War frightens citizens into giving up rights

There is still a lot of news about the nasty guy ordering “bunker buster” bombs to be dropped on nuclear facilities (especially since I’m a couple days behind in reading the news). In what I’ve read and heard so far there isn’t much I want to emphasize, beyond the strangeness of dropping bombs, then seeming to declare a cease-fire before the enemy can retaliate. I’ll admit I probably haven’t heard the full story. If you’re still curious there is an Associated Press article posted on Daily Kos about the bombing and another AP article about the spin the nasty guy’s goons are trying to give the story. Of more interest to me is an article by Mark Jacobs on Stop the Presses pleading with media to not turn the war into entertainment. He lists eight things journalists should keep in mind. 1. Don’t sanitize the impact on humans. Saying people don’t want to see dead and wounded with their cornflakes is a terrible way to judge what to show. 2. Put events in a complete, honest historical context. The question “Why does Iran hate us” and most of the answers are shallow. The full answer includes how the CIA helped a coup in Iran install the Shah, which was seven decades ago. 3. Hold politicians accountable. Too many headlines imply politicians have no agency, that things just happen. 4. The peace movement is patriotic too. Dissent is lot disloyalty. 5. Lying politicians are more dishonest in war. Be extremely skeptical of the wins they claim. 6. Don’t act like you’re “in the know” when you’re not. 7. Beware of optimism, such as the vice nasty claiming the war won’t be a long one. 8. War allows governments more easily take away liberties. Authoritarian governments use war as a reason to control citizens. They frighten citizens into giving up rights. From 1984 by George Orwell, “The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous.” In his conclusion he adds one more: Don’t let the war engross you so much you miss the domestic misconduct. I first heard of Sarah Kendzior through her work on Gaslit Nation. She is no longer a part of that and now had her own newsletter on Substack. I hadn’t checked it in quite a while. What I found was a post with a long list of perceptive questions from readers and Kendzior’s answers. She does this monthly and this one was posted June 13. I picked several questions and answers to include. Be wary of the “feud” between Musk and the nasty guy.

Dictators seek to be the sole star of a spectacle state. Doing so drains public imagination, making it difficult for citizens to conceive of a politics beyond the demagogue.

And we had two demagogues trying to be the sole star. Beyond that the feud doesn’t matter. Kendzior doesn’t trust Gavin Newsom, governor of California. At times he seems to want California to secede from the rest of the country (part of the idea that rich people want to break it up) and being the president of California instead of its governor might sound pretty cool. One reason for gutting Medicaid (and Medicare) is “a sick and scared populace is easier to control.” But note that for a long time health care has been tied to jobs to prevent our independence. A surprise of the nasty guy’s second term:

That pundits and politicians treat Trump’s first term as if it never happened and as if there’s not a template to these crises. They’ve done that before (they ignored his entire organized crime career) but, like, we were there! He was the president and we saw the whole four years! This bizarre selective amnesia is a big part of why people do not trust the media or the Democratic party.

Kendzior is wary of politicians, even Democrats, “because of the lack of accountability for sedition.” The Department of Justice under Biden was obligated to prosecute that and didn’t. Every state crime should be treated seriously, even if the perpetrators are old news. Not doing so make containing new operatives who use the same illegal and destructive tactics. This prosecution could bring the country together, since there were perpetrators in both parties. Why did the DoJ refuse to prosecute? Because Merrick Garland was nominated by Biden to make sure it refused. In the past an authoritarian would let protestors go for a few months to exhaust them and the public’s attention before calling in the national guard. By acting fast the nasty guy energized the opposition. But in the digital and AI world speed is more important. Algorithms control attention and curtail choice, so people don’t know what is happening. The nasty guy needs a military willing to fire on Americans. The more time soldiers have to see through his propaganda the less likely they are to fire. He needs his soldiers frenzied and frightened. The nasty guy may get around a possibly reluctant military by also using “deputized” civilians. Also, the nasty guy is more of a mob boss than a dictator. He doesn’t care if the US collapses. Pat attention to who is labeled a “resistance fighter” and who is called a “terrorist.” Keep in mind that in the past Native Americans and Blacks had their righteous rebellions portrayed as barbaric violence. “Palestinian terrorism” was accepted description until smart phones showed Israeli violence. Watch out for sadism hiding behind a uniform. In response to a question about tipping points in a country facing the loss of democracy, Kendzior wrote:

Protests are good ways of showing dissent and noncompliance with immoral orders, but they should be strategic when dealing with a regime that seeks the collapse of the state. The tipping point is different for each country. I actually think the US reached our tipping point in January/February 2021, and then Biden DOJ tipped it back through inaction. The inaction confused much of the public, leading them to conclude that Trump must be innocent, or else he’d quickly be punished. The refusal of the Democrats to examine why that happened is keeping the whole country from moving forward and reaching a new tipping point. People need to have confidence that if they bravely confront the Trump administration, they will have the backing of powerful officials. They have no confidence now, due to the abandonment of accountability by Biden administration, and that is a shameful thing.

The confidence has begun to grow again. Republicans abandoned the idea of trying to win people to their ideas and they would not win in a fair fight. So they cheat. They also see that the instigators of the Capitol attack were never punished and the participants have been pardoned. They could do it again without consequence. Cutting the staff of National Parks – the beloved federal workers – reminds people the federal government can do great things, not just corruption. That might be a mistake in all the slashing of federal jobs. After getting to the end of Kendzior’s Q&A session I followed a link to another one of her posts, this one from last November, about a week after the election.

I warned you for nine years, because I wanted you to be prepared. Biden was a Placeholder President designed to fill the four years between two terms of Trump while plutocrats shifted American political culture sharply to the right. Media gutted, Twitter decimated, activism destroyed, books censored, minorities demonized, public health annihilated, victims blamed, empathy scorned. That is the main thing they are after now: your empathy. They want you to hate each other so you don’t hate them first.

They want us to hate each other so we agree to their plan to tear the country apart for the rich to plunder. There is a larger plan and we are merely a pawn. Though we can’t vote out the mafia our “power lies in refusing to abandon each other or abandon the truth.” As for that election:

The most important thing about the election is not that Trump was proclaimed the winner, but that he was allowed to run. The second most important thing is who paid for it.

To see that look at the nasty guy’s donors and to who he pardoned. Look at who procured the pardons and the name Jared Kushner, the pandemic prince, comes up a lot. Kushner is relevant to Israel’s wars, yet he has vanished from punditry. Whether the US is in a mafia state centers on Kushner. Over the years I collected browser tabs, intending to use a particular tweet or cartoon when the subject came up elsewhere. That tended to not happen. So here are some old and unrelated tweets as I go through old tabs. Back in November 2022 (I did say “years”) Leah McElrath (who has now switched to Bluesky) wrote:

One problem with many well-intentioned efforts over the years to provide housing to the unhoused has been that the programs have difficulty getting funded without including a lot of moralistic conditions for the housing. Just. Give. People. Housing. THEN offer other services.

From Prof. Feynman, posted September 2022:

SCIENCE: If you don't make mistakes, you're doing it wrong. If you don't correct those mistakes, you're doing it really wrong. If you can't accept that you're mistaken, you're not doing it at all.

In August of 2024 Jeff Danziger posted a cartoon on Kos. It shows a college finance officer telling a student “Here... Sign this. Won’t take a moment.” The student looks down at a bin that is encasing her feet in concrete coming from a mixer labeled “College debt.”