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September
24
2022

Idiots Are Just Discovering That This War Is Dangerous
Caitlin Johnstone

Everyone who acts like it’s a new and unprecedented horror whenever Putin reminds the west that Mutually Assured Destruction still stands is just admitting that they never understood what’s at stake in this proxy war and always thought this was some kind of fucking game.

“Oh my God, he’s saying he might use nukes!” Yeah that’s what happens when you start a war with a fucking nuclear-armed nation, dipshit. That’s why you’re a fucking moron for yelling at those of us who’ve been calling for de-escalation and detente. Change how you are. Stop cheerleading this insane game of nuclear chicken and begin calling for de-escalation.

It’s so crazy how people pretend the US wouldn’t use nukes in response to the exact same type of attacks that Putin is warning against. Like we all know this isn’t some weird new threat that Vladimir Putin invented, right? Do we understand that this is the very reason antiwar activists have spent years warning against this exact confrontation and calling for detente instead?

This shouldn’t scan as something new for you. If Putin reiterating the longstanding principle of Mutually Assured Destruction makes you freak out like something new is being said, it’s because you didn’t pay attention in history class. If you were previously unaware that the threat of nuclear annihilation was baked into this proxy war from the very beginning, that just means it’s time to reassess your support for this proxy war.

Yes this situation is insanely dangerous. No that’s not because of anything Putin has been saying.

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If you’re wondering why we’re seeing more war propaganda today than at any point since World War Two, a big part of it is because it’s going to take a tremendous amount of psychological manipulation to get people to accept the financial hardship that must inevitably befall them as part of the empire’s economic warfare against Russia. Only by ungodly amounts of propaganda would people consent to having their bank accounts emptied for a US proxy war that benefits them in no way and which places them at greater and greater risk of nuclear annihilation.

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A truly free and liberal society would not use propaganda, censorship and information ops to manipulate the way the public thinks about a war, but if you criticize the way the western empire is using those exact measures you get a bunch of “liberals” defending their use.

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Pretty wild how the US State Department stopped publishing its annual transparency reports about US government arms trafficking right when the US government began pouring billions of dollars into proxy warfare campaigns.

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Watch all the western right wingers who’ve been stomping on women’s rights at home transform into a bunch of bra-burning feminists over women’s rights in Iran.

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One of the craziest things happening in the world today is the way weapons manufacturers are allowed to pour money into corrupt think tanks who go on to directly influence the foreign policy and military budget decisions of the most powerful war machine that has ever existed.

War profiteers being allowed to successfully and very effectively lobby for more war is not morally different from slaughtering human beings at industrial scale and selling their organs; the only difference is the way the money gets made. If you kill people and sell their bodies you’ll be called a monster, but if you kill the same number of people for the same amount of money via weapons industry profits in weapons industry-lobbied wars, you’ll be called an industrious job creator.

This is allowed to continue because the US empire is fuelled by human blood. It’s a symbiotic relationship; neither the arms industry nor the empire can live without war, so any amount of corrupt lobbying for murder and destruction is not just tolerated but warmly welcomed.

It turns out it’s impossible to get the world to unite under a single power structure without violence and the threat thereof. So it’s only natural that an empire where there’s no clear separation of corporation and state would see war profiteers knit themselves into state power.

Future generations, if there are future generations, will scarcely be able to believe that it was once legal for corporations which directly profit from war and militarism to insert themselves into key points of influence and lobby — successfully — for more war and militarism.

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People ignore politics because they perceive (correctly) that neither of their country’s two mainstream political factions cares about them, and because they perceive (incorrectly) that those two mainstream political factions are the only possible framework for political action.

A tremendous amount of perception management has gone in to getting people to buy into the absurd delusion that not only can status quo politics be used to change the status quo, but that it’s the only way to change the status quo. People stop ignoring politics when they learn there’s a whole meaningful reality underneath that delusion.

That’s when the apolitical majority becomes political. When their eyes open to the fact that (A) things are fucked, (B) the political system is rigged to make sure they stay fucked, and (C) that the political system is irrelevant because we vastly outnumber those who run it.

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Humanity taking another step toward world war between nuclear superpowers is as good a time as any to reassess our priorities in life. What we think about, what we talk about, what we speak out about, where our attention gravitates, where we place our political energy, how we spend our time on this earth, and with whom.

Anyone who is interested in a sincere relationship with reality must take seriously the possibility that this could all be gone soon, and use that as a guidepost for how they spend their time and energy on this planet.

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Rogue journalist. Bogan socialist. Anarcho-psychonaut. Guerrilla poet. Utopia prepper.

I’m celebrating the hardback release of Woke: A Field Guide For Utopia Preppers by making a pay-as-you-feel PDF available.

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My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here.

 

 

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