Sorry, I just don't think Americans are stupid enough to think deliberate lies, verbiage and legacy media propaganda is a part of some AI neural Bio-programming? The fact is the Anglo Saxon American empire is built on war making and it supports a massive Military Industrial Complex with a bunch of elected Kleptocrats in charge of its so called, democracy!

Matt Christman goes off live on http://www.twitch.tv/chapotraphouse
Topics: Schizophrenic bourgeois mind, life, death

Grill Stream

262 - Hyperborean Chamber II: In Through the Out Door 09.18.23

This week we're talking about once again about y'all etiquette, Boebert, class distinctions, the Appalachian creation myth, and the UAW strike

Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

Episode 309: Appalachian Creation Museum

"Hitler was a product of his time," historian Kent Gardner told us in 1975, just thirty years after the end of World War II. "Was Frank Rizzo racist, or just a product of his time?" The Philadelphia Inquirer pondered in 2017 about the city's notoriously racist former police commissioner and mayor just 26 years after his death. "Christopher Columbus, no saint, was product of his time," explained a 2013 commentary in the Staten Island Advance.

We often hear this sentiment in reference to historical atrocities. Slaveowners, colonizers, genocidal tyrants, and right-wing bigots from decades or centuries past didn't know any better. They were simply responding to the time and place in which they lived — a different time, marked by different social mores, moral standards, and laws.

While it's perhaps fair to cite this cliche to explain, rather than justify, awkward song lyrics or offensive language and stereotypes used in movies from decades ago. But it's an entirely different issue with respect to how we venerate and remember the past. Especially since, in the most popular cases, famous people’s bad actions were roundly criticized, at the time.

Long popular as a catch-all to hand-wave away the misdeeds of slaveowners, colonizers and war mongers, Increasingly educational movements on the American right––from Ron DeSantis trying to remake history education to conservative propaganda targeting kids like PragerU — this "product of its time" cliché and its close cousin "don't judge the past by the standards of today" is making a bit of comeback, if it ever went away at all.

The defensive, superficially appealing cliche is a popular go-to for those who think we shouldn't criticize the supposedly sacrosanct secular deities of our past — from George Washington to Ronald Reagan. But the whole concept operates under a glaring double standard: how can we take pride in and venerate the supposedly good things Americans in history did but ignore and dismiss the bad things? How can we pick and choose our moral inheritance at will? How does the need for us to downplay slavery, colonization, and Jim Crow continue to be such a strong political force? And whose interests does this down-playing serve in 2023?

On this episode, we dissect the notion that the reactionary forces of history have just been "products of their time." We'll explore the ways in which this and related concepts are not only inaccurate, but also convenient instruments of right-wing historical revisionism, and how the need to make people feel good about our civic mythology makes for bad history, and even worse politics.

Our guest is historian and museum educator Erin Bartram.

Ep 189: PragerU, the 'Product Of His Time' Defense & the White Guilt Amelioration Industrial Complex

"Realities have forced us to remain on diplomatic terms with several dictators," the Pampa Daily News stated in 1958. "U.S. ambassador to the U.N Samantha Power has been forced to look the other way as Saudi Arabia does as it pleases in Yemen," Politico told us in 2016. Biden is being forced to accept the flaws of America's friends," claimed The New York Times  earlier this year, 2023.

For decades, we've heard the same excuse regarding US foreign policy: 'Our leaders might not agree with the world’s dictatorial, reactionary governments, but they’re forced –– by some unknown geopolitical dark matter of realpolitik –– to support them for some broader, more noble goal.'

Strengthening ties with the governments of Saudi Arabia, India, Egypt, Israel, The Philippines, and other countries under right-wing, human-rights-abusing governance might be a bit unpleasant, but it’s the pragmatic thing to do and, therefore, the morally acceptable thing to do.

But countries that are not the United States or its allies are never said to be "forced" into carrying out human rights abuses or supporting those that do. They back bombings, ethnic cleansings, the oppression of women for the sport, because they are existentially evil. No outside mysterious entity ever "forces" them to have to make compromises on the altar of "reality."

But there is nothing, of course, "forcing" these decisions on our own Western leaders, and in nearly every case, they're simply extensions of preexisting geopolitical relationships, imperialist policies, and arbitrary might-makes-right governance.

On this episode, we discuss the media narrative that the U.S. is "forced" to maintain long-beneficial alliances with right-wing regimes, looking at how this suggestion falsely presents the U.S. as an unwilling, but ultimately helpless, participant in repression of human rights around the world.

Our guest is author and NYU professor James Peck.

Ep 190: Why Media Insists the US is "Forced" to Commit Human Rights Abuses

We talk about President Biden's address to the nation re: Israel/Palestine, as well as Israel's attempts to obfuscate what happened at the al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza

Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

Episode 313: Karmically Overextended

In this impromptu live show from Oct 30 2023, we break down the four main arguments against a ceasefire in Gaza and why they make no sense. 

Based on this article by Adam
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/those-who-say-cease-fire-wont-work-are-wrong-heres-why/

Live Show 10/30/23: 4 Arguments Against a Gaza Ceasefire and Why They're Bullshit

We visited legendary writer William T. Vollmann (Rainbow Stories, Europe Central) in his Sacramento studio for a long talk about lots of things. Part two of two.

Read his new essay “Four Men” in Harper’s: harpers.org/archive/2023/11/four-men/

Episode 331: Grief Is A Witch-Hag (Part 2)

“Israel Called Them ‘Precision’ Strikes. But Civilian Homes Were Hit, Too.,” The New York Times equivocated back in May 2023. “US Military Footprint in Australia Expands to Counter China,” Bloomberg announced in July 2023. “NATO to launch biggest military exercise since Cold War,” the Financial Times reported in September 2023.

Far too often, media accept and parrot the terminology of the Pentagon, never pausing to consider how deceptive and pernicious this language may be. War reportage is regularly littered with euphemisms, metaphors, jargon, and esoteric acronyms that obscure the enormity of the warfare and war crimes waged and backed by the US, warping public perceptions of the violence happening throughout the world in service of US empire.

Some major news outlets, such as the New York Times, have adopted policies not to use terms like “enhanced interrogation techniques,” a Bush-era phrase used to sanitize the committing, sanctioning and outsourcing of literal torture by the US government. More recently, the BBC has said it will no longer use the term “terrorist,” as it is “a loaded word, which people use about an outfit they disapprove of morally.” But, troublingly, many loaded, euphemistic words and phrases remain in the vocabulary of leading news media, painting a woefully inaccurate and incomplete picture of both the past and the current state of US-led and US-backed violence around the world.

On this episode, Part I of a two-part series on the language of war, we’ll examine five of the 10 most insidious terms that US media and government officials use to sanitize military aggression worldwide, discussing how journalists, writers, and others in media can use terms that are clearer and more representative of the human stakes of war. Next week, we’ll complete the list of 10 with Part II.

Our guests are Maha Hilal and David Vine.

Episode 192: How Military Jargon and Cliches Make Mass Death Seem Sterile (Part I)

“U.S. shipment of 'lethal aid' reaches Ukraine amid Russia tensions,” NBC News reported in January 2022. “U.S. adopting 'deterrence posture' as aircraft carrier heads towards Israel,” France 24 announced in October 2023. The same month, The Hill warned about “Nutrition: The national security threat no one is talking about.”

This is part two of our two-part episode on the language of war. Last week, we discussed terms like “boots on the ground” and “military footprint;” “precision” or “targeted airstrikes;” “terrorism” and the very Orwellian phrase “enemy noncombatant.”

If you haven’t listened to that episode, we definitely encourage you to do so. On this episode, we examine more of the most insidious terms that U.S. media and government officials use to sanitize military aggression worldwide, how this is affecting coverage of Israel’s nonstop murderous bombing of Gaza, and discuss how we all can and should use clearer, more accurate terms to describe the real human stakes of state violence.

Our guests are Maha Hilal and David Vine.

Episode 193: How Military Jargon and Cliches Make Mass Death Seem Sterile (Part II)

Bill Gates and his "philanthropic" foundation. We've heard the conspiracy theories — but what if the reality was damning enough? Our guest is Tim Schwab, journalist and author of The Bill Gates Problem: Reckoning with the Myth of the Good Billionaire.

Subscribe for $5 a month to get an extra episode of QAA every week + access to ongoing series like Manclan, Trickle Down and The Spectral Voyager: https://www.patreon.com/QAnonAnonymous

QAA x Goosecult Party on Saturday December 16th: https://dice.fm/event/e8pkd-qaa-podcast-x-goosecult-party-w-john-vanderslice-16th-dec-the-goldfish-los-angeles-tickets

The Bill Gates Problem: Reckoning with the Myth of the Good Billionaire: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250291431
Tim Schwab: https://twitter.com/TimothyWSchwab

Music by Nick Sena.

http://qanonanonymous.com

Episode 255: Busy Bill Gates feat Tim Schwab

The latest news about shrimp, climate summits, Henry Kissinger, Democratic politics, and Israel/Palestine

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Episode 319: Krill Kings

Citations Needed is a podcast about the media, power, PR, and the history of bullshit. It is hosted by Nima Shirazi and Adam Johnson, and produced by Florence Barrau-Adams.

Episode 192: How Military Jargon and Cliches Make Mass Death Seem Sterile (Part I)

Citations Needed Podcast

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