Is the United States much different than Stalin's Russia or Mao's China? — Julian Assange's tribulations

28 October 2019

Today — we're on the topic of 'not learning a thing'

Ever.

My youthful hope that humanity (as an entity) could learn moral lessons . . .

. . . has been crushed by experience.

Of this, Chris Hedges recently highlighted the following passage from Samuel Hynes' book, The Soldiers' Tale: Bearing Witness to a Modern War (Penguin, 1997):

In matters of war, cautionary literature and the evidence of experience do not change many minds or alter many romantic expectations.

Every new generation will respond anew to war’s great seduction—not to the uniforms and the parades but to the chance to be where the danger is, where men are fighting.

War brings to any society its electric, exhilarating atmosphere, and young men rush to join in it, however grim the stories of war they have read and accepted as truth.

Every generation, it seems, must learn its own lessons from its own war, because every war is different and is fought by different ignorant young men.

The Cain't Learn Nuthin' principle

I am, arguably, even more pessimistic than Hynes:

Homo sapiens, as a social construct, is genetically incapable of significant moral and spiritual learning.

We are either too stupid to analyze, or too dimwitted to emotionally ingest the parallels that we do see.

Let's apply this rule

Consider Julian Assange's terrible predicament. (See more on that, here.)

Paul Craig Roberts accurately observed that:

Currently Assange is being tortured, apparently to death, while bring held in solitary confinement in a maximum security British prison awaiting his extradition to the US on false charges.

As the CIA cannot be certain it has suborned all the federal judges, Washington is just as happy if Assange dies in a British prison as there is no valid case against him under current US law.

The lack of any valid case against Assange is the reason the distinguished documentary film maker John Pilger describes Assange’s persecution as a Stalinist Show Trial.

What is astonishing . . .

is the silence of American law schools and bar associations,

the silence of universities,

the absence of student and labor union protests,

the absence of any protection of Assange’s rights from courts . . . .

Only a few individuals speak out for Assange, and they, too, are demonized in turn.

The Age of Tyranny has now descended upon the Western World.

The Stalinist parallel is obvious

So is the Maoist.

Assange, Snowden and Manning all stand as current examples of parallel totalitarian experience occurring in allegedly Western "democracies".

This is why Plutocracy regularly directs our attention to the perceived "outside".

Can't have sheep recognizing the true nature of their corral.

The moral? — Herds cannot be free

The lack of response to Julian Assange's torture (at the hands of the West's ubiquitous totalitarians-in-spirit) is indicative of the massed passivity of most of Western humanity.

After a while, freedom becomes not worth fighting for because it is too weightily challenging for propagandized muttonheads to cart around.

This is the most telling argument against democratic systems.

The few deserving of Liberty are — as a matter of apparently human genetic principle — killed, tortured or shunned.

PeteFree.com

Is the United States much different than Stalin's Russia or Mao's China? — Julian Assange's tribulations