Caitlin Johnstone Profile picture
Nov 13 8 tweets 2 min read
Westerners are taught that evil foreign "regimes" don't let their people criticize their government, meanwhile westerners themselves are trained to never criticize their government. They're trained instead to criticize decoy dichotomies—false partisan nonsense—not the real power.
Westerners are trained to criticize the actions of the other party or the beliefs of the other ideological faction, never the foreign or domestic policies which are fully supported by both parties.
The power structure which maintains 99.9% of the same policies regardless of which party is officially in charge is the real government, but westerners are trained never to look there. They're instead trained to fixate on a false two-handed puppet show diversion.
Westerners say "Well I'd rather live here than China or Russia, because here I can criticize my government whenever I want!"

Okay. But you don't. You just criticize the puppets, and usually only the puppets of the party you don't like. You never criticize your actual government.
Criticizing your actual government looks like attacking the murderous foreign policy that's supported by both parties. Attacking the authoritarian domestic policies supported by both parties. Attacking the exploitative capitalist systems supported by both parties.
Westerners are trained not to do that. They're trained to believe that "criticizing your government" looks like saying "Drumpf" or "Let's go Brandon" while the same tyrannical agendas march forward regardless of who sits in the White House.
Westerners are "free" in the same way "free range" chickens are free; sure the door's open and they can technically go outside, but they're conditioned never to do so.
caityjohnstone.medium.com/free-speech-in…
Western so-called liberal democracy purports to offer freedom while in practice only offering the illusion of freedom. It uses the most sophisticated propaganda machine ever devised to make people blindly obedient gear-turners while cartoons about freedom play in their heads.

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More from @caitoz

Nov 15
Thoughts That Should Probably Occur More Often

I wonder if my own government is being truthful about its actions in that part of the world?

I wonder if my own government is in the wrong on this issue?
caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/thoughts-tha…
I wonder if the news media are telling the truth right now?

I wonder if the news media tell the truth about things generally?
I wonder if the "Evil Dictators versus Virtuous Liberal Democracies" framework I've been taught by teachers, pundits and politicians is the most accurate lens through which to view world events?

Could I have been deceived about the way my government operates, at home and abroad?
Read 20 tweets
Nov 12
The problem isn't "wokeism", the problem is that important conversations like US militarism and imperialism get bogged down in ridiculous conversations about whether the US military is too woke or not woke enough instead of how it's killing people and threatening the whole world.
Engaging in either side of that debate protects the worst impulses of the most powerful and dangerous people in the world, because it moves the crosshairs of public scrutiny from the powerful to the other side of the "wokeness" culture war. This is happening all over the place.
A good example is the way Republicans have been pushing the most horrific agendas of US imperialism but using "anti-wokeness" as a carrying agent for their propaganda:
Read 7 tweets
Nov 12
Zelensky And Bush To Give Joint Pro-War Presentation

Bush drew headlines and laughter earlier this year with his Freudian confession in which he accused Vladimir Putin of launching "a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq — I mean, of Ukraine."
caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/zelensky-and…
Zelensky And Bush To Give Joint Pro-War Presentation

"Many people who support the US proxy war in Ukraine now recognize that the Iraq war was a horrific disaster, but Ukraine isn’t the good war, it’s just the current war."
soundcloud.com/going_rogue/ze…
Zelensky And Bush To Give Joint Pro-War Presentation

"It’s easy to oppose the last war. It’s hard to oppose current wars as the propaganda machine is shoving them down our throats. Everyone’s anti-war until the war propaganda starts."
Read 4 tweets
Nov 11
Anyone who tries hard to convince you to like a powerful person has traded their mind for personality cult doctrine, whether their hero is Bernie Sanders, AOC, Donald Trump, Tucker Carlson or Elon Musk. Proselytizing for the powerful is a sign that thinking has been abandoned.
Think about it: what would be gained by one more person having positive feelings about Elon Musk or some other powerful figure? How does that benefit the world? It doesn't, yet people try to win converts for them constantly, just like evangelists proselytizing their religion.
Anyone who tries to convince me to support a given goal or perspective will have my interest if their case is lucid and well-argued, but anyone who tries to convince me to like a given individual is instantly dismissed as a mindless automaton. I know I won't hear anything smart.
Read 6 tweets
Nov 10
Democracy of the vote without democracy of information is not democracy.
It doesn't matter if people are able to vote as long as the media-owning class are able to manipulate HOW they vote. "One person, one vote" is meaningless if influence and control of information is highly concentrated in an elite few.
Mass media propaganda, internet censorship, Silicon Valley algorithm manipulation, government secrecy and the war on journalism are all anti-democratic in nature, because they restrict the information the citizenry are allowed to access to inform their vote.
Read 7 tweets
Nov 8
I don't want innovations which improve my shopping experience or make smartphones a tiny bit better, I want innovations which eliminate world hunger, innovations which make it so people have more free time, innovations which help humans live in harmony with our ecosystem.
If you're a middle class westerner technology is already at a point where they're not going to be coming out with any new inventions that make your life significantly better. But there's a massive amount of room for innovation that can make life much better for people as a whole.
In terms of societal transformation technology still has the ability to radically improve the quality of human life. In terms of rugged individualism technology is just going to give the wealthiest humans more of the same kinds of toys that are already failing to make them happy.
Read 5 tweets

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