Random Thoughts About Life, Politics, And Humanity by Caitlin Johnstone!
(2019-09-09 at 00:41:14 )

Random Thoughts About Life, Politics, And Humanity by Caitlin Johnstone

Make no mistake, maintaining narrative control is the single highest priority of the establishment. Not keeping taxes down, not keeping Bernie out of office, not even keeping the wars going. Without narrative control, their entire empire will crumble. Never lose sight of this.

A neocon is like a broken clock that is wrong two extra times per day.

Most western news headlines about foreign conflicts and uprisings can simply be reduced to either "Something advantageous happened to the United States-centralized power alliance, and that is good" or "Something disadvantageous happened to the United States-centralized power alliance, and that is bad". It is basically the same as watching a group of sports fans comment on the behavior of their favorite team. Except instead of fans it is paid propagandists, and instead of a game it is a slow-moving third world war.

People sometimes tell me that straying off the beaten path of conventional political commentary hurts my credibility. In my opinion what hurts my credibility is sticking to conventional political commentary at all times even when it is not the most honest way to point at an important truth.

Whoever wins the 2020 United States presidential election will with absolute certainty continue advancing United States imperialist bloodshed. It would be good to spend a little less energy talking about how United States presidents might be different and more energy talking about why they are all so similar.

Russiagaters say "Read the Mueller report" and pretend it is an argument, not because the report validates their position (it does the exact opposite), but because they know hardly anyone has read it so they can just wave their hand at it and pretend it contains things it does not.

There is nothing moderate about so-called "centrists"; they are violent extremists and their ideology threatens our entire world. But even if they were moderates, moderation and incremental change is not what we need now; we need drastic changes. Even their stated position is bogus.

Journalism is like art: if you do it with the goal of becoming rich and famous, it is going to suck. Yet there are all sorts of mechanisms in place within news media to reward this precise mentality, and to ensure that these types of journalists are elevated above all the others.

Things will not turn around for humanity until we have at least one positive desire to shove toward together.

Right now all we have is a bunch of things we do not want and an inability to decide what we do want, which keeps us in a state of inertia relative to our oppressors.

Once we have got one positive thing that is both (A) outside the status quo and (B) sufficiently alluring to get a critical mass pushing for it, change will be rapid and inevitable. Right now our rulers are the only ones with a clear idea of what they want, which is why they are winning.

The best form of meditation is to just allow everything to be as it is, without trying to manipulate or control your experience.

This is also the best form of foreign policy.

The path to world peace is the same as the path to inner peace: just quit trying to control everything.

"But-but-but if we do not control the world, the world will be out of our control!" is the most common objection to anti-interventionist foreign policy.

It is also the minds most common objection during meditation.

We have all got a miniature John Bolton living in our head assuring us that the world is a hostile place which we must bring to heel by any means necessary.

As within, so without: we will know peace when we finally rid ourselves of the John Boltons.

I still can not get over the fact that the United Kingdom has a Queen. She wears a crown and everything. She is in charge and can oust the Prime Ministers of Australia and Canada whenever she wants. If that is not crazy enough, when she dies it will be a king. "Hello I am a king lol." It is nuts.

If you can control what happens, you will have power until the public gets sick of your bullshit and removes you.

If you can control what the public thinks about what happens, you will have power forever.

I know a lot of United States of Americans are freaked out by President Trumps wall because of how it makes them feel about their country, but FYI from an outsiders perspective building a wall would be one of the less horrific things the United States government is currently doing.

A society is only as free as its most inconvenient political dissident. Right now, that means we are all only as free as Mr. Julian Assange.

I like Twitter. I have fun there. I am really going to miss it when I say something a little bit imperfectly and get permabanned after being mass reported by imperialist mouth breathers.

There are a lot of weird things about the Mr. Epstein case, but the absolute weirdest is how we learned that western intelligence agencies are using children as sex slaves to manipulate world affairs and, even after two years of #MeToo, we are just kind of pretending it did not happen.

People ask me what to do about the mess we are in, and my best answer is that I am leading by example here.

Do like me and punch as many holes as possible in the establishment narrative matrix. We need revolution, but we need to wake people up first. My example is my main argument.

Human minds are preconditioned to select for cognitive ease, which means preferencing the familiar-unchallenging.

That is why Dems are still blaming 2016 on Susan Sarandon, Assange & Russia. It is also why people avoid looking at the evidence that everything they believe is a lie.

If the future of automation and AI remains controlled by plutocrats instead of the people, they will neuter the left forever, far more effectively and definitely than any government agencies have been able to.

When you are a kid you think you will grow up and stay up all night and eat tons of ice cream and watch cartoons all day, but then as an adult you discover it is not really like that, but then later you figure out that sometimes it can totally be exactly like that and it is awesome.

It is not just that the powerful are constantly manipulating our minds with propaganda-it is that the science for doing so is constantly advancing. As AI improves narrative control will get exponentially more advanced. We have got no choice but to change the way our minds work.

The popular concept of "humility" exists primarily as a tool of social control; it benefits the powerful to have a meek and modest citizenry, so they made it a virtue using religion. True humility is much rarer and deeper: the ability to wonder if everything you believe is wrong.

As long as the plutocratic class is able to use its media influence to control peoples minds, elections will still go toward maintaining the status quo even if the United States has a perfect election system.

Their narrative control must be ended.

This can be done by weakening public trust in the plutocratic propaganda machine.

Trust in the mass media is already at an all-time low while our ability to network and share information is at an all-time high; we just need to exacerbate that.

People do not understand just how mentally damaging abuse can be.

I have spent years repairing my mind from an abusive relationship, and only now am I beginning to feel like I have reclaimed all or most of my mental faculties. In hindsight it looks like I was literally brain damaged.

Even many revolution-minded people are held back from really pushing for what they want by fear of the unknown world they will create. They do not yet realize that we have nothing to lose by taking a leap; we are in a burning building and the jump is already safer than staying put.

We are all hurtling toward death together
on a little blue ball through infinite blackness
in a universe that none of us understand.

But what really matters,
what really, truly, deeply matters,
is that there are strangers on the internet
who have the wrong opinions.

Thanks for reading!!
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