It is very difficult in a fake democracy to understand events as they unfold. “News” is reported to us by Orwell’s trained circus dogs. (Circus dogs jump when the trainer cracks his whip, but the really well-trained dog is the one that turns his somersault when there is no whip.)

On 9/11 I was utterly amazed that such a gigantic and nefarious plot could pulled off, but also had a sense of dissonance that our intelligence community, which could not prevent it, knew almost instantly who did it and where it originated.

So the scenario repeated with the underpants bomber. Intelligence officials knew about him, had been warned about him. His behavior was unusual – paying cash for a one-way ticket, no luggage … if only he could ignite his underwear as I can mine, we would have had a midair explosion. And instantly we know who he is, where his bomb was made, and who supervised his activities.

It might be that it is easier to track backward through events than to project forward. So it might seem logical that our news media, fed by the government, is relaying the truth to us about the Nigerian underwear situation.

That could well be. The news media might be serving a legitimate news function. The question is, why would they start now?

The Bush Administration, like that of Clinton before it, wanted to attack Iraq. Before 9/11, it just wasn’t plausible. After 9/11, anything was plausible. Some have taken the high correlation between post 9/11 activities and pre-9/11 desires, and intuited that 9/11 was a staged event. The problem with that scenario is that the government after 9/11 pointed us at Afghanistan, and only later did they attack Iraq, almost as if it were an afterthought. So I think it logical to conclude that they merely took advantage of public rage brought about by an event not of their making. One must never underestimate the potential for stupidity in high places.

Stupidity, yes, but also high intelligence. It’s a volatile cocktail. We are being shepherded by intelligent forces, though within those forces exists great hubris. I see in the underpants bombing three possibilities (or more – I am no more omniscient than anyone who reads this):

1) A fake scenario where a young man, whose father claimed was recently radicalized, was manipulated into the appearance of attempting to blow up an aircraft, not understanding that he had no chance of success. This staged event was then used as fodder to incite public opinion to allow our government to attack yet another country, this time, Yemen.

2) “Al Qaeda” operatives, being highly stupid themselves, wanted to give further credibility to the forces within our government who like attacking Arab countries. They like irritating the great beast.

3) Our government lies in wait, wanting to pounce, and only needing an event of any kind to justify predetermined activities.

It’s very hard to know, and we won’t know for weeks, months, years – if ever. What I conclude from these events is a little more abstract:

1) There have been no substantive changes in our ruling coalitions, even after the great groundswell of November, 2008. The same forces that propelled the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq are still there, and they are still ambitious;

2) News is not really news. It serves some other purpose, and there is a high correlation between the ambitions of the ruling coalition who sit behind our elected officials and the news that we are fed.

Therefore, the coalition has power over both elected officials and the news media. Picture a triangle of powerful forces – private wealth, government, and the news media. Most of us want to place the government atop that triangle, with power over the other two. Rotate the triangle so that private wealth sits atop both government and the media. To me, events make more sense if we remove the possibility of democratic governance from the picture.

If they are focusing our attention on Yemen, something is going on in Yemen unrelated to a plane that took off from Amsterdam on Christmas Day.

That’s the best that I can do without any real information at hand.

So a guy gets on a plane and tries to set his underwear on fire. Pretty scary, eh? Maybe 300 people would have died, but that’s child’s play for us. America pilots make that many corpses and text message at the same time. But the reaction is interesting, a stark contrast between self-image and reality.

Here’s how people in other countries see us:

Run your lives! Here’s a famous image – U.S. fighter jets hit a South Vietnamese village, and the resulting picture captured for all posterity the terror that we inflicted on others that day.

I don’t have to remind anyone that the reason the little girl is naked is because of napalm -it makes people tear off their clothing. When Dow first invented it, people were able to jump into lakes and rivers to get it off them. So the Dow boys came up with a new formula that adhered to the skin even after immersed in water. Good old American ingenuity.

That’s not how we see ourselves, of course.

Soldiers that return from our foreign adventures often tell tales of horror – that’s a lot of why the Vietnam war became so unpopular – returning soldiers. I would imagine that the military is pretty tight about that stuff these days – they do control the images we see. The picture of the little Vietnamese girl above would never be seen today- not in a newspaper or magazine, and certainly not TV. That was one of the lessons of the Vietnam War, first applied in Gulf War I – control what we see, control what we think. Here we are fighting two brutal wars with thousands upon thousands of civilian deaths, and people are hardly aware of it.

Images have power. Remember Abu Ghraib?

Pretty gruesome, but here is something important to realize about thought control in a society like ours: if it ain’t in pictures, it ain’t in people’s minds. Abu Ghraib, so far as I can tell, is the only imagery that has harmed the valiant war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, Colombia, Yemen, and Pakistan. And Iran. Sudan … I lose track. When we are not actually fighting these wars, we are supplying the weapons.

Remember when the Israelis attacked Gaza a couple of years ago?

American bombs. The little girl is known as “collateral damage”.

Now forget for a minute about the dead kid. It’s the building behind … that is what is known as a “military target”, sometimes called a “terrorist hideout”. Usually when they blow up a building like that, they have a real target in mind. In this case, it was the little boy. He is what they call an “Al Qaeda operative”, possibly “second in command.”

This is more like it:

Yeah baby! These colors don’t run.

What’s that? A bomb on a plane? Good God -Obama, do something! Now we’re afraid to fly again! Xray underpants, keep anyone with dark skins off our planes!

Guess we ain’t so tough after all.

Ah, December 31, a day for reflection. My problem is that I don’t reflect much. I never have in the past, and won’t start now. And I don’t do resolutions – those times in my life when I have made substantial changes, like quitting religion or smoking or starting exercise … had nothing to do with year ending or beginning. Quitting smoking, in fact, was a birthday present to myself, best one ever.

But I was thinking this AM as we drove relatives to the airport that during 2009 I really took enjoyment at one phenomenon and learned one thing.

The phenomenon is “medical marijuana.” I’m happy for the people who now have access to it for pain and nausea relief. But I’m laughing at all of the law ‘n order types who are quietly seething about it. You can hear the sphincters tighten every time a legal sale is made. A few of them may turn inside out, so great is the tightening. I love it!

Are more people smoking pot now than before? Who knows, who cares. Some sick people are comforted. Will medical marijuana laws lead to legalization? One can only hope. A lot of blacks and Latinos will be set free at last. The whole point of marijuana laws is repression of the underclasses.

In the mean time, libertarians and free-market types – take cheer. Commerce is percolating, Mary Jane is taking on new product forms, and sales are brisk. Markets are doing their magic.

I’m not a midnight toker myself. God knows I’m mellow enough as it is.

And then, the thing that I learned: While I still believe that the presidential election was stolen in 2004, I finally came to understand that it doesn’t matter. It didn’t matter in 2000 either. Obama has taught me that party politics are pointless, even counterproductive. Yes, Republicans care about being in power, as do Democrats. But it’s only about the perks of power, who gets to load up on friends in high places, which industries are favored. There’s nothing in it for us ordinary folks.

Just think of the presidential election it as the quadrennial football game between Harvard and Princeton. It is very important to some folks, but otherwise meaningless.

When Americans get scared, as will happen now that there was apparently a snake bomb on a plane (some dude tried to pull a Vincennes on us), several things happen.

1) Non-white people who choose to fly generally have seats open next to them, and so can fly in more comfort than the rest of us. (If they want to scare us off, they just make eye contact. However, they must be cautious, as that could cause patriots to go all “Let’s roll!” on them.)

2) White Americans go native and get all defensive and say things like “Why do they hate us?!” (They really don’t know – be patient with them.)

3) People die. They pull a Vincennes on us, we pull shock and awe on them. After a bunch of Saudis attacked us back then, the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, Iraq, and Denmark. This time it looks like we are going after Yemen, but Hugo’s number could be up too. And if I was Peruvian, I wouldn’t exactly be all comfortable. The whole world is vulnerable right now.

The Empire will strike back. War has been declared. Enemy to be decided soon.