I'm constantly amazed by the ability of those in power to create a narrative trusted by a gullible non-critical thinking populace. Appealing to emotions, when you have millions of functionally illiterate, normalcy bias ensnared, iGadget distracted, disciples of the status quo, has been the game plan of the Deep State for the last century. Americans don't want to think, because thinking is hard. They would rather feel. For decades the government controlled public education system has performed a mass lobotomy on their hapless matriculates, removing their ability to think and replacing it with feelings, fabricated dogma, and social indoctrination. Their minds of mush have been molded to acquiesce to the narrative propagandized by their government keepers.
"The problem isn't that Johnny can't read. The problem isn't even that Johnny can't think. The problem is that Johnny doesn't know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling." - Thomas Sowell
With a majority confused, distracted, malleable, willfully ignorant, and easily manipulated by false narratives, heart wrenching images, and fake news, the Deep State henchmen have been able to control the masses with relative ease. The unanticipated rise of Donald Trump to the most powerful role in the world gave many critical thinking, anti-big government, skeptical curmudgeons hope he could drain the swamp and begin to deconstruct the massive out of control Federal bureaucracy.
His rhetoric during the campaign about repealing the disastrous Obamacare abortion, cutting taxes, dismantling Federal regulatory red tape, making Mexico pay for the wall, dumping Yellen, favoring higher interest rates, and not interfering militarily in countries who are not threatening the United States, appealed to many libertarian minded people.
I've watched with disgust over the last month as the promises of non-interventionism by a presidential candidate have been broken by the third consecutive president. George W. promised a humble foreign policy with no nation building. He had criticized the Clinton-Gore Administration for being too interventionist:
"If we don't stop extending our troops all around the world in nation-building missions, then we're going to have a serious problem coming down the road. And I'm going to prevent that."
With 9/11 as a convenient excuse, he invaded sovereign countries based on flawed data, passed the 4th Amendment destroying Patriot Act, allowed neo-cons to create a Orwellian surveillance state, and permitted the military industrial complex to regain its power and control over the political apparatus in Washington D.C. With no Cold War to fill their coffers, neo-cons in Congress, warmongering think tank co-conspirators, military brass and their arms dealer cronies needed to create a new war to keep the racket going.
The War on Terror is unwinnable because you can't defeat a tactic, and that is just what the Deep State is counting on. An unwinnable war, like the War on Drugs and War on Poverty, results in never ending funding, no evaluation of success or failure, continuous propaganda designating new enemies whenever convenient, and a narrative questioning the patriotism of anyone who argues against foreign interventionism.
After Bush's reign of error, the election of a liberal community activist as president surely would result in a dramatic reduction in military intervention around the world. It was so certain, Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for just being elected for promising hope and change. He ran against neo-con tool McCain who never met a country he didn't want to invade. Obama's words as a candidate echoed those of Bush Jr. before he was placed on the throne by the powers that be.
"We continue to be in a war that should never have been authorized. I am proud of the fact that way back in 2002, I said that this war was a mistake."
After being elected Obama immediately changed his tune about the business of war. He withdrew troops from Iraq as required by the agreement signed by Bush with the Iraq puppet government, but he ramped up the never ending Afghanistan war - now sixteen years old and still not won. The vacuum left by our epic failure in Iraq allowed the rise of ISIS. Obama essentially created ISIS by providing arms to "moderate" rebels fighting Assad in Syria.
By the end of his term, troops were back in Iraq and more are on the way. Obama and a Secretary of State named Clinton decided to overthrow Gaddafi even though he posed no threat to U.S. interests. They have left a lawless chaotic failed state, now home to ISIS, Al Qaeda, and various other terrorist factions.
Obama should have won the Nobel Drone Prize as he launched ten times as many attacks as Bush, killing thousands, blowing up wedding parties, and murdering hundreds of innocent civilians. He bombed seven countries even though we are not officially at war with anyone. He renewed all aspects of the unconstitutional Patriot Act. Edward Snowden revealed the mass surveillance on all Americans by Obama's spy agencies.
His continued support for the overthrow of Assad, so Saudi Arabia and Qatar could build a natural gas pipeline to Europe, was thwarted by Putin. Hysterically, after eight years of war mongering and expansion of the warfare/welfare surveillance state, Obama is now portrayed as a pacifist. The fact is Obama, like Bush, filled his role in the imperial empire, policing the world, enriching the military industrial complex, and doing the bidding of his Deep State sponsors.
Now we have Donald Trump, the billionaire champion of the common man, who campaigned on getting out of the nation building business. Where have I heard that before? Exactly one year ago, Trump gave a foreign policy speech laying out his vision for the U.S. role in the world.
"We're getting out of the nation-building business and instead focusing on creating stability in the world. However, unlike other candidates for the presidency, war and aggression will not be my first instinct. You cannot have a foreign policy without diplomacy. A superpower understands that caution and restraint are really truly signs of strength. Although not in government service, I was totally against the war in Iraq, very proudly, saying for many years that it would destabilize the Middle East. Sadly, I was correct, and the biggest beneficiary has been has been Iran, who is systematically taking over Iraq and gaining access to their very rich oil reserves, something it has wanted to do for decades."
He scorned Obama and Bush's foolish attempt at creating western style democracies in 3rd world den of snakes, inhabited by factions of Muslim religious fanatics. He railed against the trillions wasted fighting worthless wars, leaving countries in anarchy, and allowing terrorists organizations like ISIS to fill the vacuum. His arguments sounded like they were being spoken by Ron Paul. He clearly ran as a non-interventionist.
"We went from mistakes in Iraq to Egypt to Libya, to President Obama's line in the sand in Syria. Each of these actions have helped to throw the region into chaos and gave ISIS the space it needs to grow and prosper. Very bad. It all began with a dangerous idea that we could make western democracies out of countries that had no experience or interests in becoming a western democracy.
We tore up what institutions they had and then were surprised at what we unleashed. Civil war, religious fanaticism, thousands of Americans and just killed be lives, lives, lives wasted. Horribly wasted. Many trillions of dollars were lost as a result. The vacuum was created that ISIS would fill. Iran, too, would rush in and fill that void much to their really unjust enrichment."
Trump rationally promised to have peaceful relations with the other two nuclear superpowers. He was diplomatic, lucid and non-confrontational when talking about the two countries neo-cons love to hate. His promises of improved relations lasted about as long as it took the Deep State to create a blatant false flag in Syria.
"We desire to live peacefully and in friendship with Russia and China. We have serious differences with these two nations, and must regard them with open eyes, but we are not bound to be adversaries. We should seek common ground based on shared interests. Russia, for instance, has also seen the horror of Islamic terrorism. I believe an easing of tensions, and improved relations with Russia from a position of strength only is possible, absolutely possible. Common sense says this cycle, this horrible cycle of hostility must end and ideally will end soon. Good for both countries."
There seems to be a common theme when it comes to how all presidents end up doing the bidding of the military industrial complex as soon as they settle into the Oval Office, no matter what they said during their campaigns. Trump is the latest example of talking diplomacy, no nation building, non-interventionism, and not putting boots on the ground, and then doing the exact opposite within weeks of taking office.
The game plan is tried and true. The Deep State either creates or provokes a false flag event to set in motion the pressure to respond militarily. They utilize their propaganda emitting media mouthpieces to spread disinformation and create the opinions of the non-critical thinking masses. Dramatic visual images and a storyline with an evil villain are essential to properly influencing a pliable, easily misled, oblivious public.
The use of false flag events, fake news, and staged graphic photographs to control and manipulate public opinion has been utilized for decades by the Deep State to push the country into military conflict craved by the military industrial complex. We've known for almost a century war is a racket, as described by General Smedley Butler in 1935.
"War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives."
We were warned by the most respected general of the 20th Century about allowing the military industrial complex to gain control over our government and politicians. Eisenhower experienced the influence of the Deep State from the military perspective and firsthand as president. Sadly, his hopes for an alert and knowledgeable citizenry keeping the military industrial complex under wraps were dashed on the shoals of a purposefully failing public education system and a relentless propaganda campaign championing never ending war.
"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together." - Dwight D. Eisenhower
Those controlling the levers of power have understood the power of propaganda since Edward Bernays taught them how to manipulate the public mind with his theories of propaganda in 1928. He believed the masses were driven by biological urges which needed to be channeled and guided by highly intelligent corporate elite overseers. His contempt for the masses was born out in his corporate fascist view of the world.
He believed our dangerous animalistic urges needed to be subdued to keep society sedate and controllable by those constituting the invisible government (aka Deep State). He trained the controllers to use propaganda in order to mold the minds of the masses in a way most beneficial to the state.
"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. …We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized.
Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. …In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons…who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind." - Edward Bernays - Propaganda
The use of propaganda and the flogging of false flag narratives by the corporate media acting as mouthpieces for the Deep State has worked wonders and resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of American boys and innocent victims (collateral damage according to neo-cons) around the world. An explosion that sunk the USS Maine was used by William Randolph Hearst and William McKinley to provoke a war with Spain in 1898.
The Gulf of Tonkin incident was a false flag used by LBJ and the war party in 1964 to kick off the Vietnam War, resulting in over 58,000 American deaths, 153,000 Americans wounded, hundreds of thousands mentally scarred for life, and the deaths of over 2 million Vietnamese. For who? For what? The American boys sacrificed on the altar of the Deep State were nothing but cannon fodder in the warped minds of McNamara, LBJ, Westmorland and the rest of warmongering elitists. Only the military industrial complex benefited, as the burgeoning welfare/warfare state resulted in raging inflation during the 1970s.
As time passed, the propagandists have become immensely more sophisticated in their messaging, psychological assessment of a dumbed down American populace, and manipulation of patriotism, symbolism and emotions to run roughshod over those opposing nonsensical, illegal, and immoral military intervention around the world. The most successful technique utilized by the Deep State for the last few decades has been "atrocity propaganda". Appealing to the emotions of people who have been indoctrinated by government schooling to feel rather than think has been wildly successful in controlling the agenda.
Atrocity propaganda was initially employed to sway public opinion to support the First Gulf War against Sadaam Hussein, engineered by Madison Avenue maggots from Hill & Knowlton on behalf of the Kuwaiti government. In emotional testimony before Congress an unidentified 15 year old girl, who happened to be the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the U.S., gave false testimony that she had witnessed Iraqi soldiers take babies out of incubators in a Kuwaiti hospital, take the incubators, and leave the babies to die.
This propaganda successfully convinced a clueless public to support our involvement in the Gulf War. With the end of the Cold War, how could the military industrial complex generate immense profits without enemies? Afterwards, Stormin Norman Schwarzkopf was glorified as the brilliant courageous hero. The masses need a hero to worship.
Whether 9/11 was a false flag or a monumental security blunder, it was hijacked by the neo-con faction within the government to wage perpetual war and turn our country into a surveillance state. A critical thinking citizen or honest journalist might wonder how the 342 page Patriot Act, which changed 15 existing laws and created entire new agencies, could be written, debated, and signed into law within 45 days of the 9/11 attack. It almost seemed like it was already written, awaiting the opportune time to implement. The War on Terror had begun. The Deep State managed to create a war against a tactic, which could never be won. It has done wonders for the military industrial complex, as arms industry stocks have risen 400% to 500% since 2001 versus the 100% rise in the S&P 500. War is a profitable racket.
The neo-cons immediately began their propaganda campaign to invade Iraq, even though they had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11. There were virtually no religious Muslim zealots inhabiting the country. Hussein hated bin Laden and his ilk. The propaganda machine, driven by Cheney and Wolfowitz, churned out false stories about 9/11 involvement and the imminent threat from Hussein using "WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION". The Colin Powell show on national TV convinced the fearful American populace to support the invasion of a country who threatened us in no way, without a declaration of war from Congress.
The invasion of Iraq set the precedent that presidents can wage war around the globe with no legislative approval. The invasion became a reality TV show called Shock & Awe. In retrospect, the Iraq War was either a colossal error of judgement or exactly what the Deep State had in mind. The ultimate financial cost of our Middle East adventures will exceed $6 trillion, while 4,400 young men gave their lives, 32,000 were badly wounded, thousands more are afflicted with PTSD, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed or maimed, all for a worthless cause. Iraq is now a failed state, with Muslim terrorists controlling large swaths of territory.
The warnings from men of stature, integrity and nobility like Smedley Butler, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Ron Paul have gone unheeded by an increasingly dumbed down, iGadget absorbed, intellectually lazy, willfully ignorant, emotionally stunted populace. They question nothing. They believe whatever the boob tube tells them to believe. Their extreme level of normalcy bias allows the Deep State to maintain control and become outrageously bold in their lies, misinformation, and ability to convince the masses of the most ridiculous narratives. Only one voice in the wilderness remains. Speaking truth to power only creates change if an educated populace says enough is enough.
"How did the American people ever reach this point where they believe that US aggression in the Middle East will make us safe when it does the opposite? How did the American people ever reach the point where they believe that fighting unconstitutional wars is required to protect our freedoms and our Constitution? Why do we allow the NSA, CIA, FBI, TSA, etc. to destroy our liberty at home, as part of the Global War on Terror, with a pretext that they are preserving our liberty?
Why are the lying politicians reelected and allowed to bankrupt our country, destroy our money, and enter wars without the proper consent? Why do the American people suffer in silence and not scream "Enough is enough!"? We've had enough of the "humanitarian do-gooders" and the proponents of "American exceptionalism" who give us nothing but war, economic suffering, and less freedom. This can and must be stopped." - Ron Paul, Swords into Plowshares: A Life in Wartime and a Future of Peace and Prosperity
"The offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil water-way leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed somber under an overcast sky-seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness." - Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
In Part Two of this article I will detail various recent false flag and propaganda episodes which are being used by the Deep State to push the world toward war. The acceleration of events based on false narratives, appeals to patriotism, and fake news puts the lives of millions at risk, with no comprehension of how they are being manipulated through propaganda techniques refined to a science. Imperial empires always fall due to their hubris and military overreach. We are being led into a heart of immense darkness.
