I didn’t intend to single Frank out in a bad way, but his question raised an interesting point. The idea here is not to browbeat a commenter, but rather have a discussion about points made in the comments. Frank is more than welcome to counter the ideas presented here and I will gladly publish his thoughts on the matter. So thanks to both Frank and Craig for their contribution to the wide array of ideologies and opinions found here among the readership.  -JJ

Frank commented on a previous post I made; “No barbarians! hahahahahahahahah On what planet. America didn’t choose to be empire. Bretton Woods elected us; we were the only undamaged nation in 1944. In your next essay please advise who you would have be the empire a nation or UN globalists.”

So I herein respond.

Few realize how often “the greatest country on earth” has waged war. Counting wars against the Indians, covert foreign wars, and aid to other states’ aggressive external and internal wars, America has been at war 214 out of the 228 years since the Constitution took effect: 94% of our existence. War has been ‘our’ national policy tool to open markets or to install friendly regimes and take land. False flags are a longstanding American tradition including acts of mass deception blamed on innocent parties, used as excuses for American aggression.

“What we’ve been undergoing to a large extent is a form of psychological abuse, actually, by very narcissistic, hegemonic governments and officials for a very long time. It’s a form of gaslighting where actually our own faith in our ability to judge a situation, and to some extent even our own identity, has been eroded and damaged to the point where we’re effectively accepting their version of reality.” ~ Vanessa Beeley

I remember some famous quote that goes something like; those who have you believe absurdities will make you commit atrocities. Some people only see the choices offered to them by the Empire, and can’t imagine other possibilities. Frank doesn’t consider that his support, and that of other ‘patriots’ allows the Empire to continue unmolested. What would happen if America followed the law? Our government is the barbarians. You’ve caught them in countless lies but still act as though they’re entitled to your support. We play victim but we’ve earned much more than we’ve reaped, so far.

Patriotism is love of country, family and tradition whereas nationalism is the belief that we possess all that’s wonderful, beginning with ‘our’ government and must install it around the world, as if we’re the Borg. The Empire exceled at convincing the world they’re ‘as advertised’ but the wrapping is coming undone. ‘Consumers’ aren’t able to think outside that space allowed by their ‘leaders’; these days America only creates pizza, poverty, bombs and ruined countries. Our public conversations revolve around propaganda and lies.

Nationalism is resentment and rivalry, defined by its enemies and traitors, real or supposed. It’s militant and belligerent. Patriotism, by contrast, is peaceful until forced to fight, and we haven’t been since 1941. Patriots regularly confuse the country with ‘our’ government; a government so swollen, corrupt, immoral, criminal, and wicked that it’s the prototype for H. L. Mencken’s statement that “every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.”

Americans generally don’t think and have very obvious double standards, the nightly news is classic propaganda. Current examples are the Russian ‘scandals’ where you find nothing proven and each time they speak about it they say; investigators believe/suspect. They’re passing laws based upon suspicions, while the ‘news’ reports how the nasty Russian government assaults ‘peaceful’ demonstrators. ‘Consumers’ hearing this ‘news’ forget about the occupy Wall Street demonstrators who were assaulted and arrested by ‘our’ law enforcement, thereby preventing their ‘free speech’. Another facet of this is Bahrain where protests against oppression began with the start of the Arab spring and continue but you never hear a word here from ‘our free press’, which may be because the Empire profits from the status quo.

Americans don’t recognize the lies they’re told about the target of the day because of the undisputed assumption that ‘our’ government couldn’t possibly be that evil. They have no trouble believing that another nation could be using chemical weapons and bombing their own civilians for no reason beyond sadism. The possibility that ‘our’ government does such things or is selling propaganda to manufacture consent for regime change is never imagined and critical analysis of that option never happens.

The demonizing of “Putin’s Russia” which has taken hold in the Empire has America “sleepwalking”, as Kissinger, Gorbachev, and others have warned, into a potential nuclear war with Russia. It’s the Cuban missile crisis again, but worse now because there are many irresponsible minor actors involved, and because American policy is without statesmanship, consistency or historical perspective.

From birth we’re taught things about Russia, Israel and the world that have no relationship with what’s really true, but we keep those ‘truths’. Who benefits? Americans believe absurd things because it makes them feel good about ‘our’ government releasing them from having to confront the beast. We’re creating our own national security “threats”. We’ve become Chicken Little.

All you’ve heard from ‘our’ ruling party(s), the FBI, the whore media, and the morons who believe them is that Russia is so powerful and the Empire is so weak that Russia determined the outcome of ‘our elections’. The primary function of ‘our free press’ is to manufacture consent/opinion that the power ‘elite’, who own ‘our free press’, want you to have. This boy has cried wolf too often for us to pay attention anymore. I don’t trust anything the TV tells us, for they only repeat government lies.

Who does your thinking for you? ‘Our’ government cares more for Israel, war and corporations than for ‘we, the people’ displayed daily by what they do vs. what they say. ‘Consumers’ let criminals pull easily debunked stunts without challenge. The Zapruder film of JFK’s murder is an easy example. Watch that, and tell me why ‘our free press’ still speaks about Oswald.

ISIS/al-Qaida fills in for ‘communist’ in America’s new world order wherever there’s resistance to that order. How long will it be before they claim ISIS is operating in Iran and so the chase has to continue there as well? You have to smile at the use of “military initiative abroad” used for “military aggression against the world.” These propagandists are well schooled.

Waging endless wars isn’t making anyone any safer. It’s certainly not making America great. It’s undeniably digging America deeper in debt. Americans brainwashed into believing that patriotism means supporting the war machine, fail to recognize is that these ongoing wars have little to do with keeping the country safe but are enriching the military/industrial complex at our expense. This expanding military empire to police/control the globe by ‘our’ government is bankrupting the nation, increasing terrorism/blowback, and pushing America closer to collapse.

International law is trampled under American army boots. ‘Our free press’ are the Empire’s propaganda units and ‘consumers’ have, through a constant barrage of lies, fear, bigotry, ignorance of history and other countries, become willing fools of this machine.

The war on Syria is part of the American global war to cause world-wide insecurity, selling reliance on American military force. Its ‘our’ protection racket, to continue American dollar domination, to weaken or destroy any country that threatens that dominance and to keep ‘consumers’ focused on manufactured enemies, instead of focused on their enemies at home that rob them every day. America respects no laws, no morality, and no humanity. Its only purpose is to plunder and murder.

The Empire condemns the killing of civilians in war by others yet it kills civilians regularly and often on a massive scale. By what logic has the killing of Koreans, Vietnamese, Laotians, Cambodians, Afghans, and others by American air power been any less shameful than the Syrian government’s use of “barrel bombs”? Why should ‘consumers’ accept Pentagon claims that when civilians are killed by Americans, it’s always accidental, but ‘our’ opponents kill civilians with malicious intent? Americans are too self-absorbed.

Trump was going to drain the swamp and clean up Wall Street: they now own him. Americans are suffering unnecessarily due to our obviously parasitic, corrupt, imperial, oligarchic, corporate-state. The most militarily powerful country on the planet only spreads chaos and hasn’t won a war since 1945 even with the investment of trillions of taxpayer dollars. We spent six trillion dollars in the Middle East while our infrastructure decays.

The ‘fake news’ wave washing over us is one step in controlling what information we have about what happens around us. ‘Our leaders’ aren’t protecting us: They’re Big Brother controlling dissent. They’ve removed several of our constitutional protections without opposition and now they’re working on free speech.

American culture is so intellectually shallow it’s frightening. Ignorance is celebrated. National exceptionalism/arrogance is virtually unchallenged by ‘consumers’. Anyone who tries to penetrate this fog of ignorance and sense of exceptionalism that has corroded America is attacked. In difficult times a nation’s tolerance for daring to swim against the cultural tide evaporates, even though it’s precisely at such times when dissent is most necessary. Trying to wake America up to the damage it does and has done worldwide raises attacks and laughter that confirm the collapse of a culture built on foundations not of wisdom, but of gross ignorance. Americans are nearly incapable of comprehending what’s really happening around them. It’s too abstract. ‘Consumers’ awareness of current events is fragmented and based on ‘belief’ instead of reality. Most ‘consumers’ can’t find Korea on a map, let alone have any idea what operation Gladio is. Terrorism serves those who would destroy civil liberties at home and wage wars of aggression abroad. It’s part of the Empire’s tactics for total control. So, Frank, tell us what you recommend. Jesse will publish your well-reasoned response.

“It is part of the general pattern of misguided policy that our country is now geared to an arms economy which was bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured upon an incessant propaganda of fear. While such an economy may produce a sense of seeming prosperity for the moment, it rests on an illusionary foundation of complete unreliability and renders among our political leaders almost a greater fear of peace than is their fear of war.” General Douglas McArthur, 1952

– Craig Dudley

https://virginiafreemen.com/2017/08/05/guest-post-barbarians/