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Resistance See other Resistance Articles Title: DELUSIONAL AMERICA In effect, America is both blind and deaf Robert Parry is one of my favorite columnists. He is truthful, has a sense of justice, and delivers a firm punch. He used to be a “mainstream journalist,” like me, but we were too truthful for them. They kicked us out. I can’t say Parry has always been one of my favorite journalists. During the 1980s he spent a lot of time on Reagan’s case. Having been on corporate boards, I know that CEOs seldom know everything that is going on in the company. There are just too many people and too many programs representing too many agendas. For presidents of countries with governments as large as the US government, there is far more going on than a president has time to learn about even if he could get accurate information. In my day Assistant Secretaries and chiefs of staff were the most important people, because they controlled the flow of information. Presidents have to focus on fund raising for their reelection and for their party. More time and energy is used up with formalities and meetings with dignitaries and media events. At the most there are two or three issues on which a president can attempt leadership. If an organized clique such as the neoconservatives get into varied positions of authority, they can actually “create the reality” and take the government away from the president. As I have reported on many occasions, my experience with Reagan left me with the conclusion that he was interested in two big issues. He wanted to stop the stagflation for which only the supply-side economists had a solution, and he wanted to end, not win, the cold war. Both of these agendas put Reagan at odds with two of the most powerful of the private interest groups: Wall Street and the military/security complex. Wall Street for the most part opposed Reagan’s economic program. They opposed it because they understood it as Keynesian deficit pump-priming that would cause an already high inflation rate to explode, which would drive down bond and stock prices. The CIA and the military opposed any ending of the Cold War because of the obvious impact on their power and budget. Left-wing journalists never picked up on this, and neither did right-wing journalists. The left could not get beyond Reagan’s rhetoric. For the left, Reagan was trickle-down economics, Iran/Contra, and the fired air traffic controllers. The right-wing liked Reagan’s rhetoric and blamed him for not delivering on it. For the left, the Reagan years were a traumatic time. Robert Parry has never recovered from them. He can scarcely write a column about events today, which are horrific in comparison, without dragging Reagan into it. Parry doesn’t realize it, but if it is all Reagan’s fault, little wonder it has been impossible to hold Clinton, Bush 1 and 2, and Obama accountable. Having written these lines, I already detect the denunciations coming my way for again attempting to “rehabilitate Ronald Ray-Gun.” Reagan does not need rehabilitating. This column is not about Reagan, and it is not a criticism of Parry. It is praise for Parry’s column, “‘Group-thinking’ the World into a New War.” https://consortiumnews.com/2015/01/30/group-thinking-the-world-into-a-new- war/ Read it. The pattern since Milosevic (and before) has been to demonize a foreign head of state and to take the US to war to get rid of him. That way the secret agenda is achieved under the cover of the necessity of deposing a bad or dangerous ruler. Parry describes this well. Group-Think plays the important role of preventing any dissent, any suspicion of the case against the demonized person, and any examination of the real agenda that is being pursued. Now it is Russian President Vladimir Putin who is being demonized. As Parry and I and Stephen F. Cohen, the most knowledgeable of the Russian experts, appreciate, Putin is not Saddam Hussein and Russia is not Iraq, Libya, Syria, Serbia, or Iran. To foment conflict with Russia that could lead to war is worse than irresponsible. Yet, as Parry writes, “from the start of the Ukraine crisis in fall 2013, the New York Times, the Washington Post and virtually every mainstream U.S. news outlet have behaved as dishonestly as they did during the run-up to war with Iraq.” When Professor Cohen pointed out, correctly, that the lies about Russia, Ukraine, and Putin were hot and heavy, the propagandists had to get rid of the man with the facts. The New Republic, a hang-out for low IQ fools, called America’s leading Russian expert “Putin’s American toady.” From Parry’s reporting, it appears that Group-Think has spread from the media and foreign policy community into the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies, which has decided that academic careers require adherence to the government’s propaganda line, which means the neoconservatives’ line. As I have written on a number of occasions, facts no longer play a role in American political life. Fact-based analysis is also disappearing from academic life and no longer plays a role in official economic reporting. A matrix has been created, an artificial reality that channels the energies and resources of the country into secret agendas that serve the interests of the ruling private interest groups and neoconservative ideology. The United States government and the American people cannot contend with reality, because they do not know what the reality is. In America’s make-believe world, neoconservative toadies such as New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, set the Group-Think tone, while knowledgeable experts such as Stephen Cohen are tuned out. In effect, America is both blind and deaf. It lives in delusions. Consequently, it will destroy itself and perhaps the world. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. His latest book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West is now available. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest
#1. To: Ada (#0)
I knew there had to be a hook in there some place.Took a lot of useless verbiage to cover his ass before he could pull poor Pooty Poot out into the glare of the light. Poor Pooty Poot.
The United States government and the American people cannot contend with reality, because they do not know what the reality is. That is the key truth. “The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.” ~ H. L. Mencken
The fact is that most Americans either do not want to know or can't handle the truth of the matter. They prefer groupthink in essence. They're much more interested in their payoffs: i.e., how the markets are doing and whether or not they are managing their wealth properly, being spoon-fed a steady stream of "new and improved" morally filthy entertainment options, etc. This is their pay, recompense, and reward for their compliance. Just as in most situations where someone becomes ultimately enslaved, at some point they're going to be bargaining for their lives and willing to pay every cent earned as such in exchange for a marginal amount of liberty, which even if granted, will not be delivered. As for me, I'll mimic Patrick Henry, give me liberty or give me death. I see no point in living in a world that's contrived as such. At some point, which we've reached, "truth" is not determined by facts, rather "truth" is determined by popular opinion, which in our world is spoon-fed and dictated to people perfectly willing to be led around like sheep to their inevitable slaughter or continued involuntary participation in the "reality" which has been created for them. Our "advancements" in technology that are used to placate the masses' basest desires and instincts, and which are used to make each participant that much more ignorant than they were prior to the former upgrade or version, do more harm than good and merely foment the ignorance for the establishment's ignorance is bliss reality. The old TV series The Prisoner is the perfect series for envisioning this and for as docile as it is by the standards in question here, now.
Yeah, it sure is.
It is all part of the plan by the private bankers to remake the world and take total control after WW3. They are also delusional to think that the world will be fit to live in after Nuclear war. Fools won't learn until it is too late.
God is always good!
Aww c'mon, Ray-gun was every bit a FED and a murdering thug ... just like everyone else fit to be a FED.
"Honest, April 15th is April Fools Day".
Another thing, PCR is a right gatekeeper intent upon controlling the minds of conservative mullets ... who will it be mullets, Romney, Bush, Christie, Paul ... hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha !!!
"Honest, April 15th is April Fools Day".
Makes one ill to view the list of political hacks running for president. Not an American in the lot.
And Adolf Hitler. But PCR doesn't dare go back that far.
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