Brainlessly being 'We the People' — Jonathan Cook's insightful perspective

31 December 2024

As a nightmare 2024 closes . . .

. . . we can, most probably, look forward to another such:

If a large chunk of the public can be persuaded that a man [President Biden] who is incapable of finding the door through which he’s supposed to leave is “sharp as a tack”, then why would they not also believe that the United States is promoting democracy as it has laid waste to the Middle East over the past two decades to control the region’s oil?

Or that Washington is seeking peace for the world and Ukraine by arming it with ever-more offensive weapons against a nuclear-armed Russia so that the US can place ballistic missiles on Moscow’s doorstep?

Or that the US wants a ceasefire in Gaza even as it supplies the munitions, intelligence and diplomatic cover for Israel to carry out a genocide there?

The problem is that, subjected to a lifetime of elite propaganda, many are readier to believe that very propaganda than the evidence of their own eyes.

They are truly hypnotised.

Does the US run by itself? Does it need a president?

Or is the president nothing more than a figurehead for a permanent bureaucracy that expects to wield power from the shadows, unobserved by voters and unaccountable to them?

Is the US a democracy, or is the democracy just a facade behind which a wealth elite maintains its power?

Biden has given us the answer. Were you listening?

Regarding this self-defeating condition . . .

. . . Christian evangelical, Michael Snyder, quoted long-deceased historian, Arnold Toynbee:

Civilisations die from suicide, not from murder.

© 2024 Michael Snyder, “Civilizations Die From Suicide”: Here Are 16 Signs That Our Society Is Doing Exactly That, themostimportantnews.com (29 December 2024) (quoting Arnold Toynbee, so as to accompany the above-cited essay's focus on the decline of Christian principles in the United States)

Of course, Toynbee was correct

However, Michael Snyder's attempt to apply Toynbee's observation to the United States depends too much on arguably statistically isolated examples of 'cultural' traits that American Christian 'conservatives' are prone to decry. Like abortion and the decline of the 'traditional family unit'.

Those emphases coming at the expense of pointing out the quantitatively massively more societal-suicide-inviting (debt-encumbering and expansionist military) practices that the United States has been so recklessly propagating for many years.

For example, I noticed that Snyder's essay made no mention of the United States' rampaging support for Zionist Israel's genocide of Palestinians. A morally repellant American behavioral characteristic that is making our nation absolutely despised, literally all over the world.

This newly arisen hatred for the United States is a historically remarkable development that other American behaviors have never so visibly invited, including the morally negative cultural traits that Snyder's essay lists.

In my estimation, Snyder's systemically too-narrow vision arguably contributes to the culture-wide brainlessness that Jonathan Cook describes.

For example — with regard to Snyder — if abortion and the decline of the family unit are bad, why isn't slaughtering millions and millions of people as a matter of Military Industrial Complex profit?

Similarly, why would not our Government's entrenched penchant for pillaging its own population be a suicidal thing?

Snyder's too-narrowly-applied religious perspective blindly skips all this.

The moral? — When a public is too inobservant . . .

. . . to see what is happening on its doorstep, it is also too comatose to recognize the causes of the mayhem.

Societal suicide is not a conscious act. It is a product of being unconscious. Meaning braindead, in exactly the ways that Australian Caitlin Johnstone highlights on an almost daily basis.

Unconsciously invited societal suicide may be Evolution's way of thinning dreck.

PeteFree.com

Brainlessly being 'We the People' — Jonathan Cook's insightful perspective