“Mendacity is a system we live in.”
– Paul Newman, playing Brick in Tennessee Williams’, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
A profusion of philosophical, psychological, and political ink has been spent on the subject of lying and liars. The toll in loves lost and relationships destroyed from lying is incalculable. All the war dead are victims of government lies; what Marine Major General Smedley Butler called a “racket.” Lies are poison, slow or quick working, and they kill both body and soul.
We are living in a country of lies. A country where propaganda is disseminated around the clock and lies are the air we breathe. Is it any wonder that most people are confused as to what to believe and whom to trust? But it goes much deeper.
I have recently read a number of perceptive, truthful articles that have gotten me thinking further about this subject, although I must add that I have been preoccupied with the issue since I was very young and my father took me to see Pinocchio in the movie theater and subsequently told me improvised Pinocchio stories before bedtime. Whether he knew it or not – and I think he knew – he set me on a lifetime’s quest to try to distinguish truth from lies and embrace the former. Then as a teenager, I appeared on a very popular television show, To Tell the Truth. I was recruited to lie, to play the part of an impostor, which I did quite well. I lied for the money and probably would have made a good lying politician if fate hadn’t interceded. It was only later that my actions and the show’s title kept reverberating through my mind, echoing down my days to the present and my interest in truth, lies, and propaganda. From my father came a love for the redeeming nature of stories.
***
“More and more often there is embarrassment all around,” wrote Walter Benjamin in The Storyteller, “when the wish to hear a story is expressed. It is as if something that seemed inalienable to us, the securest among our possessions, were taken from us: the ability to exchange experiences.”
***
It was getting dark on the street as the young man emerged from his high school on New York’s Upper East Side after basketball practice. He had lost track of time as he dreamed his basketball dreams and headed to the subway for the long ride home. It was December, 1961. A man, dressed in a cashmere overcoat and carrying a silver bowl, was walking his dog on the street. The boy asked him for the time. The man told him, adding with a grin that his watch always ran fast. The boy recognized the grin from what seemed like a dream. He pet the man’s dog, and the man asked him about the imposing school next to them. He asked the boy his name and the boy said “Eddie.” While the dog did its business in the street, they chatted for a few minutes. The man wished him luck with his basketball and said his name was Paul. As the boy hustled toward the subway, Paul Newman shouted after him, “See you later, Fast Eddie.”
The next week the boy went to see Paul Newman playing Fast Eddie Felson in The Hustler. He always remembered Paul’s words about mendacity and his words from The Hustler:
Fast Eddie: How should I play that one, Bert? Play it safe? That’s the way you always told me to play it: safe… play the percentage. Well, here we go: fast and loose. One ball, corner pocket. Yeah, percentage players die broke, too, don’t they, Bert?
Lies are a common way of playing it safe. Except they kill the liar.
***
In an article by Mike Whitney, “Betrayal, Infuriating Betrayal,” in which he writes about the Democrats’ ongoing efforts – Russia-gate, etc. – to remove Trump from the presidency, efforts based on a string of lies they know to be lies [ my emphasis] and have been proven to be so, he wonders thus toward the end:
It’s surprising that this doesn’t piss-off more Democrats, after all, it’s the ultimate expression of contempt and condescension. When someone lies to your face relentlessly, repeatedly and shamelessly, they are expressing their loathing for you. Can’t they see that?
Of course, that’s a very good question.
I read Jonathan’s Cook’s piece, “The Guardian’s deceit-riddled new statement betrays both Julian Assange and journalism.” Cook rightly excoriates The Guardian for lying about Assange and betraying him to the British and American governments, long-standing lies [my emphasis] that continue to today as Julian sits in a British kangaroo court where injustice is being served to extradite him to the USA. Here is one point he makes;
Nauseatingly, however, the Guardian not only seeks to blame Assange for its own mistake but tells a glaring lie about the circumstances. Its statement says: ‘No concerns were expressed by Assange or WikiLeaks about security being compromised when the book was published in February 2011. WikiLeaks published the unredacted files in September 2011.’
Then I read another fine article at Asia Times, by MK Bhadrakumar, “Permafrost descends on US-Russia ties,” about a bipartisan Senate bill aimed at demonizing Russia. The bill is led by Democratic Senator Chris Coons of Delaware. Bhadrakumar writes:
The fallout of all this is going to be profound for the Sino-Russian alliance. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov hit out last week: ‘It is time to stop applying Western metrics to our actions and stop trying to be liked by the West at any cost … the West is wittingly or unwittingly pushing us towards this analysis.
‘It is likely to be done unwittingly [my emphasis]. However, it is a big mistake to think that Russia will play by Western rules in any case, just like thinking this in terms of China.’
I was struck by Lavrov’s word “wittingly or unwittingly” – diplomatic speech – since he knows the Senator’s bill is filled with lies but suggests otherwise – “It is likely to be done unwittingly.”
Finally, I read an article by Philip Roddis, “Julian, Guardian, and the Law of Volitionality.” As a lead-in to his announced topic, he tells a little tale about his step-mother that struck me. It is worth quoting in full:
Indulge me a moment, will you? At fifteen I acquired a stepmother. We never got on. Her and dad’s insistence that she be called “mum” didn’t help. For the two years we spent in the same house – I left home weeks before turning seventeen – I never addressed her by name or title.
She had dad round her little finger. One ploy was to badger him into making a ruling against me. Once she’d done so, she’d beg him to relent. “Oh it’s alright, Frank. Let him … ” [do/have whatever it was she’d got him to forbid]. But no way was he going to u-turn at this point. A matter of pride, you see. I saw this little comedy for what it was but dad fell for it every time.
And here’s the thing. Maybe she did too. She got her way, but I don’t rule out her motives for that post victory appeal being hidden to – and by – her. My flawed but brilliant teacher said that everybody knows what they’re doing. Indeed, it was so fundamental a tenet he gave it a name: The Law of Volitionality. Yes, he took it to absurd and at times cruel lengths but for all that he was onto something. To manage cognitive dissonance – to maintain a sense of being fundamentally good – we play games with ourselves. Stepmother was likely fooling herself almost as much as dad with her tiresome shenanigans.
It’s not that she wasn’t being manipulative. Just that an essential ingredient of the manipulation, vital to maintaining self-esteem, was a decision – volitionally squirrelled away, out of sight from everyday awareness – to hoodwink herself. [my emphasis]
You can find such examples every day. Articles about lies tossed about by all sides of the political spectrum are commonplace.
I think it fair to say that everyone has lied at some point, but only the most manipulative are proud of it. “The essence of the lie implies in fact that the liar actually is in complete possession of the truth which he is hiding,” wrote Jean-Paul Sartre. This cynical consciousness that knows the truth but denies it to others is a perfect description of politicians, propagandists, intelligence services, and their media mouthpieces. They know they are lying and are proud of it, but of course they will never admit it.
Most people are not that manipulative. Sartre says there is another type of liar who suffers from bad faith. While they lie to others, they also try to lie to themselves and hide the truth from themselves. People often say that this person and that one really believe their own lies, that they are deluded, but this is not possible. For “the one to whom the lie is told and the one who lies are one and the same person, which means that I must know in my capacity as a deceiver the truth which is hidden from me in my capacity as the one deceived.”
I have recently been thinking that many people who are adamantly insistent on the efficacy of mask-wearing against SARS-CoV-2, the virus associated with COVID-19, and those who are always quoting the official statistics, are of this sort. They either know there is good evidence against mask-wearing and the official statistical game, but try to convince themselves this isn’t so, or they avoid reading about the possibility to save face and live with themselves – both acts of bad faith. Such people are like Philip Roddis’s step-mother. But in this case, the bad faith is about a Big Lie, just as the fake fight between Trump and Biden has induced many people to take bad faith sides in a scene from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass:
“Tweedledum and Tweedledee
Agreed to have a battle;
For Tweedledum said Tweedledee
Had spoiled his nice new rattle”
So Tweedledee and Tweedledum
Had their scrum
All about the rattle.
When it was done
Only the dumb
Gave a shit about their battle
***
Last year, I was at a large library book sale and came upon an odd box of typed manuscripts of stories that lacked the author’s name. They were free and so I took a few. There was one very short story, entitled “Fear,” that struck me for its haunting connection to the issue of lies. “Death is the sanction of everything the storyteller can tell,” wrote Benjamin, which seems so true with this anonymous story. Here it is:
Listen, that’s what I want to say to them. Listen, this is one of those stories hard to believe. When I first heard it, I doubted it completely. Of course I was telling it and that might have been a factor. It’s hard, once you hear your own voice, to believe it’s you. After a while, however, I became convinced it had to be true. I couldn’t make up anything so odd, so sick if you prefer. At first the voice sounded strange, but once I realized it was really mine, I understood I was revealing this pathetic tale under great duress and it was understandable that my voice sounded foreign.
You should take that into account. I am a very sick man. I realize that now. In the beginning, I thought I was surely dying, until, that is, I saw that I was already dead. Dying was beside the point. I was dead. Naturally this came as a great surprise to me. Now you might reasonably ask, how did this absurd situation come about, and how can a dead man write words? Let me tell you.
It began when I was born while the world was engaged in one of its periodic slaughters. No, periodic is not true. Those slaughters are constant.
So you wonder what my astrological sign is? The mushroom cloud of course. A cancer born under the sign of the mushroom.
Anyway, I have been living for decades now and you’d think I would have seen the obvious. I didn’t, or that’s what I told myself. Not for the life of me. I kept going on as if I were alive when I was dead. It’s obvious now: the dead never know they’re dead until… But I didn’t know it, and you can imagine, I hope, how this caused me many problems.
Don’t laugh.
That was the year I disappeared.
She asked me: “But are you content?”
– No, I wouldn’t say that.
– So you’re not? It’s hard to tell? Tell me.
– No, not really.
– Not really what?
– Not really content.
– What would give you contentment?
– I’m not sure.
– You mean to say you have no idea?
– No, not that. I guess if I thought about it …
– Do that, that’s what I’m asking you. You must have thought about it before.
– Sure I have but…
– Why the but? You’re so hesitant about everything. You don’t know, you doubt, maybe, but, perhaps. Why are you so unsure?
I had no satisfactory answer. I could only stumble over my words. I was afraid they would trip me up, especially if I spoke without premeditation. I was used to hesitating so I could control things. That’s not exactly true. When I realized I was dead, I also realized it was because I had always been a liar, to myself and others.
It was then I disappeared.
Since coming here, I have been resolved to change. Yes, the outside world was making me sick with all its lies and deceptions. Mendacity, mendacity, mendacity – I heard someone in a play scream that out once. I never forgot it, and I felt I was going mad because of it. But I too was a liar, so I resolved to change.
No more bullshit. That was my number one resolution. It sounded crude but was true. Next to it, I listed euphemisms for bullshit: exaggeration, manners, civility, tolerance, modesty , mental reservations, kindness, and of course lies. Bullshit was lies and self-deception. Simple as that. I couldn’t admit that I was dead; that was bullshit, and I was dead because I was a bullshit artist and just wanted to be an artist and write stories that were true. I have always lied so much because, like everyone else, I was afraid of the truth. Saying it, hearing it, or seeing it. I much preferred ideas of what should be true rather than what was true, or what I really thought was true. I was afraid if I gave up lying I would feel lonelier than I did before. Where did it get me anyway? Where does it get anyone? I have always hated myself for it. This all seemed so weird to me; how everyone nodded at truth, just as they nodded to each other, and then went on lying their ways through life. And if you asked them if they were lying, they would invariably deny it. Oh, it’s so twisted. I am sick. I don’t know where I’m going with this story. It seems to have a life of its own, unlike me.
I didn’t really disappear. They took me here. I am so afraid.
That was it. Short and eerie. It reminded me of Kafka, who wrote in his diary: “The strange, mysterious, perhaps dangerous, perhaps redeeming comfort that there is in writing.”
***
“And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.”
That’s what the CIA has inscribed on the wall of its headquarters: The George Bush Center for Intelligence.
More appropriately, as a description of not only the CIA but American society as a whole, are Ken Kesey’s words from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest: “You seem to forget, Miss Flinn, that this is an institution for the insane.”
That’s not a lie.
Yes, “Mendacity is the system we live in.”
And the odor here is really loathsome.
[]I have recently been thinking that many people who are adamantly insistent on the efficacy of mask-wearing against SARS-CoV-2, the virus associated with COVID-19, and those who are always quoting the official statistics, are of this sort. They either know there is good evidence against mask-wearing and the official statistical game, but try to convince themselves this isn’t so, or they avoid reading about the possibility to save face and live with themselves []
Pied Piper-ism.
Except it’s supposed to be the Age of Reason.
But it’s not.
And it’s painful.
There was a common saying back in Soviet Russia: The state pretends to pay us and we pretend to work.
As for the current plague, in USA — viz. wearing masks: the state will pretend to protect us and we will pretend to believe them.
I began telling my friends the above back in March, as it was obvious that. . . this is a very deadly game they’re playing with us. They are pretending to protect us, when in fact they are trying to murder and/or sicken as many of us as possible.
Science is based in nature, and natural laws, what is inspectably the case, observable, empiricism. . . .such as: water finds its own level.
If everyone wears a mask, this create a new normal. That is: the smallest particles seep through, all the time, instead of the larger ones.
The large ones all lump together fall to the ground in seconds.
Now, with only tiny tiny particles, they can float around for hours, as they are almost weightless.
And so instead of the particles on the ground and no danger, instead, they are floating around for hours. And those tiny tiny ones walk right through the virtuous masks worn by the virtuous.
The moral of the story is to avoid people wearing masks, and since many for matters of survival, like work, etc., cannot: they are all now at greater risk.
In other words, Fauci was right back in Feb. and March as he rationally explained masks do nothing and may be harmful. Then he decided, got the memo as it were, the game plan is really to kill and sicken as many of us as possible.
In other words, there is an ongoing effort to make us sick and kill us, more of us than would otherwise be.
It wasn’t enough that doctors and governors, etc. murdered the elderly in nursing homes. . . and hospitals. . . .the only way is to be healthy and avoid people; since that is not possible, the powers that be by enforcing wearing of masks put us all at greater risk.
Even those clowns “debunking” “the” “conspiracy theorists” — that oppose wearing masks — listen to what the “debunkers” say, and watch their pathetic videos: their own logic and videos show the opposite of what they are trying to claim.
Wearing a mask increases ones heart rate, weakens ones immune system and thus makes one more likely to becoming infected.
Were masks effective, they’d have been worn from time immemorial to prevent catching cold, or flu or pneumonia.
Back in the good old days, doctors still had some say in public health.
Now, most of them are censored. And we get the edition of faux Science approved by those wanting to murder us because they can; and their vaccines at best are 50 percent effective.
Two decades ago I ruminated on whether to dump the land line and go wireless with a cellular. I thought about it for months.
I finally said “no” because it was silly to trade in a dependable service, for one that is undependable and has dropped calls, among other problems, such as causing cancer.
The land line does not drop calls, nor do I get “computer viruses” into my phone, my land line, ever. The technology was perfected as it were, compared to cellular.
Yet, as a civilization we “accepted” a product that was not ready for prime time, as the land line was and demonstrated to be so over decades and decades.
Why did we accept this experiment, that has all kinds of flaws?
How soon before land lines are banned?
Why was free analog TV banned?
I just read this from Google, as good an explanation as any: “The most important reason to make the switch to a digital signal is because it will free up valuable portions of the broadcast spectrum, which can then be used for other purposes, such as advanced wireless services and for public and safety services.”
In other words, we are just slabs of meat to be chopped up, fried, baked, boiled and eaten alive or dead.
They don’t know how to stop lying to us.
“We spend our lives making sense of the memories of our past,” Katherine Ann Porter said in 1963.
“All this time I was writing, writing no matter what else I was doing; no matter what I thought I was doing, in fact. I was living almost as instinctively as a little animal, but I realize now that all that time a part of me was getting ready to be an artist. That my mind was working even when I didn’t know it, and didn’t care if it was working or not. It is my firm belief that all our lives we are preparing to be somebody or something, even if we don’t do it consciously. And the time comes one morning when you wake up and find that you have become irrevocably what you were preparing all this time to be. Lord, that could be a sticky moment, if you had been doing the wrong things, something against your grain. And, mind you, I know that can happen. I have no patience with this dreadful idea that whatever you have in you has to come out, that you can’t suppress true talent. People can be destroyed; they can be bent, distorted and completely crippled. To say that you can’t destroy yourself is just as foolish as to say of a young man killed in war at twenty-one or twenty-two that that was his fate, that he wasn’t going to have anything anyhow.”
-30-
Brilliant ! Thank you Ed. Yes, Kafka and Orwell would easily recognize this quasi-psychotic dystopia… this empire of bullshit. Political deceit is the air we breathe, corporate lies the sea we swim in. And it takes everything one has… everything one is: to persevere with consciousness in this unconscious society, attached as it is to its self-delusion and anaesthesia. But the truth will always be the truth, regardless of whether it is believed. Merci – Michel
Good comment Michel. But I would maintain that you cannot seek the truth if you believe that you already hold it.
Your story of being a guest on “To Tell The Truth” – and there to “lie” no less – gave me a big much needed smile. Thanks for continuing – to tell the truth – especially after such a rather suspect teenage experience. 🙂
Above all, Ed’s writing is PROFOUND! I was going to comment in a previous treatise where Ed quoted Nietzshe as writing something “just a year before he went mad”. – The borderline between profound and insane is not the same for all people, and we must be prepared to be declared mad if we seek for deeper meaning. I greatly appreciate Ed’s motivation to explore the boundaries. He goes well beyond the mundane expression of individuality.
Regarding your mention of Russia-Gate. Any topic in the media with the “gate” suffix should be assumed as suspect immediately. What a foolishly familiar trick to get the public attention for a few minutes.
The Watergate Hotel was a real place not a gimmick word.
Maybe I am the only who thinks it stupid.
Can people not allow themselves 60 seconds to simply consider the words of the Russian foreign minister (Lavrov) who clearly stated NATO needs an enemy to exist.
“We are deeply convinced that the alliance has lost the meaning of its existence and is feverishly looking for a new one,”
Why is there no intelligent discussion initiated by the US government?
It was the Obama/Biden administration who began harassing Russia again, via the Ukraine, and now it’s the equally insane GOP Pentagon with moving troop into Poland.
Maybe the Pentagon is the real government?
And why? We need an endless war again invisible enemies. We need an excuse to steal 50% of every tax dollar to fight the endless war.
Orwell wrote about the Totalitarian society’s need for endless warfare in 1984.
“But though it is unreal it is not meaningless. It eats up the surplus of consumable goods, ..”
It is 70 years since that was written, but no change occurrs.
Ed, Thanks for Kafka diary quote,.
As someone who appreciates good writing, I have to say that by far the best piece of writing I’ve ever encountered in my life was in a case file I came upon when I was a low level clerk at Social Security Office of Disability Operations. This person had a disability for a mental condition (which, BTW, was the only guaranteed way to get disability compensation). I was so impressed that I made a copy of his letter (a decided No-No – I guess a No-No qualifies as a Lie).
That was 30 plus years ago. If I still have the copy, and if I can find it, I’d love to type it in a comment some day. You may not consider the best writing you’ve ever encountered; but I think you’ll agree it’s exceptional.
One of the most subtle and well-meaning ways, I fear, that we deceive ourselves is by leaping to a conclusion of certainty about that which is uncertain, confusing, ambiguous, still in the process of unfolding. These days, I am as doubtful of those who claim to know that this pandemic is a planned plutocratic move to further bleed us dry, as I am of those who tow the official party line(s) about social distancing, masks, immanent vaccines, and such. I have substantial doubts that anyone on planet could possibly know this at this point in this unprecedented maelstrom where the truth about it, as best we can ascertain it, actually lies. I fully understand the impulse to view the pandemic in a familiar frame that has repeatedly proven true in the past, as just another elite or deep state machination or psyop which follows the familiar pattern of obfuscation, manipulation, and further oppression, a pattern evident at least since the JFK assassination. But just because something walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, doesn’t necessarily mean it is one, at least to my aging, increasingly enfeebled mind. That this global pandemic–which seems to have set the world reeling and likely holds more unpredictable and catastrophic consequences in store on personal, social, political, and economic levels–would have been hatched by plutocrats who already had the world by the throat, strikes me as a leap, supported by some logic and precedent, yes, but still a leap. As my father always told me, “if it works, don’t fix it.” I may be entirely wrong here, and I always value Ed’s sensitive and incisive takes on things, but I just can’t bring myself to believe, after taking a hard look at a good piece of the proferred evidence, that anyone would have deliberately hatched this raging, unpredictable, uncontrollable monster, especially those who had everything going their way in a neoliberal world order which may now be flatlining before our eyes. One of the most difficult tasks, I believe, is to remain in a state of uncertainty when things are falling apart. Yet contrary to Ed and most readers of his extraordinary blog, this is where I believe we should remain right now. Surely the plutocrats and their politicians are taking every advantage offered them by the pandemic to tighten their stranglehold, as they could be expected to do, and we should call them out and do all in our power to oppose them. But, again, taking advantage of something falls short of indicating that it was planned ahead of time. I know these comments run counter to the strong current flowing here, and it’s painful to me to break ranks on this issue with my friend, Ed, and with others whose comments have often given me much-needed insight and encouragement. But speak I must to be true to myself, and with that, at least, I have no doubt that Ed, although in sharp disagreement with me about the particular subject matter, would heartily agree.
Hello Newton, I empathize with how you might be feeling. I for one have no problem believing insane people enjoy doing insane things since insanity is all they know. No matter how much control or ability to manipulate anything…, I think some humans would delight in ‘variety’ for their heinous acts. By the way, just before reading your comment, I was doing a printout of information on Agent Orange.
Thanks, Joseph, for the charitable response. Here’s another voice I just stumbled upon a few minutes ago that makes a case similar to mine, albeit in a harsher tone than I believe warranted. Again let me stress that no disrespect to Ed and his readers are intended by my contrarian views on this pandemic. In fact, this is the FIRST time I have found myself in substantial disagreement with the man and friend I consider to have the clearest, most compelling voice out there right now. I thank God that Ed continues to speak to us and can’t wait to read his new book.
https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2020-10-01/doubt-path-despair-cynicism/
Newton, I heartily agree, for sure. Thank you for your very thoughtful response, as usual. Yes, I disagree, and I think there is a great deal of circumstantial evidence to back my position that I will not go into here. Maybe other readers might want to have their say, which would be good, whether they agree with you or me. Dialogue and respect for differences of opinions is the way forward. Pax, Ed
Bless you, Ed, for indulging me (as I knew you would) on this topic, which I know is of deep concern to you and those who wisely heed your voice. If and when I’m proven wrong or change my mind (because of you or your readers or otherwise), I’ll be the first to admit it right here. I’ll also give you the courtesy of not belaboring on your website my differences on this crucial subject, having graciously been given the opportunity to put in my contrarian two cents. That said, I sure as hell WILL keep up my daily visits and get my hands (and mind) on that book ASAP.
The most clear and obvious flaw in your thinking is that TBTB already had the world by the throat and were winning. This is not true. They are on the precipice of losing everything. Their only goal is power and dominance. Money is a tool of control for them not an end. It is their money after all. The problem they face is that full spectrum dominance has failed. The economic and political repercussions from this are the end of Western dominance. Economically, militarily, spiritually the West could be at its end. This would be when a world war begins. It hasn’t happened because Russia has made it clear it will use nuclear weapons. The US is losing control of Asia and its wars in the middle east have hit a brick wall. The West was going full speed ahead over a cliff. TPTB slammed on the breaks. Lockdowns buy them time. They have to reorganize or lose everyhting. This is desperation you are witnessing.
Don’t entirely disagree. The question remains, however, even in light of your scenario, whether this desperation is a reaction to the Covid crisis now added to the all the others you mention, or instead a deliberate gamble by the plutocrats to try to engender a new, more permanent, more oppressive form of global dominance. Here’s a pretty good article that supports your case and Ed’s:
https://stateofthenation.co/?p=30117
United State Hospital for Feeble Minded and Mental Retardation.
It is worthwhile to ponder if United States become the most massive sized state hospital, an open air, 50-state institution of, on, for, and being Mental Retardation, or mentally retarded, and criminally insane, and feeble minded, etc.
Recall in Titicut Follies, 1967, of Bridgewater State Hospital for the criminally insane. in 1866 this place was called the Workhouse for Vicious Paupers.
There was Belchertown State School for the Feeble-Minded, opened in 1922.
19th century Northampton Lunatic Asylum opened, aka Northampton State Hospital — also named Northampton Insane Hospital — was built to cure the insane in the Moralist tradition. Etc.
Only feeble minded could actually observe Sept. 11, 2001 and not bat an eye.
Yes, it was clever that air traffic controllers that day were interrupted by massive simulation all over country about air planes/jets smashing into buildings. This was to mask the fact drones hit a couple sky scrapers.
On a normal day, this would have been impossible to hide, since air traffic controllers would all have known these were missiles of some sort instead.
This aside, the point is there are those running this United State Hospital for Feeble Minded and Mental Retardation; and there are a country full — as patients herein.
Both camps include criminally insane elements, of what proportions feel free to guess, along with other elements.
Don’t be afraid to guess on the high side.
Those running these aforementioned places some were monsters, and some patients were monsters, and there was everyone else: running it, staff; and being run by it, patients.
As in our USHFMMR.
It opened here long before 9*1*1; on that day it celebrated its great ability, as it were.
Corona911, an even greater display, on display.
Who is patient Zero, how many are there? Nobody knows, neither the wardens nor their wards, nobody seem to know.
Nobody even asks.
Ron Unz has theorized US military release this plague in Wuhan, circa Oct. 2019 recklessly, never expecting this to be contained by China, much less expecting it to spread over the world and back to where it came from: USHFMMR.
Objective as theory goes: wreck Chinese economy, simultaneously cover up collapsing USHFMMR, etc . . . .
Did BOJO really catch it? It is a fact he lived. Did The Donald really catch it? We’ll know if he does not live.
How is this really transmitted?
Without person zero, it’s anyone’s guess how it came to be that a human being become infected.
How was the first infected person infected?
And: how is it actually transferred person to person? Or, is it?
The USHFMMR Center for Disease Control and Prevention doesn’t actually know.
“We are still learning about how the virus spreads and the severity of illness it causes.” “It is thought to spread by. . . .”
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/how-covid-spreads.html
Oswald was thought to have killed JFK. Russia was thought to have compromised Trump.
Obama was thought to be a man of peace. NYTimes, thought to be paper of record.
The USHFMMR was thought to be a constitutional republic. . . .
“. . .I see Indians that crawl through this mural that recalls our history.
Who were the homestead wives?
Who were the gold rush brides?
Does anybody know?
Do their works survive their yellow fever lives in the pages they wrote?
The land was free, yet it cost their lives. . . .”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8LUbCv8Y0c
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Yes…, we are a lie ! We live a lie and even proudly own our fear. We rationalize every form of escapism from what we are…liars! Our lies destroy…, our lies support the destruction that we blame on others. Our lies rationalize our perpetual escapism. I lied…, I bought a step ladder out of fear instead of dealing with my fear…, seeing it for what it is. It gets very tricky and occasionally seems silly. It is not!
She said: “Your problem is that you keep telling the truth when they ask you stuff. They don’t want the truth- they want you to lie. Then everybody’s happy. So stop making trouble, okay?”
But the truth is so much easier to remember.
And of course, Maggie the Cat wasn’t really pregnant, was she? But Big Daddy sure wanted it to be true.
I hope Benjamin reads this blog.
Lies like layers of the onion, awake perhaps today to another layer or happy enough to wear the onion peel garment another day, a mask to cover our embarrassing sight. “No, listen, this is the ultimate red pill! It’s the straight skinny!” How to be sure, though? When there is no more onion?
Very nice article, Ed. As always since I have been following you, an inspiration and on point. Several years ago I started looking at things I had been ignoring, realizing that everything I knew was wrong. The first step is the hardest, as long conditioning bids us look away, stick with the safety of the group. How can all the talking heads and all my friends be wrong? But as new information is absorbed, so also the knowledge that we may yet be deceived, most likely by ourselves, but certainly by the cultural narrative surrounding us.