Beautiful! And reminds me of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipuTfdvCO9A&t=2943s

You be rogue-ing and flowing...the 11th commandment: love living in paradise, blessings Down Under Lady!

Love crashes in from all directions,
so peel me off the ground like Wile E Coyote
and blow on my thumb to unflatten me.

Love crashes in like an ACME anvil,
like an ACME exploding rocket,
like an ACME exploding female roadrunner doll,
like an ACME exploding orgy of divine light
erupting from the Great Mother's breasts
and ripping me to shreds leaving nothing but gratitude,
so shake the black soot off from my fur
and clean the coyote-shaped blast marks off the wall behind me.

Love crashes in through my bare feet on the grass
and the wind in my hair,
through the laughter of my children,
through the flying creatures in the air,
through my lover's hands on my flesh,
through the unknowability of the future,
through the ineffability of the present,
through the ecstasy of existence,
through the boundless Heart in which all arises,
so give me a sign which says "YIPE!"
that I may hold before I start falling.

I am in love with everything,
head-over-hormones in love,
gishy, sticky in love,
in love like an idiot,
in love like a gibbering lunatic,
in love like a cartoon,
so fire me out of a cannon
even though I will surely miss my target
so that 
for my very short and ill-advised flight
I can look down over it all
and blow kisses
and howl.
____________________

Reading by Tim Foley.

Love Crashes In

Western “liberal democracies” are just totalitarian regimes with more money and better narrative management. The US-centralized empire controls the global south with bombs, bullets and blockades and controls the rest of us with mass-scale psychological manipulation.

Sure it's more pleasant to be sitting where we are rather than at the barrel of the gun, but don't confuse pleasantness with freedom. It's nice that here they let you criticize your government and buy whatever you can afford at the store. It would be pleasant to live in a vat with your brain plugged into a virtual world of endless pleasure, too, but it wouldn't be freedom. Psychological tyranny is still tyranny.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Psychological Tyranny Is Still Tyranny

The science of modern propaganda arguably got its start over a century ago during World War I when a young Edward Bernays was recruited to help sell the conflict to a reluctant American populace, after which he took what he'd learned on that front and folded it into a lifetime of work on the study of mass-scale psychological manipulation.

That was when propaganda as we know it today came into being, with the scientific method applied to the task of refining techniques for manipulating large-scale human behavior using modern media distribution. Those methods have been in research and development this entire time, and have advanced at least as much as our other instruments of warfare have advanced since World War I.

But that wasn't the beginning of mass-scale psychological manipulation by the powerful. That has been going on since the dawn of civilization.

Reading by Tim Foley.

We've Been Dominated By Narrative Control Since The Dawn Of Civilization

The Washington Post has an article out with the brazenly misleading headline "Russian trolls on Twitter had little influence on 2016 voters". Anyone who reads the article itself will find its author Tim Starks acknowledges that "Russian accounts had no measurable impact in changing minds or influencing voter behavior," but the insertion of the word "little" means anyone who just reads the headline (the overwhelming majority of people encountering the article) will come away with the impression that Russian trolls still had some influence on 2016 voters.

"Little influence" could mean anything shy of tremendous influence. But the study did not find that Russian trolls had "little influence" over the election; it failed to find any measurable influence at all. 

Starks does some spin work of his own in a bid to salvage the reputation of the ever-crumbling Russiagate narrative, eagerly pointing out that the report does not explicitly say Russia definitely had zero influence on the election's outcome, that it doesn't examine Russian trolling behavior on Facebook, that it doesn't address "Russian hack-and-leak operations," and that it doesn't say "doesn’t suggest that foreign influence operations aren’t a threat at all."

None of these are valid arguments. Claiming Russia definitely had no influence on the election at all would have been beyond the scope of the study, the report's authors do in fact argue that the effects of Russian trolling on Facebook were likely the same as on Twitter, the (still completely unproven) "Russian hack-and-leak operations" were outside the scope of the study, as is the question of whether foreign influence operations can be a threat in general.

What Starks does not do is make any attempt to address the fact that mainstream news and punditry was dominated for years by claims that Russian internet trolls won the election for Donald Trump. He does not, for example, make any mention of his own 2019 Politico article telling readers that the Russian Twitter troll operation ahead of the 2016 election "was larger, more coordinated and more effective than previously known."

Reading by Tim Foley.

Western Journalists Are Cowardly, Approval-Seeking Losers

You are not separate from the universe. How could you be? The whole thing worked together to give rise to you through an unbroken chain of occurrences over billions of years, and the stuff you are made of comes from the same Great Whatever as everything else. Since the dawn of life on this planet organisms have been exchanging water and other elements back and forth through eating, drinking, reproducing and dying, and you are inseparably one with that dance.

And your own elements will not die. When your incredible heart stops beating and the stuff your amazing body is made of begins to come apart, your own molecules will simply continue the dance of the elements that has been going on for billions of years.

You won't die, you'll just return. Some elements born of stardust arranged themselves on two legs, looked around, experienced countless wonders, laughed, cried, fell in love, learned and unlearned, and then changed form, like a ripple ceasing its movement and becoming indistinguishable from the surrounding water. The water remains the same — it's just doing a different dance now.

Reading by Tim Foley.

You Are Home

One of the main differences between myself and other commentators who talk about an elite conspiracy to implement a totalitarian dystopia is that the others warn that we are being pushed toward this dystopia, while I insist that we're already there and have been for generations.

Reading by Tim Foley.

A Prison Where The Prisoners Don't Know They're In Prison

There's a thread going around on Twitter by Columbia University's Sophie Fullerton advancing the claim that I have promoted crazy conspiracy theories about child "crisis actors" in Syrian war atrocities. Fullerton has me blocked on Twitter so I can't respond to her there, but in her thread she brings up one of the most egregious instances I've ever seen of US war propaganda in the mass media, so it's worth taking some time to unpack her claims here as a public service.

The "interview": https://youtu.be/R7MRWhZzL5k

Reading by Tim Foley.

Recalling CNN's Fraudulent "Interview" With A Seven Year-Old Syrian Girl

I get funny reactions from people who are new to my work, often because I don't act like the other indie media figures they follow. I'm unrefined and swear a lot. I engage on social media with both followers and critics far more than most do. I talk about elite conspiracies to create a totalitarian dystopia, but I differ from other conspiracy analysts in that I assert that the dystopia is already here and has been for generations.

One of the main things that sets me apart from other people whose names I often get mentioned alongside is that I don't just publish anti-establishment commentary on news and politics and polemics against the empire; I publish art, poetry, philosophical musings, and big-picture assessments of what's going on with humanity as a whole. In case anyone's curious, I have a number of reasons for doing this.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Why I Publish Art And Philosophy In Addition To News Commentary

If the logic that "there are no innocent Russians" because the Russian people have a moral obligation to overthrow their warmongering government were evenly applied, it would also apply to Americans. Even more so, really, since their government is vastly more warlike than Moscow.

Per the "there are no innocent Russians" argument, Americans should be banned from participating in international events. Americans should be kicked out of foreign universities. Cinemas should stop playing Hollywood movies. Hemingway should be banned from schools.

Reading by Tim Foley.

There Are No Innocent Americans

Decamp writes that "The lessening concern about Putin resorting to nukes appears to be based only on the fact that he hasn’t used any up to this point." But this is as logical as believing that it is safe and wise to jump even harder on the sleeping bear you've been jumping on just because the bear hasn't woken up yet.

The assumption that because a disaster has not happened in the past it will not happen in the future is a type of fallacious reasoning known as normalcy bias. The assumption that because a disaster has not happened in the past it will not happen in the future, even though you keep doing things to make it increasingly likely, is just being a fucking idiot. It's like Wile E Coyote jumping up and down on the land mine until it explodes because it didn't explode when the Roadrunner ran over it.

Reading by Tim Foley.

US May Help Ukraine Launch An Offensive On Crimea

In times like these
when nuclear warheads are being moved into position,
when weapons manufacturers can't keep up with the demand,
when the pundits are making everyone stupid and crazy,
when it's hard to remember Assange's face but you can't turn on a screen without seeing Zelensky,
when our culture is manufactured on conveyor belts in New York, Hollywood, Arlington and Langley,
when everything's fake but the bombs and blockades,
when it feels like we're rocketing toward armageddon next to Jeff Bezos in a space suit,
when it feels like the angels have become smack addicts but have to settle for shitty Fentanyl fixes,
when it feels like God got kicked out of the group home and has to sell his plasma and sperm for cash,
when it feels like Heaven must be powered by smoggy nineteenth century London coal,
when it feels like the angel and the demon on humanity's shoulders are double fucking our ear canals,
when the bastards have sleeves full of bottomless aces while we're still trying to learn the rules,
when annihilation feels like a certainty and transcendence like a fairy tale,
it helps to have somewhere solid to take your stand.

In times like these
when everyone's so alienated they have to consume chemical intoxicants together just to share affection with each other,
when everyone's so lonely they trap animals in their homes with them so at least they have something that can't leave,
when everyone's so afraid of their own vulnerabilities they preemptively attack anyone who lowers their guard,
when everyone's pouring their lives into generating profits for miserable employers who will never have enough,
when everyone's being driven mad by the pointlessness of a civilization built around wealth extraction,
when everyone's allowing themselves to be sedated into a coma so they can't experience their own despondency,
when the radiant authenticity of nature is paved over to build cinemas to watch CGI creatures in CGI worlds,
when the sacred song of the heart is getting drowned out by desperation for dopamine hits from strangers on apps,
when the causeless joy of being keeps getting lost to fear and insecurity,
it helps to have some grounding in the changeless.

In times like these
truth can sneak in
like a thief,
like a ray of light through the smallest crack,
like a children's cereal mascot finally nicking a bowl of that delicious sugary starch
(oh my god it's got marshmallows and turns the milk neon colors oh fuck oh god I'm cumming),
like a ninja,
like Batman,
truth can sneak in and bonk you on the head
leaving you unable to see anything but the primal oneness,
unable to remember how you ever got things so mixed up,
like Gilligan when he got hit with the coconut
(except good).

In times like these
no matter how fucked up you are
you can sometimes catch Buddha winking at you in the mirror.

In times like these
everything is so tenuous
that satori can come crashing in at any moment.

In times like these
Shiva can just get tired of putting on the act
and take off the you-mask and break character.

In times like these
anyone's petty and irrelevant natterings
can be interrupted by the hatching of their heart.

We are such weird, mascara-streaked, runny-nosed ape mutants.
We are sharp-toothed blood-splashing murder monkeys.
We are honey-hearted giants with galaxies in our eyes.
I really hope you know how beautiful you are,
no matter how hard things are
and no matter how hard things get.
You contain vast universes,
and I wish I could make full-length Broadway musicals out of all of them.
No matter what happens I will love you through and through
until the heat death of the universe
and beyond.

And we just might get our miracle after all,
beautiful ape mutant.
We just might get our miracle after all.
In times like these, anything is possible.
In times like these, anything can be.
In times like these, we've all got nothing to lose,
which means we've got nothing to lose
by leaping.

___________________

Reading by Caitlin Johnstone.

In Times Like These

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

You Are Home

Caitlin Johnstone

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