“Self Made” is coding for entitled  narcissism.

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CNN reports that President Biden has nominated criminal neocon Elliott Abrams for a position on the United States Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, which according to the US State Department is responsible for "appraising activities intended to understand, inform, and influence foreign publics" and pays "acute attention" to the US government's official foreign propaganda arm, the US Agency for Global Media.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Presidents Keep Hiring Elliott Abrams Because The US Empire Is Just That Evil

Anyone who is capable of honest self-reflection and critical thinking understands that the "self-made man" is a myth of our culture; that anyone who amasses a fortune does so on the backs of many other people whose work made it possible, and found the opportunity to do so because of the circumstances they happened upon by chance of birth, conditioning and sheer dumb luck.
And it's worth highlighting that this is also true of all other personal circumstances, including those that people in this slice of the online community might take pride in. One doesn't for example become aware of the manipulations of the powerful and the deceptions of the media because they are particularly smart and virtuous, they do so because they were lucky enough to find information from others which helped them form this understanding, and because their personal conditioning allowed them to take that information in and let it inform their worldview.
Similarly, one doesn't wind up opposing capitalism because of any personal specialness or righteousness; one finds themselves opposing capitalism because they happened upon socialist ideas after having meandered through a life which gave them the conditioning necessary for them to seriously consider those perspectives and take them on board. If their life had unfolded differently, through no fault or virtue of their own, they never would have happened upon those ideas, or if they had they would not have been receptive to them.
I said "Anyone who is capable of honest self-reflection and critical thinking" above, but even those gifts come upon us largely by sheer dumb luck, brought to us by other people in the form of information and conditioning throughout our lives.
My point is we're all just kind of muddling our way through this thing, and our successes and failures (by whatever metric we measure success and failure) are due more to the unfolding of humanity's collective consciousness than any brilliance or defectiveness on our own part.
Obviously we must all try to do our very best with the hand that we were dealt in life, but it's probably a good idea to harbor some compassion for those who don't get it as right as we do in our eyes. We were all born into a world saturated with propaganda and dominated by abusive systems, and ultimately the degree to which we are able to see our way around in that world says as much about how good or bad we are as a seed landing on rich or sandy earth says about the quality of the seed.

Reading by Tim Foley.

The Self-Made Man Is A Myth

Professional psychopath John Bolton has an article out with The Hill titled "America can't permit Chinese military expansion in Cuba" which inadvertently spells out exactly what's wrong with the way the US empire keeps amassing heavily armed proxy forces on the borders of its large Asiatic enemies.

Reading by Tim Foley.

John Bolton Accidentally Explains Why US Policy On Russia And China Is Wrong

The New York Times excludes some crucial information about cluster bombs from its headline, The Washington Post and Guardian have some interesting views on NATO membership for Ukraine, and, surprise! John Bolton loves cluster munitions.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Today In War Propaganda

And it really is interesting how almost everyone seems to be pretty much okay with corporations in the media and Silicon Valley interfering in a US election like this. Everyone shrieked their lungs out about the (now wholly discredited) narrative that Russian bots had influenced the US election with tweets and Facebook memes, but immensely wealthy corporations with universes more influence manipulating the way people think and vote is perfectly fine?

Reading by Tim Foley.

The Worst 2024 Election Interference Won't Come From Russia Or China

I saw a video clip of Julian Assange speaking in London in 2010 where he made an important observation while explaining the philosophy behind his work with WikiLeaks. He said that all our political theories are to some extent "bankrupt" in our current situation, because our institutions are so shrouded in secrecy that we can't even know what's really going on in the world.

"We can all write about our political issues, we can all push for particular things we believe in, we can all have particular brands of politics, but I say actually it's all bankrupt," Assange said. "And the reason it's all bankrupt, and all current political theories are bankrupt and particular lines of political thought, is because actually we don't know what the hell is going on. And until we know the basic structures of our institutions — how they operate in practice, these titanic organizations, how they behave inside, not just through stories but through vast amounts of internal documentations — until we know that, how can we possibly make a diagnosis? How can we set the direction to go until we know where we are? We don't even have a map of where we are. So our first task is to build up a sort of intellectual heritage that describes where we are. And once we know where we are, then we have a hope of setting course for a different direction. Until then, I think all political theories — to greater and lesser extents of course — are bankrupt."

Reading by Tim Foley.

Real Change Is Impossible While Our World Is Shrouded In Secrecy

In a recent CNN interview of US presidential candidate Cornel West, former CIA intern Anderson Cooper argued that the US invasion of Iraq was morally superior to the Russian attack on the city of Grozny.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Anderson Cooper Is A Disgusting CIA Goon

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

The Self-Made Man Is A Myth

Caitlin Johnstone

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