This year in "American Politics" can only be understood by rational folks as what it actually is, political theater. Nothing is as it appears to be in our corporate media; a group of international conglomerates (now reduced from six to five) control 90% of what we see, hear and read. Many Americans are unaware of "Operation Mockingbird," a program of the OSS (now CIA) instituted to "support the war effort" in WWII and extended into "peacetime" (the "cold war" era). (Note: Wikipedia terms this program "alleged." Of course they do.) All five "news" conglomerates have their CIA handlers censoring or spinning news stories to protect "our National Security" (actually the security of our "permanent government," aka the "Deep State." The late George Herbert Walker Bush, who began his government career in the CIA before the killing of JFK, acknowledged this program, but sought to soft-pedal it by pointing out that the CIA handlers were no longer paid by the CIA, but by the media conglomerates themselves, as though that changed the nature of the control.
That was then (President #41), this is now (#45). According to 45, the only news that's not fake is his own tweets. Others differ; the current number of his lies, per day, as reported by that radical left-wing rag Forbes Magazine, is averaging at about 23.8 (since the onset of the Covid-19 "Chinese hoax"). The US has become the world champ in total number of Covid-19 cases and deaths. 45 is a recent victim (he's "fine," though), and continues his campaign to deny any responsibility for over 220,000 dead Americans, a number which is predicted to double by the end of the year.
Is there any objective means to separate facts from fiction, truth from lies? Of course. Problem: many self-interested groups and their agents spend inordinate amounts of money and time promoting self-serving fictions, and many Americans (and others) accept these fictions uncritically as truth, for reasons having no connection to reason and logic (while sometimes producing rationalizations of them as "cover"). 45 is a master of brazen emotional manipulations of his "base." What amazes me is reading such rationalizations (and acceptance of fiction as fact) echoed by otherwise-rational people I respect (when they are in their "normal," rational states). See this post, for example.
Today, I listened to an episode of an excellent podcast series ("Hidden Brain"), "The Logic of Rage," which examined the way the human brain can and does "switch gears" from the rational mode to an emotional mode, which is (to use a phrase from Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers) "unencumbered by the thought process." This mode short-circuits our otherwise-logical behavior into fight-or-flight mode, a mode made necessary in our evolutionary development to ensure our survival, but deadly for the long-term survival of any civilization. This podcast episode is a good example of how logic and reason can go out the window in circumstances such as we currently face.
Up until now (in this post), I have not mentioned the "new paradigm" under which I now operate, which requires an entirely new attitude towards, and view of, American elections as presently constituted. I covered this new paradigm here, so I won't repeat myself. The focus of this post is intended to be "how to determine the truth;" to be rigorous, one must first define "truth." Is it relative, subjective, absolute? Sometimes one, sometimes another? Do the dictates of (actual) National Security ever require that our employees in the civil service, elected officials, or even judges on the bench, lie to us as a matter of policy? Here is a mostly-excellent essay on the topic of truth in politics.
In summary: the worst decision you can make, in determining how you will vote, is to allow externalities (like the views and interests of the "tribes" to which we all belong), opinions of "thought leaders" in media, or anything but your own well-considered judgments, based on your own unbiased research, enlightened self-interest and the general welfare of our nation, determine your choice. Think for yourself, while also considering others. My choice was based on these factors, in the context of what can be accomplished by our body politic before November 3. My actions in the four years to follow will be focused on the new paradigm.
When looking at that new paradigm, bear in mind that the main author and advocate of that paradigm (Anna von Reitz, annavonreitz.com) is not infallible, and has posted many articles which are of questionable provenance and feature flawed logic or just plain incorrect information. That said, I judge the core of her program (the unfinished job of "post-Civil-War Reconstruction" of our actual government, as distinguished from the government-services corporations which the Founders established and which have since usurped that actual, sovereign government) to be sound and essential to complete—if you agree with me that self-government by We the People, each of whom enjoys the status of a sovereign-without-subjects, a status the Founders established when we rejected the foreign rule of King George III, is preferable to the defacto status we now suffer as a people controlled, through fraud and semantic deceit, by our employees, in a system of corporate feudalism.
(I tried to write this last paragraph in rigorous prose for clarity, because the subject demands rigorous treatment. After all, I'm advocating a new paradigm here, and no common assumptions can be made. I wish to avoid any attempt to restate or condense the valid and essential information Anna has provided to support the New Paradigm; she has done a good job in this endeavor. However, reading over this last paragraph, it's neither accessible nor entertaining. Anna has, if anything, erred on the side of being very accessible in many of her posts; for example, this one. It's an accessible allegory of the process our government-services employees have used for over a century to rob us blind. Maybe I'll post a list of more of her posts of this nature, the gist of which I agree with. Anna has written in many formats and styles, for different audiences: the highbrow, the lowbrow, the religious, the agnostic, the thoughtful, the tribal ideologues, even specifically for Trump, who is unlikely to read much of anything. Perhaps she should commission a pretty, faux blonde Fox News anchor to produce special shows just for The Donald, to deliver appropriate parables. Sadly, expecting to influence 45's thought process, let alone his behavior, seems—to any rational observer—an exercise in futility.)
Determining "the truth" in our current pre-election environment is frustratingly complex. No single source of information can be trusted without rigorous examination. With 45 (or, adopting Greg Palast's appellation, "Agent Orange"), "truth" is whatever he says it is; anyone or anything disagreeing with his assertions is, by definition, "fake news." Unfortunately, "real news" is exceedingly difficult to discern. Operation Mockingbird is still very much with us, and is not under the control of the current administration. As noted above, our "mass media" is owned by only five multinational conglomerates, and the "news" divisions of these huge corporate enterprises have been neglected as their profitability pales beside their sister divisions in entertainment. In fact, "Fox News" is not even officially recognized by many nations (outside the US) as a "news organization;" it's considered to be either entertainment, government propaganda, or some combination of the two. Even a reporter for "The Gray Lady" (the NYT) was caught fabricating stories. So, when passengers on the "Trump Train"hear their hero decry "fake news," they could claim they had actual reasons to believe him (other than tribal loyalty), although they would be unlikely to look for actual reasons; their loyalty implies faith, but does not demand reason (or reasons).
If the "mainstream media" is unreliable as a source of truth and verifiable facts, where is there left to look? I recommend finding sources independent of that media, and checking them against each other. (Greg Palast, a real investigative reporter at a time when that category is nearly extinct, is a great example—and he's entertaining, as well.) Other examples: Seymour Hersh, Bob Woodward, Glenn Greenwald... a search for "contemporary investigative reporters" just now yielded these links: the UK-based, worldwide "Positive News" where you will find the London-based media organization The Bureau of Investigative Journalism. Follow these links to Forensic News, Global Witness, The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, The Intercept, Tomgram, and Fighting back against fake news: meet the factcheckers. Also of note, from Northeastern University, in Boston, MA, this article on journalism. Try your own search and see what you find. (Unfortunately, you may find pyrite along with the gold, like "Snopes," a site which reliably "debunks" any source not approved by the corporate and government establishments. Buyer beware.)
These are extraordinary times. Today is Nov.2, 2020, and tomorrow national elections are held. As of last May, according to Forbes, the incumbent President has averaged over twenty lies per day. That number now stands at 50, according to an October 22nd Washington Post article: "As President Trump entered the final stretch of the election season, he began making more than 50 false or misleading claims a day. It’s only gotten worse — so much so that the Fact Checker team cannot keep up."
In light of these numbers, it seems unwise to take any White House statements at face value. Trump has endlessly repeated unsubstantiated or false statements about "election fraud" in an apparent attempt to invalidate the results if he loses. Voting by mail has long been a tradition in many states, the only means in some states; a trend that's been accelerated by the pandemic crisis. (New Jersey last month sent every registered voter a mail-in ballot.) Over half of all votes may have already been cast through early voting and mail-in ballots; "conservative" Breitbart reports, "A majority of Joe Biden (D) supporters say they have already cast their ballots, while just a quarter of President Trump supporters have done the same, a Change Research/CNBC Poll released this week found."
The Trump team saw this trend coming, and recognized it as a threat. As the demographics of mail-in voters tend to favor Democrats, efforts to sabotage mail-in voting have included crippling the Post Office by removing sorting machines, prohibiting overtime, sending mail trucks out "on schedule" but empty, and more. On Greg Palast's site, you'll find a plethora of means by which Republicans have, for years, tipped the scales in their favor through fraudulent means, including purging voter rolls with "Operation Crosscheck" and making voting more difficult for the Democrat demographic, like limiting ballot drop boxes to one per county in states like Texas where counties are huge. With publicity about these issues, and courts striking down various vote-suppression schemes, the Trump Team is near panic as poll numbers run against them. For weeks, Trump has been claiming that voting must stop on election day and, if he is ahead, he must be declared the winner, setting up a rationale for claiming that if he's ahead on election day, and subsequent votes swing the count to Biden (as may happen, since early and mail-in ballots take longer to count), this will "prove" election fraud by Democrats. Only rabid Trump partisans are likely to believe this, and they've been urged to participate in "poll watching" while armed. Nothing good can come of this.
I hope tomorrow's contest will be decided in the weeks to come, without violence. (The chance of the incumbent conceding tomorrow, if he loses, is small but not vanishingly so, if there's a landslide or a number of "battleground" states where the count is overwhelmingly for Biden.) However, "the truth about politics" can't be found by looking at the current contest. As I laid out in a previous post, that's a new paradigm, folks. Looking for the truth in politics by analyzing current political theater makes as much sense as trying to gauge reality by analyzing the actions of characters in a daytime soap opera. We will fix nothing by getting better writers for the opera: we need to recognize the nature of our reality and replace the current fantasy world with the new reality that we deserve. We start that recognition, and work to replace fantasy with that new reality, at The American States Assembly.
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