[su_spoiler title=”MAKE SURE YOU CIRCULATE THESE MATERIALS! BREAKING THE EMPIRE’S PROPAGANDA MACHINE DEPENDS ON YOU.” open=”yes” style=”fancy” icon=”arrow-circle-1″]
“Cram them full of non-combustible data, chock them so damned full of ‘facts’ they feel stuffed, but absolutely brilliant with information. Then they’ll feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving.”
—Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, 1951“It is not only information that they need – in the age of Fact, information often dominates their attention and overwhelms their capacities to assimilate it….What they need , and what they feel they need , is a quality of mind that will help them to use information and to develop reason in order to achieve lucid summations of what is going on in the world and of what may be happening within themselves.”
— C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination, 1959
[su_dropcap style=”light” size=”5″]T[/su_dropcap]he mainstream media’s (MSM) ongoing narrative of the massacre in Las Vegas is clearly deceptive. This is nothing new. That is their modus operandi. Overwhelm people with a glut of information about a terrible tragedy and all becomes clear to people sick-at-heart over the deaths and injuries to innocent people. But it’s a false clarity engendered to confuse. Tell the story big and loud, and tell it repetitively from different angles, and It becomes hard to think straight, especially with the addition of all the sad stories of the innocent victims’ deaths and injuries. Who can forget the false official narrative that was spun amid the grief for all the innocent victims of the attacks of September 11, 2001. Few could think straight at the time.
The MSM tells us in detail about Stephen Paddock’s gambling life, his houses and real estate dealings, how much he paid for them, his gun collection numbering 47, including all those in his hotel room (23), the alleged exact number of rounds he had in his car (1,600), how he shot from his hotel room windows, etc. We are told what his brother and girlfriend say about him: they are shocked; he was just a regular guy; they can’t explain it. We are told how he got the room gratis, how long he stayed there, and that he was planning to escape (they say this with a straight face). Told how many people died (59) and how many were injured (527), we remember these numbers vaguely, especially the latter. A regular person just feels overwhelmed by all the information, the numbers; saddened and depressed for all the victims, and more afraid.
A mystery is created, an endless mystery that can be pondered and pseudo-debated ad infinitum: why would a seemingly normal, if slightly eccentric, man do such an horrendous thing? Why did he “snap”? Was there something wrong with his brain? But if he “snapped,” why did he buy so many guns over a long period of time? Is snapping consistent with long-term planning? Was he mentally ill? The national “conversation,” as they like to call it, will revolve around guns and mental health, and the MSM will keep the story going with endless experts offering their opinions. And that endless conversation will divert the public’s attention from the essence of this case and other matters we are not supposed to be focused on at the moment.
[dropcap]W[/dropcap]hat the media do not say is that there is video and witness evidence that there were at least two more shooters, maybe more, one from a lower floor and another at the Bellagio Hotel that was locked down. This means that there was a conspiracy involved. They don’t mention this so that someone like me can do so and be branded a “conspiracy theorist,” the term created by the CIA to besmirch anyone questioning the official narrative of the JFK assassination. You will notice that I am not – purposefully – linking to this evidence that I assert exists, nor am I raising more of the many questions surrounding this case. I am hoping that readers will research these matters themselves, and if they discover that there is evidence proving that there was more than one shooter, then, just as with the magic bullet absurdity in the JFK case, they will conclude, ipso facto, that the MSM are involved in a cover-up of a conspiracy, which is itself a conspiracy – a factual conspiracy, not a conspiracy theory. And if that is so, they will ask why, and who is being protected. Cui bono? Why would the MSM push this narrative of the lonely crazed gunman?
People need to realize that they must be immediately skeptical of such official narratives and do their own research, and they will learn that there are excellent alternative websites that are doing real journalism and are seeking truth for truth’s sake.
While this brief article is not a “lucid summation,” as Mills suggested we need, I offer it as a concise provocation to anyone reading this to develop their own sociological imaginations to achieve such lucidity at a time when propaganda is king and the pawns are being swept off the devil’s chessboard.
One might end up asking: Who’s the devil? And answering their own question? [/su_spoiler]
[su_box title=”ABOUT THE AUTHOR” style=”glass” box_color=”#b11612″ title_color=”#e2e7e7″] Educated in the classics, philosophy, literature, theology, and sociology, Ed Curtin teaches sociology at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. His writing on varied topics has appeared widely over many years. He states: “I write as a public intellectual for the general public, not as a specialist for a narrow readership. I believe a non-committal sociology is an impossibility and therefore see all my work as an effort to enhance human freedom through understanding.” His website is http://edwardcurtin.com/ . [/su_box]
Appendix
Fine minds think alike
The proudly iconoclastic Paul Craig Roberts also thinks there’s something rotten in Denmark. Examine his arguments below. He posted this on his site on Oct. 5, 2017.
Las Vegas
Paul Craig Roberts
Dear Readers: to reiterate, I do not know what happened in Las Vegas and do not expect to be able to find out. I understand that this is a subject of interest to you, but I have no explanation for you. My own opinion is that, if it were a staged operation, authorities responsible will put out many different explanations on the Internet, so that skeptics will be divided by their choices of the explanation. In other words, multiple conspiracy theories will kill unity of skepticism that possibly could produce a full account.
All I can tell you is that I consulted a US Marine sniper and a 27-year police veteran who has conducted many investigations. They say they would like to see daytime crime scene photos of the kill zone showing blood trails and blood pools and would like to see examinations of the bullets striking the ground showing trajectories and direction(s) of fire. They agree with me that if such a massacre took place, evidence would be everywhere. Why don’t we see it? Suspicions should be dispelled by abundant evidence, not created by withholding evidence.
[premium_newsticker id=”154171″]
[su_box title=”” style=”bubbles” box_color=”#7978cc”]
Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found
In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” — acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump — a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all.— Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report
7 comments
Ed Curtin can take another curtain call, while the “bravos” ring out. “Bravo” for “brave,” too! Because this is a brave piece, and Curtin faces up to the challenge with grace and clarity. Its a bullfighter’s grace, because he is taking on the “bull” that rushes at us when events like this occur. That bull is fueled by our own criss-crossing emotions of fear, anger and sadness as well as the managed “news” that snorts at us and charges with sharp horns glistening. So, quite right to call this piece a “provocation.” Like Paul Craig Roberts, John Pilger, Philip Giraldi, Pepe Escobar and a few others, Curtin is a “provocateur” par excellence!
The only way to figure this out is to find ‘cui bono’ and frankly like with many other strange occurrences that remains very hidden if it can be at all applied. A restrained suspicion is good but one can interpret events also at maximum hysterical value. To create chaos in Las Vegas does not seem to be have much purpose. Neither had the slaughter of children in Connecticut by another child much purpose except to release that child from his rotten life. To see the World Trade Center attack as only a state conspiracy diminishes the remarkable effort of the Saudi Arabian team that destroyed it. Now of course foreigners are dunderheads who envy this hallowed ground, but the tenor of this society gives rise to extremes as seen in the McCarthy trials, the Jones suicides and other societal anomalies that stun the outside world.
Very well done. Thank you Ed.
It appears that the USA is very much like ancient Rome where bread and circuses kept the population in check. Western Europe of course has its soccer game violence, but somehow the US media appear to be the conduit through which much of the blood excitement flows. Every major crime is exaggerated and blown up to titillate and induce pleasantly stimulating fear, while mass killings like the horrid Las Vegas one give rise to improved spectator sales of maudlin and slightly nauseating sentimental cable television programs. It all is par for the course and blood violence is a basic public pleasing spectacle ever since the Roman empire. As long as one does not participate in the violence and bloodletting, one can observe it like a video game much like looking at public USA football games. It is always the other who will suffer for our pleasure, similar to the gladiators who fought each other to the death in the Roman arenas. The Hollywood movies operate on the same principle, and the more gruesome the proceedings the better the financial results. The USA and the Western world are technologically highly developed but culturally they are quite barbaric and in fact range well below some areas of the globe that are considered to be Third World countries.
Thank you Peter. A perspective that is easy to understand;only if you have sane mind.
“No culture can survive if it attempts to be exclusive” Gandhi
All around…. an excellent article about the irrelevant information meant to distract us from reality. Peter Pavimentov makes an excellent point about how this constant battering with information is meant to excite and glorify violence…. every last irrelevant detail told again and again reinforces the triumph of violence.
Edward Curtain asks one important question among many:
Why would the MSM push this narrative of the lonely crazed gunman?
If a Muslim had committed this massacre, he would have been labeled a Muslim Terrorist, even if he were a crazed lone gunman. When a white christian male goes on yet another rampage… no one dares call him what he is ‘a white, christian, male terrorist’. White christian male syndrome is endemic to christianity, with its deep roots of violence intended to convert, conquer and dominate all other traditions… Consider Anders Breivik the Norwegian white christian male who killed more than 70 young people at a gathering to promote multiculturalism. He did so to protect christian hegemony.
The three dominion religions: christianity, judaism and islam are all equally violent… all seek to exclude the other, to dominate the other…. currently we have missionaries in afghanistan, euphemistically called aid workers, who follow soldiers into batter with their bibles, we have the Israelis dominating and destroying the Palestinians, we have ISIS claiming to reinstate the Caliphate.
All three of the violence prone semitic religious tradition begin by glorifying violence to animals:
Genesis 9:1-3 “The fear and dread of you shall rest on every animal of the earth, and on every bird of the air, on everything that creeps on the ground, and on all the fish in the sea; into your hand they are delivered. Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you; and just as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything.”
“The fear and dread of you”…. is meant to sustain the illusion of the glory of violence.
What this blood drenched tradition fails to grasp is that once violence is unleashed, it is not contained. Once violence is glorified it finds many arenas of expression.
There does not seem to be any effort by the media or those who control public opinion to seek out the root of societal violence. Instead they give us vigils, irrelevant facts and speculations. As long as they do not bring up the roots of violence they can maintain their positions at the top of the dominion pecking order…. man over animals, white male christians over women and the disenfranchised. They must maintain never ending violence to stay in power.
A more humane religious ethic would encourage non-violence and discourage the urge to kill.
Such a religion is the Jain religion of India, which for thousands of years has resulted a community that encourages respect for the lives of all being, respect that includes their right to live free from human harm:
All life is sacred and everyone has a right to live fearlessly to their maximum potential. Living beings do not have any fear from those who have taken the vow of ahimsa.”…
Jain children do not become shooters or trophy hunters, do not invade foreign lands to conquer the natives. They are taught to live in harmony with the natural order, thereby contributing to a much needed less cruel, heartless and violent world.