So when people try to frame Assange's persecution as a matter of public perception and fighting foreign narratives about the US, they are incorrect. The issue is not that Assange's persecution makes the US look bad, the issue is that it proves the US is bad.

Reading by Tim Foley.

US Moral Authority Is Dead And Buried

I say we arm Russia against Russia. If it's bombing its own government buildings, its own pipelines, its own captured power plants, then it's the best proxy force against Russia we've got. Send the Russians tanks and F-16s immediately.

Russia's fighting Russia over there so we don't have to fight Russia over here.

Reading by Tim Foley.

The Kremlin Did Not Kill Itself

The best way to live a life based in truth, and the best way to be of use to the world, is to expand consciousness both inwardly and outwardly. Deeply investigate your own consciousness, divest yourself of the misperceptions and erroneous assumptions around thought, perceiving and selfhood which are driving your behavior, and discover your true nature. Also, learn everything you can about what's going on in the world, how people are being subjected to needless suffering by abusive systems, how power is really structured, what the mechanics of our civilization's dysfunctions are, and where some possible solutions might lie. Do both of these things.

Reading by Tim Foley.

The Ken Wilber video: https://youtu.be/5TUr949kmZk

Look With Both Eyes

Having an ideologically diverse audience has really opened me up to how politically cloistered everyone's used to being these days. People are always expressing surprise at the fact that they agree with me on some things yet disagree with me on others, either positively like "Wow we're not on the same page economically but I love a lot of what you say", or negatively like "OMG how can someone be so right about war and authoritarianism but SO WRONG about capitalism??"

This wouldn't stand out to them as something surprising or unusual unless it was something they don't normally experience in life. Which is a sign that something is off, because agreeing with people sometimes and disagreeing with them other times is the normal state of human interaction. That's what you experience constantly in life if your interactions are allowed to move naturally.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Ideological Echo Chambers Are Making Us All Stupid

The Biden administration has signed off on both F-16s for Ukraine and attacks on Crimea using US-made weapons. Both of these moves have drawn dire warnings from nuclear-armed Russia, and both would have been unthinkable a year ago.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Biden Okays F-16s For Ukraine, US Weapons To Attack Crimea

Many people turn to conservatism and religion because they perceive — correctly — that mainstream culture is a fraudulent sham bereft of meaning and authentic values. Their solutions are misguided, but their reasons arise from a perception of a very real problem. 

It isn't actually necessary to turn to religion or conservatism to find depth, meaning and groundedness; depth, meaning and groundedness are always abundantly accessible. But nothing about western culture makes this obvious, especially in the mainstream.

Turning to religion and conservatism as a solution to the degradation of mainstream culture is just replacing the modern systems of mass-scale thought control with the old ones. It's a completely maladaptive solution to the problem, but you can't ask people to just keep participating in a worldview that feels like it's sucking your soul out of your body 24/7. You need to offer them something nourishing and authentic. Nothing in mainstream liberal culture offers this; it's self-evidently phony, soulless and vapid.

This isn't something the left can just dismiss. There needs to be something on offer which meets these needs better than both mainstream culture and the regressive belief systems which caused so much suffering in the past.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Escaping The Prison Of Mainstream Culture

There are no adults behind the wheel of the vehicle that's driving us toward World War Three. We're on a bus that's being driven straight toward a cliff, and it's being driven by infants. If we survive this it will not be because of the experienced leadership of western governments, but completely in spite of it.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Everything's Getting Way More Dangerous And Way More Stupid

The most common articles of propaganda — and by far the most consequential — are not the glaring, memorable instances that live in infamy among the critically minded. They're the mundane messages, distortions and lies-by-omission that people are fed day in and day out to normalize the status quo and lay the foundation for more propaganda to be administered in the future.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Most Propaganda Looks Nothing Like This

The truth of the matter is that you can't vote your way out of a mess you never voted your way into in the first place. You never voted for any of this.

You never voted for your government to circle the planet with hundreds of military bases and continuously work to destroy any government which disobeys it. 

You never voted for your government to imperil the world with rapidly escalating brinkmanship against nuclear-armed nations.

You never voted to base your entire civilization on the pursuit of profit while shoving your biosphere into the capitalist machine like a tree branch into a wood chipper.

You never voted to let plutocrats and war profiteers make decisions for your government while normal people suffer and toil to scrape by.

You never voted to let billionaires live as kings while homeless people shiver in tents.

You never voted for surging authoritarianism with more and more police militarization, surveillance, censorship, propaganda and control.

You never voted to create this freakish dystopia where all political oxygen gets funneled toward vapid culture war debates which threaten the powerful in no way while any effort to effect meaningful change is ground into the dust.

None of those things were ever on the ballot, and they won't be in November of next year either. What will be on the ballot is whether you want all of those things to continue under the office of someone with a D or an R next to their name. 

Reading by Tim Foley.

You Can't Vote Your Way Out Of A Mess You Never Voted Yourself Into

Today in tyranny we've got three stories on the rapidly increasing authoritarian abuses in western "free democracies":

1. Grayzone reporter detained by British counter-terrorism police for doing journalism.

2. South Australia passes draconian anti-protest law.

3. State Department dismisses questions about Ukrainian imprisonment of US citizen for speech crimes.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Authoritarianism Keeps Surging In Western "Free Democracies"

We are marching toward dystopia and oblivion, and we are doing it in ways that have no historical precedent. We're in completely uncharted waters, and things are only getting crazier and crazier.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Our Ongoing March Into Dystopia And Oblivion

Readings of all Caitlin Johnstone's articles, usually by her co-writer Tim Foley.

Ideological Echo Chambers Are Making Us All Stupid

Caitlin Johnstone

Related tracks