Who owns your dreams?

It would not be impossible to prove with sufficient repetition and a psychological understanding of the people concerned that a square is in fact a circle. They are mere words, and words can be molded until they clothe ideas and disguise.”

― Joseph Goebbels

In my Special Article, I write about something unprecedented – the pervasive, insidious US control of the public mind, not just that of its own people but of its allies too—a level that outdoes any “dictatorship” in history, mobilizing the resources of American culture in a way that Hitler would have envied, a combination of subliminal and subtle but overt indoctrination.

The Nazis attempts at brainwashing the public were crude compared to what we have today, with TV and the Internet and a new kind of Information Culture. Today there are a lot of circles that are in fact squares — and vice versa — as the powers-that-be choose: pretty much everything in geopolitics.

How is it done?

Answer: we have weaponized imagination.

Weaponizing imagination

We live as much in our imagination as in reality.

Reality is “what-is”.

Imagination, however, is possibility – “what-could-be”. Therefore, imagination is intrinsically subversive of all established order— which by definition limits possibility and must be controlled. To gain that control, we must weaponize imagination.

You can dream all you want. No one should know. No one should care.

But your government wants to control the future, so you must have the “right” kind of dreams.

When it comes to expressing your imaginings in the waking moment, that is a social action and requires a medium – paint, a block of marble, words on the page, stories in dramatic from on the stage or on TV, or even academic discourse: philosophy, history, psychology all involve imagination’ anything not testable or “falsifiable” as scientists say.

Keep in mind that in our society all social actions are also political. And that the “future” is just someone’s dream. Someone else’s dream.

The way to for the powerful to get everyone sharing the same dream is not by violence but to tell a good story.

In the media, we call them “narratives”.

Everything is a “narrative”. Every ‘expert” talks of “narratives”. Every government official. Every journalist Every educator. Have you noticed how that word is “ubiquitous”?

50,000 years ago, people sitting around the fire at night, telling stories, imagined past events and spirits and monsters. They used words, and songs and poetry but they called up pictures in the mind. In fact, they thought in pictures.

Today, we sit in from of a flat screen TV, live streaming Netflix. More pictures. Other people, unknown to us, create realistic monsters and spirits for us using advanced technologies.

Yes, our ancestors’ monsters are still there and their spirits-- and all manner of unreal things— for which we suspend disbelief as the Old Ones did. Just we don’t call up those imaginings from inside ourselves— they are created by others.

We call it “entertainment” which comes from Latin and Old French and means to “hold together”. And t\hat’s what entertainment does today – it holds your world together—and you don’t know it. You just think of it as fun. It’s TV shows of all kinds, YouTube, CNN-- everything. And it creates a world.

For an hour or so at a time on Netflix, “what could be” is “what-is” – the unreal becomes very real at the emotional level, which is where logic and reason have their roots. It is the same on CNN. And YouTube and a hundred other media. I feel therefore I think.

This mode of consciousness is exploited by the media and governments and academia to support the established order of our society, to direct imagination so that only certain possibilities can be realized, to make squares circles --and circles squares. Only you don’t get to choose. That’s for the Powerful.

Why is there so much injustice? Why so much unfairness? So little freedom? There doesn’t have to be. Not logically anyway. But we are not rational beings. We do not live in reality but in our imaginations which would be OK if only our imaginations belonged to us.

If we wanted a better world, we need to own our dreams, to own our imagination of what could be and draw on the power of emotion to make a better world.

Try that.

And maybe die. There is risk.

Geopolitics: the Netflix Version

Every good TV show or novel has a “setting”, which looks realistic but really isn’t because it has to accommodate multiple story lines and a variety of characters both good and bad.

That’s true of Geopolitical Dramas, too,

Take Ukraine.

The Reality

This story is based on actual events, which everyone knows but ignores. When you see ‘based on a true story’ you know it’s not true.

The Maidan Coup of 2014 was orchestrated by the US, especially the CIA, as part of a long-standing program to vivisect Russia. The coup involved the use of ultranationalists from Western Ukraine, who are correctly called “neo-Nazis”, for their racist and ethno-supremacist views.

Ukraine had always been Russian., and like many regions in Russia it was ethnically diverse. So the Galicians in the West had almost nothing in common, with Russian Ukrainians in Donbass or Lugansk, or with the polyglot population of Odessa.

The NeoNazis of course wanted to purify Ukraine. They originated in Galicia and they wanted their own country.

They aimed at nothing less than cultural genocide of Ukrainian Russians who occupied the most productive parts of the country and so mounted a military campaign to accomplish their aims with shelling of civilian settlements, massacres and killings.

The Russians of course supported their Ukrainian brothers but did not go so far as full-on military intervention, Instead, they tried to achieve a negotiated peace in the form of Minsk I and 2.

When Zelensky took over, he first advocated rapprochement with the Russians and Russian Ukraine, but quickly changed his mind. If he hadn’t done that then the UltraRight, the Nazis, who, with CIA help had infiltrated almost every institution in Ukraine would have had him killed.

Zelensky was an actor – and the act quickly became the person, Killings and atrocities continued as NATO built up his army for a Final Solution.

Children died.

The West lied.

Everyone on Death’s side.

Things went from bad to worse. But Zelly was feted around the world, with standing ovations everywhere.

The Show

Now, if you were a TV Producer and your sponsor was the CIA, how would you write the script. ?

Here’s how. By turning reality upside down and inside out.

Neo-Nazis, the Bad Guys, who are crazy and violent become the Good Guys, reformers, freedom fighters

Russia, the Good Guys, a democratic, multiethnic state suddenly become the Bad Guys -- an authoritarian (Nazi) dictatorship

Vladimir Putin, the Hero-- a popularly elected Russian President, favoring negotiation over military action is suddenly the Villain --a genocidal megalomaniac, a psychopath with dark, irrationality.

Hey, it’s just a story, right. But repeated enough times, with variations to reinforce the ideas, it takes hold.

Vladimir Zelensky, an opportunistic sociopath with dictatorial impulses becomes the Hero, a Freedom Fighter and Champion of Democracy .

To do all this you need all Western media on the same page and to make sure of that you need support from academia, think tanks, governments and the corporate world. Confirmation bias works best with confirmation offered from all quarters. .

Academia has to present an historical overview that validates the portrayals of Russia and Eastern Europe, as well as Vladimir Putin, buttressed by psychological interpretations. Events like the mysterious downing of MH117, and various assassinations of Russian dissidents can be presented as examples of the intrinsic evil of the Russians and especially Vlad the Bad.

In a good Netflix drama, the Bad Guys have to be shown doing horrifying things. Of course, it’s all special effects. In geopolitics, we use special effects too and lots of imagination. That’s what created the Bucha Massacre and a few other fake atrocities,

But intelligent people believed it.

Robert Scheer believed it.

Co-option

But creating this kind of drama requires resources, co-opting the entire culture with memetic saturation and subliminal programming, the same messages repeated again and again. Your entire culture is an echo chamber.

Endless media articles and books and videos and documentaries and thinktank pieces and pronouncements by government authorities provide context, setting and background for narratives where the Good Guys are always OUR guys and the Bad Guys are Russian or Chinese or Cuban or Venezuelan or Islamic terrorists who just kill because they like blood and death and pain.

It’s media shock & awe and schizophrenia at the same time.

Of course, you also need to co-opt people like Robert Scheer, who is nominally left-wing, anti-war and critical of the US Government. His credibility s enhanced by his criticisms of US policy, for example, the Iraq War— but he accepts all the US governmental propaganda about Russia and Putin.

Scheer is a useful idiot. Then again, so is most of the public.

The trouble is real idiots don’t know when a square is a circle. But “useful idiots do”.

That, sadly, is the real meaning of “co-option”.

Scheer supported Zelensky as a democratically elected President, when the people of Donbas and Lugansk could not vote—not wanted to, having already voted for independence, which was also the case with Crimea.

He called Putin’s decision to honor his defense treaty with the DPR and LPR an “invasion”. He thought Russia repressive while in almost all respects more democratic than the US!

Scheer could have his political cake and eat it too. It is intellectual dishonesty although it goes over well with the US’ s upper middle Dithering Classes.

It’s a living I guess.

Will the Series Get Cancelled?

Every TV series inevitably gets cancelled. People get tired of same-old, same-old. They start noticing the plot holes. The story just looks…old.

That’s what is happening now with the Ukraine.

Zelensky no longer looks like a hero. Terrorism, repression of dissent— even of religion—corruption, atrocities of all kinds, mean bad reviews, especially in view of Russian political unity and the country’s social and economic progress.

No, there will be no Season 2 of the Ukraine Story. Sean Penn wants his Oscar back.

This Post?

This is from one of my special article drafts.It draws on my over 30 years of experience in the media — almost every field.

As you can see the article is complex, combing knowledge of media persuasion, social psychology, anthropology, philosophy, even evolutionary psychology. It’s a work in progress so I welcome your thoughts.

And, of course, I also welcome coffees at the buymeacoffee.com site. It’s the end of the month and time to pay my bills!

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