{"id":237986,"date":"2024-07-09T07:17:49","date_gmt":"2024-07-09T11:17:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=237986"},"modified":"2024-07-09T07:18:12","modified_gmt":"2024-07-09T11:18:12","slug":"the-longer-cycle-of-gaslighting-and-deception-has-suddenly-burst-into-open-view","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=237986","title":{"rendered":"

“The longer cycle of gaslighting and deception…has suddenly burst into open view.”<\/b><\/h2>"},"content":{"rendered":"

We Were “Deceived & Gaslit For Years”, All In The Name Of “Democracy”; Then “Poof”, It Collapsed Overnight<\/h1>\n

By Alastair Crooke<\/p>\n

The Editor at Large for the Wall Street Journal, Gerry Baker,\u00a0says<\/a>:\u00a0\u2018We\u2019ve been \u201cgaslit\u2019 and deceived\u201d \u2013 for years \u2013 \u201call in the name of \u2018democracy\u2019\u201d. That deceit \u201ccollapsed\u201d with the Presidential debate, Thursday\u2019.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cUntil the world saw the truth \u2026 [against] the \u2018misinformation\u2019 \u2026 the fiction of Mr. Biden\u2019s competence \u2026 suggests they [the Democrats] evidently thought they could get away with promoting it. [Yet] by perpetuating that fiction they were also revealing their contempt for the voters and for democracy itself\u201d.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Baker continues:<\/p>\n

\u201cBiden succeeded because he made toeing the party line his life\u2019s work.<\/strong>\u00a0Like all politicians whose egos dwarf their talents, he ascended the greasy pole by slavishly following his party wherever it led \u2026 Finally\u2014in the ultimate act of partisan servility, he became Barack Obama\u2019s vice president, the summit of achievement for those incapable, yet loyal: the apex position for the consummate \u2018yes man\u2019\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cBut then, just as he was ready to drift into a comfortable and well-deserved obscurity, his party needed a front man \u2026 They sought a loyal and reliable figurehead, a flag of convenience, under which they could sail the progressive vessel into the deepest reaches of American life \u2014 on a mission to advance statism, climate extremism and self-lacerating wokery. There was no more loyal and convenient vehicle than Joe\u201d.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If so, then who actually has been \u2018pulling America\u2019s strings\u2019 these past years?<\/p>\n

\u201cYou [the Democratic machine] don\u2019t get to deceive, dissemble and gaslight us for years about how this man was both brilliantly competent at the job and a healing force for national unity \u2013 and now tell us, when your deception is uncovered, that it\u2019s \u2018bedtime for Bonzo\u2019 \u2013 thanks for your service, and let\u2019s move on\u201d,\u00a0<\/strong>Baker warns.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201c[Now] it is going horribly wrong. Much of his party has no use for him anymore \u2026 in a remarkably cynical act of bait-and-switch, [they are trying to] swap him out for someone more useful to their cause. Part of me thinks they shouldn\u2019t be allowed to get away with it. I find myself in the odd position of wanting to root for poor mumbling Joe \u2026 It\u2019s tempting to say to the Democratic machine frantically mobilizing against him: You don\u2019t get to do this. You don\u2019t get to deceive, dissemble and gaslight us for years\u201d.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Something significant has snapped within \u2018the system\u2019.<\/strong>\u00a0It is always tempting to situate such events in \u2018immediate time\u2019, but even Baker seems to allude to a longer cycle of gaslighting and deception \u2013 one that only now has suddenly burst into open view.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/picture><\/a><\/p>\n

Such events \u2013 though seemingly ephemeral and of the moment \u2013 can be portents to deeper structural contradictions moving.<\/strong><\/p>\n

When Baker writes of Biden being the latest \u2018flag of convenience\u2019 under which the ruling strata could sail the progressive vessel into the deepest reaches of American life \u2013 \u201con a mission to advance statism, climate extremism and self-lacerating wokery\u201d \u2013 it seems probable that he is\u00a0referring<\/a>\u00a0to the 1970s era of the Trilateral Commission and the Club of Rome.<\/p>\n

The 1970s and 1980s were the point at which the long arc of traditional liberalism gave place to an avowedly illiberal, mechanical \u2018control system\u2019 (managerial technocracy) that today fraudulently poses as liberal democracy.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Emmanuel Todd, the French anthropological historian, examines the longer dynamics to events unfolding in the present: The prime agent of change leading to the Decline of the West (La D\u00e9faite de l\u2019Occident), he argues, was the implosion of \u2018Anglo\u2019 Protestantism in the U.S. (and England), with its entailed habits of work, individualism and industry \u2013 a creed whose qualities were held then to reflect God\u2019s grace through material success, and, above all, to confirm membership of the divine \u2018Elect\u2019.<\/p>\n

Whereas traditional liberalism had its mores, the decline of traditional values triggered the slide towards managerial technocracy, and to nihilism. Religion lingers on in the West, though in a \u2018zombie\u2019 state, Todd avers. Such societies, he argues, flounder \u2013 absent some guiding metaphysical sphere that provides people with non-material sustenance.<\/p>\n

However, the incoming doctrine that only a wealthy financial \u00e9lite, tech experts, leaders of multinational corporations and banks possess the required foresight and technological understanding to manipulate a complex and increasingly controlled system changed politics completely.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mores were gone \u2013 and so was empathy. Many experienced the disconnect and the disregard of cold technocracy.<\/p>\n

So when a senior WSJ editor tells us that the \u2018deception and \u2018gaslighting\u2019 collapsed with the CNN Biden-Trump debate, we should surely pay attention; He is saying the scales finally fell from peoples\u2019 eyes.<\/p>\n

What was being gaslighted was the fiction of democracy and also that of America declaring itself \u2013 in its own scripture \u2013 to be the trailblazer and pathfinder of humanity: America as the exceptional nation: the singular, the pure-of-heart, the baptizer, and redeemer of all peoples despised and downtrodden; the \u201clast, best hope of earth<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n

The reality was very different. Of course, states can \u2018live a lie\u2019 for a long period. The underlying problem \u2013 the point Todd makes so compellingly \u2013 is that you can be successful in deceiving and manipulating public perceptions, but only up to a point.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The reality was, it simply was not working.<\/p>\n

The same is true of \u2018Europe\u2019.<\/p>\n

The EU\u2019s aspiration to become a global geo-political actor too, was contingent on gaslighting the public that France, Italy and Germany et al could continue to be real national entities \u2013 even as the EU scooped up all national decision-making prerogatives, by deceit.<\/strong>\u00a0The\u00a0mutiny<\/a>\u00a0at the recent European elections reflected this discontent.<\/p>\n

Of course, Biden\u2019s condition has been long known. So who then has been running affairs; making critical daily decisions about war, peace, the composition of the judiciary and the boundaries of state authority? The WSJ piece gives one answer: \u201cUnelected advisers, party hacks, scheming family members and random hangers-on make the critical daily decisions\u201d on these issues.<\/p>\n

Maybe we have to\u00a0reconcile<\/a>\u00a0to the fact that Biden is an angry, senile man who yells at his staff: \u201cDuring meetings with aides who are putting together formal briefings, some senior officials have at times gone to great lengths to curate the information in an effort to avoid provoking a negative reaction\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like, \u2018You can\u2019t include that, that will set him off\u2019 or \u2018Put that in, he likes that,\u2019\u201d<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0said one senior administration official.\u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s very difficult and people are scared sh*tless of him.\u201d The official added, \u201cHe doesn\u2019t take advice from anyone other than those few top aides, and it becomes a perfect storm because he just gets more and more isolated from their efforts to control it\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n

Seymour Hersh, the well-known investigative journalist\u00a0reports<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cBiden\u2019s drift into blankness has been ongoing for months, as he and his foreign policy aides have been urging a ceasefire that will not happen in Gaza whilst continuing to supply the weapons that make a ceasefire less likely. There\u2019s a similar paradox in Ukraine, where Biden has been financing a war that cannot be won \u2013 yet refusing to participate in negotiations that could end the slaughter\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThe reality behind all of this, as I\u2019ve been told for months, is that Biden is simply \u2018no longer there\u2019 \u2013 in terms of understanding the contradictions of the policies he and his foreign policy advisers have been carrying out\u201d.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On the one hand, Politico\u00a0tells<\/a>\u00a0us:\u00a0\u201cBiden\u2019s insular senior team are well acquainted with the longtime aides who continue to have the president\u2019s ear: Mike Donilon, Steve Ricchetti and Bruce Reed, as well as Ted Kaufman and Klain on the outside\u201d.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the same people \u2014 he has not changed those people for 40 years \u2026 The number of people who have access to the president has gotten smaller and smaller and smaller. They\u2019ve been digging deeper into the bunker for months now.\u201d And, the strategist said, \u201cthe more you get into the bunker, the less you listen to anyone\u201d.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In Todd\u2019s words then, decisions are made by a small \u2018Washington village\u2019.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Of course, Jake Sullivan and Blinken sit at the centre of what is called the \u2018inter-agency\u2019 view. This where policy mostly is discussed. It is not coherent \u2013 with its locus in the National Security Committee \u2013 but rather is spread through a matrix of interlocking \u2018clusters\u2019 that includes the Military Industrial Complex, Congressional leaders, Big Donors, Wall Street, the Treasury, the CIA, the FBI, a few cosmopolitan oligarchs and the princelings of the security-intelligence world.<\/p>\n

All these \u2018princes\u2019 pretend to have a foreign policy view, and fight like cats to protect their fiefdom\u2019s autonomy. Sometimes they channel their \u2018take\u2019 via the NSC, but if they can, they will \u2018stovepipe\u2019 it directly to one or other \u2018key actor\u2019 with the ear of one, or other, Washington \u2018village\u2019.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, at bottom, the 1992 Wolfowitz doctrine which underscored American supremacy at all costs, in a post-Soviet world \u2013 together with \u201cstamping out rivals, wherever they may emerge\u201d \u2013 still today remains the \u2018current doctrine\u2019 framing the \u2018inter-agency\u2019 baseline.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dysfunction at the heart of a seemingly functioning organization may persist for years without any real public awareness or appreciation of the descent into dysfunctionality. But then suddenly \u2013 when a crisis hits, or Presidential debate misfires \u2013 \u2018poof\u2019 and we see clearly the collapse of the manipulation that has confined discourse to within the various Washington villages.<\/p>\n

In this light, some of the structural contradictions that Todd noted as contributory factors to western decline become unexpectedly \u2018illuminated\u2019 by events: Baker highlighted one: The key Faustian bargain: the pretence of a liberal democracy operating in tandem with a \u2018classic\u2019 liberal economy versus the reality of an illiberal oligarchic leadership sitting atop a hyper-financialised corporate economy that has both sucked the life from the classic organic economy, and created toxic inequalities too.<\/p>\n

The second agent of western decline is Todd\u2019s observation that the implosion of the Soviet Union rendered the U.S. so cock-a-hoop that the latter triggered a paradoxical unleashing of global \u2018Rules-Based Order\u2019 expansion of empire versus the reality that the West was already being consumed from its roots upwards.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The third agent to decline lay, Todd argues, with America declaring itself to be the greatest military nation on earth \u2013 versus the reality of an America that has long rid itself of much of its manufacturing capacity (particularly the military capacity), yet elects to clash with a stabilized Russia, a great power returned, and with China which has instantiated itself as the world\u2019s manufacturing Behemoth (including militarily).<\/p>\n

These unresolved paradoxes became the agents of western decline, Todd maintained. He has a point.<\/strong><\/p>\n

___
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We Were “Deceived & Gaslit For Years”, All In The Name Of “Democracy”; Then “Poof”, It Collapsed Overnight<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-237986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sotn-special"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=237986"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237986\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=237986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=237986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=237986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}