IDIOTIZED PUBLICS

US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has laid out US policy toward the People’s Republic of China – a manifesto upholding Washington’s vow to prevent China from surpassing the US. However, China is a nation with a population several times the size of the US (and the G7 combined) and is making the transition from developing to a developed nation – surpassing the US is inevitable. Only through subversion and conflict can the US even attempt to prevent this – and that is precisely what the US government including the State Department has been doing and is announcing it will continue doing.

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE—This kind of thing happens so often because within an empire that is held together by propaganda, capitalism and mass military violence, those who are elevated to prominence within that empire have a symbiotic relationship with those things.

Someone who is worth a quarter billion dollars is unlikely to support the end of capitalism and the elimination of vast wealth inequality. Someone whose wealth and status come from Hollywood is unlikely to oppose the imperial propaganda machine of which Hollywood is a crucial part. Someone who benefits from status quo politics is unlikely to promote meaningful opposition to them.

ERIC ZUESSE—That response from him was assuming what he undoubtedly knew to be false: that the users’ concern was whether or not a given “outlet” that’s being searched-for by a user will be found if specifically searched-for on DuckDuckGo. He’s not so stupid as to actually believe that that is what users are actually rebelling against — he knows that instead they are rebelling against having a search-engine, whether Google or DuckDuckGo or any other, pretend to be able to predetermine which allegations or types of allegations that are accessible through the Web are true, and which are false (or ‘low quality’). Obviously, no search-engine can do that; any that pretend to are committing fraud. But that sadly includes every search-engine.

Although mild, by imperialist/exceptionalist terms, and a valuable voice for reason in a situation where reason is at a premium, Prof. Mearsheimer still sees the world in terms of old-fashioned Machiavellian power competition. Apparently wrapped in some form of nationalist perspective, his implicit dislike and distrust of China is never properly explained. Why should the US play Russia against China, or oppose their alliance, as long as the Western set of imperialist values dominates policy in the West?

Almost 85% of rabidly imperialist Neocons are Jews. Russophobia runs deep in the Jewish community today, yet, it didn’t use to be that way. Not when progressive and left-wing Jews had a voice in the media and the civic life of the US and Western Europe. Before Zionism preempted the Jewish conversation with its obsessional mono focus on Israel, Jews were leaders in many vital struggles, some outright revolutionary. Where did they go? And now we have this.