Dave McGowan, author of Weird Scenes in the Canyon, an inconclusive expose’ of the music scene in Los Angeles in the mid-sixties, along with other works, has inoperable cancer. I think he smokes.
I’ll be spending time soon PDFing all of his website writing, most not published.
Couple this with the an aggressive form of breast cancer hitting DM Murdock (Acharya S), author of The Christ Conspiracy and Did Moses Exist?, among many other works, and it is a double whammy. I don’t know them personally, but feel like I do, and have great fondness for them.
It makes me wonder why George H.W. Bush has lived so long and well. Why do the good die young, while old creepy cynical psychopaths linger on and on and on …?
Here’s a rundown of future topics as I try to take a new direction with my blog.
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I have an unfinished post set aside about the Paul is Dead phenomenon. I’ll get back to it. As far as I can discern on available evidence, Paul McCartney indeed died in 1966, probably murdered. On hand was a body double who had been used in service already, as famous people often use doubles to preserve their privacy. He was groomed, trained and went under the knife, and was used as a replacement. I don’t think anyone planned that, but once it was seen as a necessary to kill McCartney, the idea of replacing him with the double probably took wings, so to speak.
If it were only some silly entertainer and a huge cash machine in jeopardy, it would not matter. But it does matter, for other reasons. I’ll go into that.
On the matter of Yoko Ono, I still do not understand that.
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Another subject I’ll explore: I had the same experience as Dave McGowan (see footnote*) did when he decided to look into the moon landings to see if they were faked. It’s not that they were faked, but how really, really easy it is to see that they were faked.
The fake moon landings were part of a larger project, Manhattan in scope and deadly in intent. This was not trickery for sake of public relations. Apollo was the cover story for work going all the way back to Wiemar: Conquest of space. Therein lay more power than ever before possessed by humans, the most ambitious military prize ever imagined.
Some other day on that one too. I have fewer answers on that than on Macco, but the pretending to walk on the moon part, that was real.
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For right now, we were sitting on our deck overlooking Denver the other evening, and I said to my wife that I had come so far along in understanding this crazy fucking place (I don’t use that word around her), but that I hope before I die to understand everything! That is the reason I exist. I am mostly retired, we have a wonderful life with friends and kids and grand kids. We have no money worries. I am thankful for all of that, for sure. I did absolutely nothing to deserve it.
I should just be satisfied. But I also have an undying urge to understand things.
So I am going to cover one more subject, DD, or dissociative disorders, which affects me and which I have explored. But first let me state clearly: No whining allowed. I am a happy man. Or men.
I was beaten up as a child, sniff sniff. I don’t remember any pain, and it wasn’t by my parents. They were lovely people. But I do remember as a four-year-old waking up on the floor after being cold-cocked, and then again later on. Did it happen at other times? Don’t know, and have no desire to know. Looking back I realize there was a demonic pathology in our household embodied in my siblings that made the place a living hell. In that situation, children retreat, lose memories, and become dissociative.
I am thankful for it now, but in my younger years, it caused problems. I avoid hard liquor and Ambien, as they cause amnesia. My inner children take over. When I heard of Patrick, and then Kerry Kennedy driving in blacked out states after having taken Ambien, I immediately understood. Their childhoods had more trauma than any of us can imagine.
Once you know it is there, it is kind of fun. Self knowledge is the best kind. When my fingers hit the keyboard, I do not know what will emerge. I have a little devil residing in me, and he’s a clever one. For me, writing is easy and fun, and necessary. I have to do this.
I know, you’re going all Seven Faces of Eve on me, thinking it’s all weird. I think it is common phenomenon. There is a whole lot of abuse in this world, a whole lot of suffering that children endure or witness and repress. These children become adults who are, in my view, more interesting, observant, and empathetic than regular people with regular childhoods.
We who have endured such trauma – again, no whining allowed, as mine is minor by comparison to so many others (think of the children of Vietnam or Iraq, for instance) – we instantly recognize each other on meeting, sometimes even just passing in the street. No words need pass. We know. We exist on a higher level of intuition, probably an element of survival.
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Enough of that. What on earth I have been doing with the blog … is driving me to distraction! It’s boring! It is like I own a race car, and use it to go to the grocery store.
I feel as though I have only tapped the surface of the potential to use this blog as an exploration tool and heck, even make it interesting. As I said, I want to understand everything. Hardly anything is what it appears on the surface, politics always, but people too. Everyone has a story, everyone is living a lie on some level.
So stay tuned. It is going to get better here. It has to, otherwise I’ll be bored and I’ll quit.
Sorry about the ads in the piece below, one of my favorites from a man I deeply admire, Mel Brooks.
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*Mr. McGowan, I just learned, has been diagnosed with incurable small-cell lung cancer that has already spread to his liver and bones. Travel well sir, and thank you for doing some very interesting work.
I let go with a blog post before I had finished it. On the iPad the “save draft” and “publish” buttons are side-be side and I had to pee and ….
So what. Blogging has gotten really, really boring, and it is time for a quantum leap. I am going to attempt something never done by either bloggers or journalists. I am going to tread new ground.
In the last post, concerning understanding of evidence, I highlighted how Dr. Judy Wood proved (a word I usually avoid) that the Twin Towers could not have “pancake” collapsed in 2001. Ergo, the official explanation given us by NIST of their demise is false. What we saw that day happened too fast and left too little debris behind. It was not pancake collapse.
Given the impossibility of pancaking, there are several other theories around about what happened that day. The so-called “9/11 Truth Movement” has latched on to them. The biggest purveyor of misinformation on the subject is a group called “Architects ad Engineers for 9/11 Truth.” That group claims to have 2,200 members, but I’d have to see the list to believe it. I do know that if you mention the name “Dr. Judy Wood,” they will boot you out the door.
Alternative theories advanced by that group and others are that the buildings were brought down by controlled demolition, nanothermites, nuclear bombs, mini-nuclear bombs, and mini-neutron” bombs.
Controlled demolition cannot be, as there was not enough debris left that day. There should have been thirty stories or so left behind as we see in earthquakes. Instead, there was but one or two stories worth. Where did the rest of the buildings go? (A side issue, that the buildings “pulverized” as they “collapsed,” but that would require that the kinetic energy used to pancake be used instead for pulverization. It cannot do both.
Nanothermites. This theory, advanced my Steven E. Jones, posits that a substance used by the military and industry to cut steel was used in sufficient quantity to cause what we saw that day. The sheer volume required, truckloads, would have taken weeks or months to put in place. When used it burns extremely bright and hot. Again, we are missing heat and light in the building’s demise. The sections of steel beams for the most part do not show any indication of cutting. In a building made of aluminum and iron, aluminum and iron residue, which also makes up thermite, would naturally be present. As Dr. Wood says, presence of those two metals in the debris is no more significant than finding chocolate chip cookies. Neither nanothermites or cookies brought the buildings down. Again, not enough debris.
Nukes of all varieties: Missing from Ground Zero that day were two essential elements indicating nukes in use – bright flashes and heat. Whatever process brought down the building was a cold one. The dust cloud that rolled out did not kill anyone. A pyroclastic flow from a volcano or nuke is quite deadly. That one was not. People were covered with dust, but did not suffocate or die from heat.
Given the absence of extreme heat and bright flashes of light, another theory advanced is that the buildings were brought down by “mini-neutron” bombs. The problem is that no one seems to know if such a thing even exists. It appears to be a made-up weapon used to explain the absence of heat and light flashes.
But there is one signature left at Ground Zero that indicates a some sort of nuclear process. That is the presence of tritium, a hydrogen isotope. Enough was there to indicate a nuclear process – but all the other evidence rules out a hot process.
This is where the above-mentioned Steven E. Jones plays big, the next chapter tomorrow.
We could spend the rest of our lives examining the details of the 9/11 false flag event, and no doubt in the coming decades the people who did it will feed that curiosity. If JFK is an example, they will allow new information to slip out now and then, keeping the machine running. Sometimes new information might even be real.
Movies and books and YouTube videos abound now, but it is very difficult to know who is genuine, who is a misinformation agent, and who is just stupid.
We are under control, even those of us who are genuine skeptics. Our activities are effectively quarantined by the “conspiracy theory” meme, a thought control device that squelches independent thinking. And we don’t even trust one another due to the abundance of government misinformation agents about.
Initially, according to General Wesley Clark, the U.S. intended to use the event to bring about regime change in seven countries (Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan,and Iran.) The dominant religion in that part of the world is Muslim, so Muslims were used as patsies that day. That enflamed focused hatred in the American public, and thus unleashed the American military juggernaut to go on a terror rampage.
It was successful – that is, the enflamed passions part. Most Americans hate Muslims and fear Arabs. Fear is an effective sales strategy.
The military operations perhaps have faltered, but who really knows? We are not privy to the inside dealings of the National Security State and its military/intelligence operations.
This much can be said with some assuredness: Even as they endured defeat in Iraq (and are still attacking it, now using ISIS), and even as they are yet to being down Iran, the military onslaught has not been slowed, hampered or changed by American elections.
That is an important point, something really useful to know. A positive side effect of 9/11 is evidence that national American elections do not affect American public policy. (The same is true, in my view, at the state level in Montana and Colorado, where I live and have lived, but I cannot speak for the other 48 states.)
Regarding 9/11 itself, is there any reason to stay in the rabbit hole? Are we not walking backward through history? Is there any point to finding truth?
No, and yes: There is indeed no point in unraveling the crime from a whodunnit it how-they-dun-it standpoint. They got way with it, they got their wars, and the people who did it will never be caught or punished.
But yes, there is a good reason to understand the event, even as we can never achieve justice.
It is hard to separate wheat from chaff, hard to know who is real, who is fake in the world of political intrigue, especially with the high intrigue of state-sponsored terrorism like 9/11. As Winston Smith learned in 1984, the man he relied on, O’Brien, was a mole whose job was to ferret out people suffering independent thought experiences*. The enemy of the Party – Emmanuel Goldstein – did he really even exist? Or was he too an invention of the state?
Dr. Wood is too smart to go chasing rabbits, and too much an optimist to concede defeat. Her main thrust, as I see it: The cat is out of the bag. The weaponry used to bring down the Twin Towers that day was a big ‘reveal.’ They unleashed a technology not seen before, at least at such a high concentration level.** It offers evidence of a source of free energy that can be used for good as well as evil.
I have decided to trust her, and those who support her. I have seen how she is attacked and marginalized within the co-called “9/11 Truth” movement, and so hope that indicates she is on the right path (flak intensifies as planes draw closer to a target). If I am wrong, if I am being snookered yet again, so what.
Tomorrow and in the coming days I will review some of the evidence that she has uncovered.
By the way, her resume’ is impressive, shown below the fold.
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*I have seen connections to a certain JFK researcher, Mark Lane, and the deaths of two prominent celebrities who wanted to use their platform to re-open the case. That would point arrows to Lane as an O’Brien-type agent.
**There are suspicions and evidence that the same technology was used in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, the 1996 destruction of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, and 2007 destruction of a bridge in Minneapolis. Continue reading “Rabbit Hole 4: Leaving the rabbit hole …”→
Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others. (Groucho Marx)
So, you’re among the skeptics! Welcome. So you don’t believe the original story about Muslims with box cutters? Well, we have others.
Loose Change!
Loose change was 2005 documentary that received wide publicity and was widely viewed, was in fact an Internet phenomenon. Below is the three-minute trailer.
The movie was designed to rope in skeptics and lead us down a blind alley. It freely asserts that 9/11 was an American coup, which anyone with half a brain can understand. But then, in over two hours, the movie seals several false impressions designed to beguile and mislead, among them:
Planes hit the buildings. There is quite a long sequence trying to analyze a protrusion under the aircraft and a flash of light before the explosion. It reminds me of the old story of customs agents’ futile disassembling of trucks at the border trying to find smuggled drugs, when in fact it was trucks that were being smuggled in. It fails to ask the question, “What plane?”
Steel was removed from Ground Zero before it could be analyzed. Below is a LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) image of the topography of Ground Zero on 9/27/2001. What steel? It’s not been carted off. It is already gone. Where did it go?
Nano-thermites were found on site. The movie introduces us to one of the most devious of the misinformation agents, Steven E. Jones.
Wikipedia, itself a source of rabbit holes and back doors, does its job. It says that
The film’s main claims have been refuted by journalists, independent researchers, and prominent members of the scientific and engineering community.
That’s called Ad Verecundiam, or “argument from authority”, by the way, in case you’re tracking logical fallacies. Wikipedia is very good on celebrities and music. In matters of national security … it is part of the cover-up. It is riddled with back doors allowing access by agents of disinformation.
On the surface, it appears we are having give-and-take. But if 9/11 was a coup d’etat, why would those who planned the event turn around and allow open debate? Are they that stupid?
It is a diversion, a side tunnel in the rabbit hole. If we follow the movie down its logical path, we will end up at a place further from the truth than when we originally raised a skeptical eyebrow.
He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors. (Thomas Jefferson)
Before viewing the movie, we were merely skeptical. After viewing it, we are thoroughly misinformed. Mission accomplished.
It is wise, then, to return to Ground Zero and set aside theories. We must examine the evidence, and let it speak.
Into the rabbit hole we went yesterday – it can absorb our energies for months.
Perceptions are part of the the problem. Ours are limited. Another part is the quality of evidence, and yet another the source of evidence, and our abilities to interpret it correctly.
A friend once remarked to me that our view of reality is like that of a ditch digger: we look over the edge and see very little. Yet what we see from this ditch is the whole of our reality, so has to do. A wise person accepts that we don’t see or know much.
Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980), spent his career analyzing our interactions with media. Each affects us differently. Some are “hot,” supplying high definition and requiring little viewer participation. Movies, with high quality images, put everything in front of us so that we can sit back and relax and enjoy the show.
Cartoons, on the other hand, are but crude outlines of reality. We have to supply almost everything so that characters come to life. What are Eric Cartman and Kenny, after all, but crude little animated circles?
McLuhan’s definition of a “cool” medium – low definition, high participation – applied to cartoons, telephones, speeches, and television.
Television requires that we look into the screen, but it is a flat presentation. In order to use it, we have to supply dimensions, depth and context. We don’t just watch our TV’s. We enter them. Thus does it have such power over us, becomes our reality. If it is on TV, it is real.
This was true Tuesday morning, 9/11/2001 – we did not observe the events of that day. We participated. They are etched in our consciousness. People get angry when skeptics say that the images were fake. Skeptics are saying that reality is fake.
9/11/2001 was a “psyop,” a psychological operation with images well-crafted in advance. Our news media actively engaged in fakery and deceit. But networks were nothing but the willing vessel. Behind those vapid faces and coiffured hairpieces are corporations that are wired to the military-industrial complex and who own and manage our reality.
What do we know for sure? The Twin Towers went away. The Pentagon had a hole. That is all we can say with certainty from the TV images. Since we’ve all talked now to witnesses, we know that World Trade Center complex was destroyed. That was real.
One image given to us, of an aircraft sliding through a building as a knife through butter, is something that cannot happen in real life. (By the way, notice how the building moves in relation to the plane in this GIF image!) There were no eyewitness accounts of that, but it was on TV. Since TV is reality, we have adjusted our reality to fit the images. Newton’s Third Law was suspended that day.
The television networks lied to us. This is proven (a word I seldom use) since the planes hitting the buildings could only go through them by mans of “CGI,” or “computer-generated imagery.” Physical reality does not allow that.
The television networks owned our minds that day, and served as the conduit by which other lies were fed to us in our traumatized state. We were fed a farcical tale of hijackers, a demonic image of a man in a cave, and “photos” of 19 “hijackers.” One of them, Mohammed Atta, was an obvious “Photoshop” creation, a Freddy Kruger-like image made to enter our nightmares.
Once we know that the television images were contrived for effect, our job is to get out of our ditch and find more and better evidence. But we cannot go places and see things, we cannot know the minds of those who contrived that event. That means that we must decide who we can trust, and who not.
Thus does the rabbit hole provide many turns and tunnels.
The events of 9/11/01 appear to have been intricately planned on a vast scale. There is evidence of outside energy directed at the seven buildings of the World Trade Center, and no others.
But only a small portion of the evidence was directed at the American public via their TV sets: buildings emitting smoke and fire and then collapsing. The accompanying narrative was that jet aircraft had hit the buildings.
This imagery targeted at us via our TV sets was accompanied by a story of an evildoer in a cave and nineteen suicidal cohorts.The crime was solved before the day was over.
A third building “collapsed” before our eyes later that day, Building Seven. It did not have the “hijacked aircraft” cover story, and so its demise was harder to explain. Consequently, to this day, most Americans don’t know about it, much less of the destruction of four other buildings bearing the prefix “WTC.”
The success of the caveman-Arab hijackers cover story, a conspiracy theory, can be attributed to the near religious faith that Americans have in their news media, and also to a blackout of evidence showing of a much larger and more sophisticated event. The success of the cover story in the years later is due to the continuing blackout of evidence in our news, education and entertainment systems. Events like the “killing” of Osama bin Laden in 2011 have the effect of giving the official story a booster shot.
To find blacked-out evidence, people have to take their own initiative and seek out other sources, such as books, lectures, YouTube videos and podcast. Most don’t do that. In fact we are warned away from doing so by the “conspiracy theory” meme, a thought control device.
Here are some of the phenomena of that day that I will cover in subsequent posts, as best as I am able. Some time back I offered some crude mathematics regarding coincidence – that related events can be paired to test the likelihood of their simultaneous occurrence, the “CO” in coincidence. Keep this in mind as we review the following – that is, it can all be explained, but why did it all happen at once?
A hurricane, Erin, that originated in the South Atlantic and traversed in a nearly straight line towards New York City, stopping and remaining stationary on the morning of 9/11, and then turning abruptly northeast.
Hurricane Erin at midday, 9/11/2001
The straight line on which the hurricane approached New York City in the immediate days before 9/11 was -15 degrees, or magnetic north.
The hurricane was barely mentioned on local news coverage even as we know that American television news reporters go gaga over hurricanes.
At the same time, a massive cold front approached New York City from the east.
Consequently, during the events of that day, the World Trade Center complex was between an extreme high pressure system (cold front), and an extreme low pressure system (Erin).
During this time, stations that measure fluctuation in the earth’s magnetic fields showed disturbances at precisely the times of the “events” in the complex: The North and South Towers being “hit by aircraft,” the two towers “collapsing,” and finally, around five P.M. Building Seven “collapsing” on its own without benefit of an “aircraft.”
After the Building Seven event, the magnetic lines returned to a more normal (though still disturbed) state.
During the whole of the day after the buildings experience the supposed aircraft hits, Building Seven was seen giving off fumes from its west side. The fumes defied wind patterns, and we’re headed upward at forty-five degrees and downward at the same angle, with a division line apparent at two darkened floors around the thirtieth.
At the time Building Seven “collapsed” at 5 P.M., it did so silently, registering no significant seismic signal – that is, it had been gutted of its mass.
Do you understand these events? Neither do I. Here are the problems: By not having the raw evidence of that day at our disposal, we don’t know even to wonder about what really happened. But even so, now having the evidence, we lack expertise in science and so are not skilled at interpretation.
So we have to look to ‘experts” to interpret data for us, and just as when the TV that day was spinning lurid lies about hijacked aircraft hitting buildings, we are at their mercy.
[This is a rework of yesterday’s post with revisions to aid in clarity of thought, which ain’t always working for me.]
Often in discussing matters like 9/11 or other false flag events, those of us who don’t buy the official story are challenged to present a plausible alternative. For a true skeptic it is enough to know what cannot be true. As to what really happened, it’s a long and frustrating journey. Keep in mind:
Those who did these events are not talking.
Even if there are unwitting participants, they fear for their lives, and so are also not talking.
Public mythology is part of human history since the beginning of time, a well-understood management tool. Those who manage these events are far ahead of us in planning – i.e. – it is almost an act of e.s.p. to understand the “why” of events such as 9/11 or Boston.
Even though skeptical we usually don’t have the expertise needed to fully understand the means by which an event is staged.
As the event is “reported” to us we don’t know who we can trust and so are on our own to weather a storm of official “news” media and “scientific” experts.
The people who did these events were smart enough to anticipate that there would be skeptics, and so provided us with bullshit stories when the first bullshit story collapses. Ergo, we are faced with the multi-layered cover-up, the rabbit hole.
Here’s Ron Suskind, a man who passes as a “journalist” in this bullshit land of fables. He interviewed either Karl Rove or Dick Cheney (he’s not allowed to say, part of pthe code of honor of the journalist):
The aide said that guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I pnodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
So we are left to study the evidence left in the wake of the false flag events secure in the knowledge that the majority of the population is continually fooled and will stay fooled. Even as we do, other events come along to take their place. Those of us who are not convinced are consigned to the margins and subject to ridicule. It is brilliant.
But the official cover stories for these events are ridiculous. It is only blind faith in authority figures that keeps them alive. Given that they are made up fantasies, there is always some aspect that is so ridiculous as to blow the entire thing out of the water – a lynchpin for skeptics. A few examples:
JFK: Commission Exhibit 399.
RFK: The official autopsy which says that the bullet that killed him was fired from behind and two inches from his head.
MLK: A jury trial finding that the Memphis Police and Fire Departments, the FBI and U.S. military conspired to murder him.
9/11: That jet aircraft flying through concrete and steel as a knife through butter.
Boston Bombing: A man in a wheel chair who has lost both lower limbs and who, rather than being dead, is merely grimacing.
That’s enough for the true skeptic to look elsewhere for answers. Given that, the people who plan these events also supply other bullshit cover stories when the original ones fail. People like Richard Gage, Alex Jones, Steven E. Jones, John Lear and Jim Fetzer, to name a few, are the”second level” of the cover-up. They provide blind alleys. Thus given the absurdity of the cover stories, we are led to other absurdities such as LBJ, the mob, Mossad, controlled demolition, drone aircraft, Mossad, mini-nukes, nano-thermites, stage management by Steven Spielberg and even space aliens dropping by.
It’s hard to watch the original cover stories succeed, but even harder as skeptical people get caught up in the second level. But who are we to challenge the vast American news media or Popular Mechanics or NIST or some other appointed body of appointed experts … it takes some internal fortitude. Even if the bulk of the public is skeptical about the Osama bin Laden caveman story, for instance, they are either afraid to talk to anyone about it for fear of ridicule, or caught up in the second layer.
So it goes. It is a highly sophisticated and effective thought control regime. I’ve been through it, I understand. It’s difficult. Though poll results are kept private on such delicate matters, I assume that even if the bulk of the public is skeptical … they are tuned out. It’s too difficult to imagine such a large conspiracy. The second level of the cover-up also includes a wide array of “debunking” sites to steer people away from real evidence. It is pre-tainted.
In the coming days I am going to offer up some evidence that I have come to believe is reliable enough to derail the official story of some of the major false flag events of our times. It will not be the usual fare already widely circulating, but rather stuff I’ve gathered from tireless and unpaid private researchers who have endured the ridicule and earned my respect. I am not the final judge of character, and can be fooled. But I trust certain people as being men and women of honor. I will relay their findings.
I hope to make it interesting. I don’t have any definitive answers. For me it is enough to know what cannot be true. For the reader, I hope only to assist in that critical first step on the path of learning: Ask the question.
There’s a certain amount of delusion and illusion in any country, but in one like ours, where just within the last fourteen years we’ve been sold and told lies on four major wars causing millions of deaths and refugees, and where are own crimes against ourselves and others go uninvestigated … we get words like these:
You can run a newspaper without professional reporters in much the same way you can run a democracy without newspapers: badly.
Perhaps there is truth in those words if Brooks understands that we have “newspapers” in this country in the same sense that Soviet Russia had them: as a façade. Perhaps he is publicly acknowledging that this is not a democracy. But I don’t pick up on any real insight in the piece.
Religious authority figures preen about in phallic headgear, all the while failing to tell us that the Jesus story is really myth. In the political economy, the story of Jesus is replaced by the story of great country with functioning institutions. Police and courts enforce laws, and powerful people have to care about the law. Journalists relay the words of politicians, and the mere act of relaying those words helps us to understand politics. Journalists, acting as both stenographers and megaphones, after years of service, are de facto very good at that job.
In reality, the good ones are squeezed out early on. But as long as we’re pretending, let’s also assert that votes matter and are really counted, and behind those votes exist informed citizens. Even as every politician knows that inside the voting booths are clueless people performing ritual without substance, we have to pretend it matters.
That is the democracy story. Like the Jesus myth, the whole thing was made up by power to serve power.
The people need their myths. So Says Father Foster in the video above. Without it, they are forced to make their own sense of the world, and often come up with explanations that do not please the overlords. (Who, in their right mind, without any outside influence, would come up with the Jesus story?)
And without phony “journalists” who give us our “news” we are given a complicated world that does not lend itself to simple causes and effects. We have to think for ourselves. People don’t know how to do that, and power likes it that way.
Enter the journalist.
…the good people of Montana can produce their own opinions without people like me, but without people like Johnson and Dennison, they cannot produce their own facts.
The good people of Montana could stand with a little less patronizing. That aside, the news media in this utterly corrupt country exists to reinforce offical lies, and facts are an important part of the art of a well-told lie.
I come from a religious family, with a priest brother and sixty years of Catholic education spread among four boys. This is the lesson I got out of all of that: The further up the ladder of power one goes, the less belief there is, the more cynicism. Priests often believe, and just as often know better. Bishops (like editors) rarely believe the myths.
The journalism profession serves as a bought priesthood, to use a term from the earlier labor press we once had. Up the ladder go those most intuitively aware of where power lies and how to live with it. Out the door go those who want to know what is really going on.
Here’s an allegory from my youth. I went to see a movie, Journey to the Center of the Earth, starring Pat Boone and based on a Jules Verne novel I’ve never read. I was a kid and really liked it. At a certain point the cast was lost in the bowels of the planet and their lanterns went out. They thought they would perish in darkness. Then a remarkable thing happened: Absent lantern light, phosphorous in the walls provided all the illumination they needed.
We do not have a burrowing press, we do not have serious journalists, we do not have a functioning democracy. We’re on our own, kids. Time to grow up.
So there is no more Lee Enterprises Montana State Bureau. Stop whining! Stop trusting journalists. Citizen, make sense of it on your own – you are easily as capable as any journalist.
Piece of Mindful 