Are Americans a particularly gullible brand of sheep — can our wooly selves survive?

09 July 2020

Cultural competitiveness . . .

Does Darwinian evolution apply?

Let's start with a general observation about Russiagate (episode 3)

We will build from:

a general comment about

the American perception

Russian President Vladimir Putin

through

Russiagate 3's specifics —

and include

the conceptually related

(also abysmally foolish)

United States COVID-19 response . . .

to (finally)

offering a partial answer to the posed cultural longevity question.

Recall Russiagate 3?

That's the propaganda concoction comprised of the New York Times and Washington Post stories claiming that Russia pays the Taliban to kill US troops.

Sixty percent of (evidently sheep-headed) Americans believe this rather obvious falsification

They accept the faked account, despite its obvious internal flaws.

Such as:

Why would the Taliban need motivation to keep killing the same Americans that they have successfully been trying to permanently eliminate from Afghani soil for more than 18 years?

And why would Russia, already having trouble with its economy — due in large part to American sanctions — waste money on supporting a Taliban plan that is already working very well, without any Russian contribution at all?

Here, I suppose that the 81 percent of Americans . . .

. . . who think that Vladimir Putin is a threat to the United States, imagine that he is kind'a like the Devil.

Thus capable of, and needing no motivation for, indulging any kind of nefariousness.

Even when his purported evildoing makes no sense at all, when assessed from the Russian Federation's own strategic perspectives.

Americans' geopolitical reasoning is so consistently inept . . .

. . . that learning from someone actually competent might be useful.

Among the world's prominent leaders, President Putin is demonstrably the most strategically talented. He usually plays his comparatively weak military and economic hands with skill.

If emulating competence was something Americans wanted to do, they could easily read English translations of Putin's speeches and writings and — thereby — understand exactly what he thinks regarding the globe's geopolitically competitive stage.

To my knowledge, no American president has ever left such a clear and analytically minded record of his thought processes, Abraham Lincoln (maybe) excepted, while in office.

What is notable is that, even when translated from the original Russian, Putin speaks and writes with surprisingly easily understood clarity. And often, with admirably non-propagandized accuracy.

His is an old-fashioned, Great Power, realpolitik mind. Americans could learn from it.

Here is the culturally revealing part to this

Instead of trying to understand the mind of their supposed enemy, Americans ignore Putin's analyses and prefer to wander (willfully lost) in Ignorance's Fog.

A clearer violation of Sun Tzu's (common sense-based) The Art of War is difficult to find.

We waste what our purported adversary regularly gives us — and equally demonstrates with proof left on the ground — in favor manufacturing bullshit that serves only the strategically feckless American War Machine.

Now there's a combination of bad faith and evildoing, packaged.

Whom did we call the Devil?

From this, we can tentatively conclude that . . .

Americans should probably not be noted for finely-honed, accurate international insight.

Regularly demonstrated stupidity is, apparently, the price we pay for our rampaging ignorance, prideful arrogance and consistently mindless analytical thoughtlessness.

Must be something in our education-lacking American water.

Dumb as a possum's hind end?

Gareth Porter summarized the Afghan Bounty Situation this way:

The New York Times dropped another Russiagate bombshell on June 26 with a sensational front-page story headlined, “Russia Secretly Offered Afghan Militants Bounties to Kill U.S. Troops, Intelligence Says.”

A predictable media and political frenzy followed, reviving the anti-Russian hysteria that has excited the Beltway establishment for the past four years.

But a closer look at the reporting by the Times and other mainstream outlets vying to confirm its coverage reveals another scandal not unlike Russiagate itself:

[T]he core elements of the story appear to have been fabricated by Afghan government intelligence to derail a potential US troop withdrawal from the country.

And they were leaked to the Times and other outlets by US national security state officials who shared an agenda with their Afghan allies.

US intelligence agencies began offering a series of low confidence assessments in the Afghan government’s self-interested intelligence claims, judging them to be highly suspect at best, and altogether bogus at worst.

In light of this dramatic development, the Times’ initial report appears to have been the product of a sensationalistic disinformation dump aimed at prolonging the failed Afghan war in the face of President Donald Trump’s plans to withdraw US troops from it.

Yes

A conniving Afghan Government source for the bounty tale makes notably more sense, than attributing actual scalp-paying actions to Russia.

The Times and Post eagerly fell for the fabrication.

Both newspapers are corporatist-owned Military Industrial Complex propaganda outlets. They financially thrive on creating non-stop fuel for waging perpetual war.

What's not to like (from their perspectives) in propagating yet another silly Russiagate fantasy?

Trump is, after all, a Bad Man.

When truth does not matter . . .

. . . even as an element of self-applied professional ethics — one is happily free to roam the world, while generating profit-gathering untruths.

For insight, follow structurally existing incentives.

Consider a parallel (and equally incompetence-revealing) example — American COVID

Where SARS-CoV-2 is concerned, the United States has been consistently (grossly) unprepared and abysmally incompetent, when judged by any sane standard:

If COVID's seriousness was a lie, then why did the United States fall for badly damaging its economy, so as to deal with it?

And if the coronavirus's bad effects were not a lie, why didn't America respond more appropriately — like most of developed Asia and Germany?

The moral? — When brainwashing a flock of uninsightful fur-bearers . . .

. . . what is True very easily woolgathers into non-existence.

This quintessentially American trait raises a question regarding societal survival:

Can a large group of determined Reality-avoiders and magical thinkers continue sowing their cultural genes?

Perhaps so, if they are rich and militarily widespread, as we still are. Money, bullets and bombs do talk.

On the other hand, practical matters tend to expose flaws in Magic Imperialism's uneven flow.

We often see that, in spite of our national power, we frequently stumble over Life's occasionally deadly booby traps.

Witness every lost American war. And the trillions of dollars that went with them.

Whether waging COVID, war forever and beyond, or castigating Putin non-stop — our clue-lacking responses are revealing.

We are (I propose) virtually alone, internationally speaking, in occupying the Gargantuan DumbAss category.

We might hypothesize that our self-created engulfing paranoia (and its stalwart companion, Greed) are eventually going to gobble us.

A future parable is there contained, I suppose.

Stupidity, displayed during competition with actual intelligence, tends (usually) to be self-defeating.

At least so, when manifest over a long enough time interval.

Optimistically, however, I doubt that ours is going to be a spectacular flameout.

More like an intellectually and morally pathetic one:

Yep, them 'Muhrikans were like especially stupid Romans.

And fittingly, lasted nowhere near as long.

Is being a bad example better than being no example at all?

Perhaps history will still tag us with "exceptionalness".

PeteFree.com

Are Americans a particularly gullible brand of sheep — can our wooly selves survive?