the fact that scrutinizing the behavior of the US war machine appeals to their base and wins votes with the fact that the Republican Party is built around facilitating war and militarism at every turn. Their solution? Pour mountains of energy into championing the case that the nation's military has gotten too "woke".

Because everything in mainstream American politics is geared toward channeling the public's political attention down channels that pose no threat to the rich and powerful, and because the United States is the hub of a globe-spanning empire that is held together by mass military violence and the threat thereof, it was only a matter of time before we started seeing the war-weary sentiments harnessed so effectively in Trump's 2016 presidential run diverted into scrutinizing the military in ways that pose no obstacle to US warmongering.

Reading by Tim Foley.

The biggest problem with the western left is that it doesn't exist.

To look at leftist discourse you'd think the left's biggest problem is that some leftists have the wrong beliefs about this or that issue, or that the left pays too much or not enough attention to identity politics, or places too much or not enough emphasis on electoral politics, or is too sympathetic toward enemies of the US empire or not sympathetic enough, or that this or that faction gets it all wrong — but it's not. The biggest problem is that there aren't anywhere remotely close to enough leftists to get anything done in the west today.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Donald Trump spent four years proving to everyone that he wasn't bad because he was similar to Hitler, he was bad because he was similar to Obama. He wasn't terrible because of the ways he differed from other presidents, but because of the ways he was the same.

The tiny smattering of violence that occurred in the US because of Trump was microscopic compared to the death and destruction he inflicted upon the world outside the nation's borders. But the mainstream worldview can't acknowledge those actions, because the mainstream worldview is designed to support and facilitate those actions.

Yes, Trump is evil. Yes, you should be alarmed that monsters like him exist. But not because he is a unique aberration and deviation from the US government's status quo; rather, you should be alarmed because he perfectly exemplifies and bolsters the US government's status quo. 

Reading by Tim Foley.

Today in tyranny we've got three stories on the rapidly increasing authoritarian abuses in western "free democracies":

1. Grayzone reporter detained by British counter-terrorism police for doing journalism.

2. South Australia passes draconian anti-protest law.

3. State Department dismisses questions about Ukrainian imprisonment of US citizen for speech crimes.

Reading by Tim Foley.

The biggest impediment to free speech is people's belief that they have it. Not censorship. Not refusal to platform critical voices. Not the war on journalism. It's the fact that most people are propagandized into saying what the powerful want them to say, and don't know it.

Reading by Tim Foley.

The truth of the matter is that you can't vote your way out of a mess you never voted your way into in the first place. You never voted for any of this.

You never voted for your government to circle the planet with hundreds of military bases and continuously work to destroy any government which disobeys it. 

You never voted for your government to imperil the world with rapidly escalating brinkmanship against nuclear-armed nations.

You never voted to base your entire civilization on the pursuit of profit while shoving your biosphere into the capitalist machine like a tree branch into a wood chipper.

You never voted to let plutocrats and war profiteers make decisions for your government while normal people suffer and toil to scrape by.

You never voted to let billionaires live as kings while homeless people shiver in tents.

You never voted for surging authoritarianism with more and more police militarization, surveillance, censorship, propaganda and control.

You never voted to create this freakish dystopia where all political oxygen gets funneled toward vapid culture war debates which threaten the powerful in no way while any effort to effect meaningful change is ground into the dust.

None of those things were ever on the ballot, and they won't be in November of next year either. What will be on the ballot is whether you want all of those things to continue under the office of someone with a D or an R next to their name. 

Reading by Tim Foley.