Needing More War News, NBC Analyzes Impending War with China

Here's the military-industrial-news-media complex hard at work today, focused on the western flank.  I'm smelling the stink of military manufacturers frightening and corrupting politicians in order to procure more orders for weapons. And why not float the idea of a two-front war with two nuclear armed adversaries, one of whom manufactures much of America's high tech goods?  Trump is mostly out of the news these days than to drum up more warmongering? This will allow NBC to sell more commercials and thus enjoy some largess too.

Caitlin Johnson comments at her website:

NBC's Meet the Press just aired an absolutely freakish segment in which the influential narrative management firm Center for a New American Security (CNAS) ran war games simulating a direct US hot war with China. . . .

As we've discussed previously, citing war machine-funded think tanks as expert analysis without even disclosing their financial conflict of interest is plainly journalistic malpractice. But it happens all the time in the mass media anyway, because the mass media exist to circulate propaganda, not journalism.

This is getting so, so crazy. That the mass media are now openly teaming up with war machine think tanks to begin seeding the normalization of a hot war with China into the minds of the public indicates that the propaganda campaign to manufacture consent for the US-centralized empire's final Hail Mary grab at unipolar domination is escalating even further. The mass-scale psychological manipulation is getting more and more overt and more and more shameless.

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Congress is Pollyannaish on War

Who could possibly be against financial oversight? And what about additional oversight into how this mountain of weapons will be used next year or five years from now, and against whom? At a time of skyrocketing inflation, Congress wants to spend money that we will be forced to borrow or print out of thin air based on sloganeering, but it is afraid to ask hard questions in public. If I took out a car loan today, I would be asked a hell of a lot more questions then Congress is asking itself.

Over this century, we have a clear track record for coddling our military contractors, pouring weapons and military into conflicts that have little to do with American interests in the absence of any metric of success, eventually slinking out of that shattered country, having depleted our treasury, thereby permanently losing opportunities to address the needs of our own citizens. Has anyone considered how angry we were when we (falsely) accused the Russians of offering bounty for the killing of US troops in Afghanistan? Our leaders are now bragging that they were instrumental in killing a dozen Russian Generals and sinking a Russian warship. Why would we not think that there will be blowback to this, perhaps in the form of Russian funding of terrorist acts against the US or in the form of nuclear annihilation? Why won't Congress discuss any of these issues in public?

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When it Comes to an Extremely Tight National Budget, War Always Finds a Way

The $54B being shoveled over to Ukraine as part our proxy war against Russia is the equivalent of the entire annual U.S. budget for roads and bridges. It's double the annual budget of NASA. Every Democrat in Congress voted for this give-away, mostly to the U.S. military-industrial complex. Those voting for this include all six members of the Squad, allegedly the most progressive wing of the Democrat party. Not a single no vote from Democrats. Most Republicans joined in, with no meaningful discussion of U.S. priorities, no acknowledgment that the U.S. was not being threatened by Russia. No acknowledgment that the country NATO was designed to defend no longer exists and no accountability as to how these weapons will be used in coming years and by whom. This $ is pouring out of our deficit-rampaged national budget in a country where schools are failing, where cities are decaying, where crime has skyrocketed since 2020 and where it is difficult to buy infant formula. This is America at its shining best, in the eyes of our defense industry.

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Hmmm. Why Don’t Smart Good-Hearted People Want to Run for Political Office?

One of our biggest challenges, I believe. I know a lot of smart people, none of who are willing to run for high office. None of them are willing to step into the financial cesspool of politics and none of them want to put their families at risk of harm. This article features the thoughts of For the political scientist Brian Klaas.

"[P]ower-hungry people are, by definition, more likely to seek power. Whether running for national office or applying to manage the local homeowners’ association, those who get off on the idea of controlling others naturally put themselves forward, while most people look at the stress, scrutiny and public pressure, and politely decline.

“Our modern society has made it extremely unattractive to normal, decent human beings to end up in positions of power,” Klaas said, noting that he himself gave up any childhood fantasy of becoming US president as soon as he realised how dirty American politics is. “I don’t think I’m alone in that. I think there’s lots of people who think: I could make the world a little better, but the cost might be enormous to me.” For that reason, Klaas believes, the pool of prospective leaders is already skewed towards those who should be kept well away from power. “I conducted 500 interviews with some of the worst people around – and they weren’t normal,” he recalled. “There are quirks about them, there’s something wrong with some of them, but they’re all very, very good at getting into power. And that’s not an accident."

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A Modern Approach for Teaching Your Child about Sex at a Public School

For those of you who are parents, is this how you want sex education taught to your first grader? Is there really a medical school class called "Guessing the Sex of New born Babies"? Sex is anchored strongly to biology. That's what doctors care about. They don't care about "gender" except to the extent that gender means "sex" and only one out of 6,000 babies has an intersex condition.  And how is it that when you go to the humane society to adopt a "female" or "girl" dog or cat, they don't look confused?  They know exactly what you mean.  It's the same thing as doctors, who don't "guess" what sex a baby is, except one out of 6,000 times.

Those who hate "Libs of Tik Tok" are pissed that the creator of that account is holding up the mirror to modern incoherent non-scientific insanity.  My kids are now grown, but if I had first graders and I found out that they were being taught this gibberish, I would be outraged. I write these words as a person who has voted almost entirely for Democrats for the past four decades and who has canvassed for Bernie Sanders. If moderate Democrats don't muster up the courage to speak up, they will have earned the red wave that is currently being predicted.

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