Tomorrow morning, while you’re in the kitchen turning on the coffee, have a look out the window. You’re looking at World War III. We’ve been in an economic and information war with Russia and China, our two biggest adversaries, for decades. Remember “economic cooperation” with China? Never was such a thing. How about those heady days after the fall of the Soviet Union when the West – read: U.S.A.
during all the years I worked in the Board of Ed, my opinions about the utter lack of attention paid to "social studies" at first seemed dumb. the fishy. I ended up with the definite sense that there had to be some method to that madness. it sure smelled conspiratorial (and remember that "No Child Left Behind" was one of Bush Jr.'s "selling points" and had no social studies component at all. when I'd argue to those middle-school kids that they needed to pay attention to that stuff, their answer was that I was wrong because they were told all the time that the only things that counted were math and English (then referred to as "English Language Arts," although there was very bad English, a moronic sense of Language and no Art at all). and who was I to argue, being a mere social worker (obviously all my years of teaching college writing were irrelevant)?
in the Bd. of Ed., one thing you could count on was that whatever the current buzzwords were, they reflected a panicked sense in NYC public schools that something was terribly Wrong. during my last years there, the buzzword was "Critical Thinking" (I know it's two words, but it's one thing). most of the kids I knew believed anything they read, including ads.
now, people I've considered friends, ostensibly (and biologically) adults, will believe any fucking spew that issues from RFK Jr. now, among other serious flaws, RFK Jr. is not especially bright to begin with and isn't very well-educated because Harvard won't let you go--or to fail--if you're a Kennedy, dope shooter or not. RFK Jr. says "when I was a kid, nobody was autistic, but now there are so many autistic people." now, being a mere social worker (albeit one with a pretty good awareness of the politics and vagaries of psychiatric diagnosis), I know perfectly well that those vagaries are directly responsible for this supposed "increase" of autism. this kind of thing would never occur to these "friends of mine." and actually, JFK Jr. seems pretty spectrum-y to me.
so yeah...a lot of people will believe anything. and sorry for taking so long.
How depressing! Did you have allies? Is a return to standards imaginable, or is all hope lost? As for RFKjr, I see him as yet another of Ethel's bad boys, true to his tainted Skakel blood.
Sheesh, everyone knows the Maui fires were started by Marjorie Taylor Sporkfoot wielding Jewish Space Lasers to fool the dimwits in Congress into starting a seccession war. You cannot believe a word spoken by China.
Hi Judith, I think I learned that through you before but I noticed when you click the 3 dots and make your correction it seems to re-post the comment as if brand mew? At least any previous "Likes: disappear.
yes, I've noticed that as well. otoh, I'd rather make sure my remarks are spelled properly, reasonably clear and contain no blunders and boo-boos than worry about likes.
Chinese identification of the "weather weapon" which allegedly started the Maui fire evidently didn't mention the specific religion of those who invented and/or used the imaginary device, probably in recognition of and deference to the ga-billion Chinese meals eaten by American Jews on Sundays and major holidays. The Chinese know which side of their egg roll is swimming in "duck" sauce, and who put it there.
I’d just like to know when we are going to start helping ourselves by dealing with our own traitors. I could care less about Chinese or Russia meddling when we sit by and allow RNC fascists to subvert this democracy. They make a mockery of the judicial system even as they use it against us.
If you work your way back through recent and not-so-recent U.S. history, you may see a correlation between alarms about foreign aggression and the undermining of democracy at home. The threat of foreign aggression is a continual moneymaker for the defense industry. The threat, and even the reality, of right-wing insurrection isn't very lucrative. Although, true, domestic law enforcement has benefited handsomely from surplus military equipment -- but they seem to think the real domestic danger is people of color, not white right-wingers.
Absolutely! The Chaos-makers fomenting division and exploiting fear--it’s a tactic described in The Shock Doctrine and employed by the neonazi fascist billionaires (The KKKoch Gang) who want to subvert this democracy.
Well my lovely friend, you have set the most beautiful table - even the place cards are just right. I can't say this helped my growing feeling of ennui, which while charming on a waif of 22 is truly unbecoming on a woman of my age. This awful sense of dread is soul crushing. I want to run away from home but there's really no where to go.
Am on a search! My sister lives in Ireland. Whoever thought that “taking the boat the OTHER way” might be the best option? My parents are rolling in the graves!
A large percent of the cash-paying students at America's top state (and private) universities are Chinese. We don't appear to be concerned that our own citizen's can't afford college tuition while we educate the prosperous children of our enemy??? Our big box retail stores from coast to coast are chock full of products made by our enemy ??? Our enemy owns trillions of dollars worth of T-bills ??? This WWIII is a weird one.....all this while many of our Fortune 500 USA corporations have decalred war on the health and well-being of Americans!!! What kind of war is this? See: Walt Kelly
My family and I are in college-visiting mode. It is very distressing to see the large numbers of Chinese nationals who are attending the Engineering schools of Big Ten schools in the Midwest. It is also distressing to think about all of the American students who are being rejected from these schools because international students pay so much more to attend these schools. I don’t mean to say they aren’t qualified, they are. But it’s changing the experience on these campuses. I think it’s really scary that we are educating their best and brightest and then sending them home to use that knowledge possibly against our country.
If I hadn’t already been tending my existential dread like a crazed Martha Stewart (I know, redundant) curate (her favorite word dear god) her garden, I wouldn’t be strolling inside to watch a life-affirming episode of the real something or other right now. Which I never have.
This makes me understand what my brother meant (when my father asked him to tell him exactly what went through his head when he decided to drop out of college and skip to Manhattan) - and he answered- (despite the Wrath of Dad) “Of what cosmic importance?”
This kind of writing makes me eat chocolate, Lucien.
Can't help but wonder where they could have got the idea that the American people and the rest of the world could be so easily lied to and fooled via media. I mean, it's not as if you would ever encourage your own or reward them for doing it, is it?
A career from an army captain's Vietnam My Lai attempted whitewash report, to a General and Shrub's Chaiman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff onward to Secretary of State's global televised delivery of the "facts" to the UN about Sadam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.
That little vial of pure bulllshit Powell held up sure grew up into a big boy weapon of mass distraction in twenty years huh?
Disinformation and weaponized lies are very cheap and effective vs tanks and planes etc that cost billions and get blown to smithereens as one of your recent columns pointed out. A population that hasn't learned to "fact-check" or worse yet is addicted to getting fed BS that's exactly what they want to hear/believe is a soft target.
I think because I was an auditor for so many years, I tend to be skeptical - not suspicious, just looking for a different way to either support or discredit any proposition that is put on the table before me. Trust, but verify.
We Americans have two choices for verdicts in criminal trials : Guilty and Not Guilty. But the Brits have a third choice: Not Proven. I like that.
We Americans prefer our Manichaean, black-or-white world. We either go in whole hog, or we reject completely. And that makes us susceptible to pitchmen like Trump and Russian covert operators.
My background in science makes me want to get at the original source of information not a second or third hand re-interpretation. One thing that needs to be "taught" about checking references - reverse image Google search. Amazing how many people are fooled by manipulated pictures or reject ones as fake that are actually real. AI is only going to make these problems worse.
I like the American system, a not guilty verdict just means Not Proven, its not some existential determination of truth. A juror may find that Trump is not guilty because the prosecution hasn't proven its case beyond a reasonable doubt, yet still believe that Trump was guilty of the acts charged.
Read the Harpers June issue about our war in Ukraine. No one in their right mind will argue in favor of Putin. When it comes to our Foreign policy we are as culpable as anyone else. Our government is still run by MIC(Military Industrial Complex). As it turns out our democratic presidents are more hawkish. I use the term lower case democracy as we don’t really live in one. Our country was founded on Genocide and Slavery. Too much? That’s the point. Always interested in what you have to write. Your Elon Musk piece was especially informative. Thanks!
Unless and until wimmin replace men as national, societal, and economic leaders this planet will remain at a constant state of war including at war with the Blue Marble itself.
I am stunned though, by the number of women who still scream and yell for Trump wherever his pig body shows up. It looks like almost half the crowds are female.
At least since Gingrich’s GOPAC memo, the GOP has abandoned reasoned political discourse. They’ve decided that politics is war by other means - and the first casualty of war is truth. And they will accept any help from anywhere.
Ah, Lucian, in 1445 words (by actual MS Word count) you have absolutely outdone the October 27, 1951 issue of Collier's Magazine, which was headlined, "Preview of the War We Do Not Want" with a tab sub-head, "Russia's Defeat and Occupation 1952-60." (For your non-geezer readers, Collier's was a large-size weekly national, print magazine, circulation over 3 million, which competed with Life, the Saturday Evening Post, and Look. My mom always had all four in our apartment.) I have a distinct memory of reading that issue of Collier's when it was published, which is why your headline triggered what us sentient geezers know is called ASMR. Wikipedia has an accurate entry about the 1951 article, using the Collier's headline, and a Google search will show you the cover of the magazine, our guy holding his M-1 Garand rifle with fixed bayonet.
Wow. You're a better (computer person) than I, Gunga Din. My admittedly wrong-end-of-the-telescope memory is that many of the articles read as though the writer was describing a football game. USSR ran this play, USA and allies ran that. The Wikipedia entry does mention that nuclear blasts were not described in an apocalyptic way. Yes, the first U.S. hydrogen bomb test was 13 months later, but we certainly knew enough from Hiroshima and Nagasaki to understand just what kind of devastation "mere" A-bombs would cause. A juicy factoid in the Wikipedia entry is that the Collier's (associate, not even senior) editor who put the entire package together was Cornelius Ryan. Five years later he began writing a book, published in 1959, titled "The Longest Day: June 6, 1944." That best-seller, and the book's movie sale, surely got him out of the office for good.
You're right about the Russians still throwing their hand into the fray, and they're doing it via social media.
I had the unpleasant experience of talking to a Russian troll on Mastodon-I'd posted something about feminism, and he replied with some garbage about how becoming a feminist means you avoid responsibility.
Boy, did that one go south fast-because by the end of his rant, I'd figured he was a fundamentalist who loved Darwinism, and blamed women for not having babies.
But I didn't block him-even after I'd blasted him to kingdom come and back, until one day I had posted something about Jan 6 and noted that a few congressmen who supported it should have been in the indictments list or at least before the Jan 6th committee-and that the people who were there were justly charged with crimes.
The troll popped up and stated that the people who were at the Capitol that day were there because there were inaccurate votes being counted and they wanted to make sure they were done correctly.
That was the time I blew my stack, cursed him all the way to Moscow, told him where to go and how to get there-then blocked him and the instance he came from. I did not want to even deal with this kind of propaganda, because that is exactly what it was.
Yeah, the Russians are still there, doing their best to make their impact-and that's the way they do it.
I sometimes wonder if there is a connection between Fox News (not just their hosts) and Russia, because there seems to be one. Tucker Carlson sure did like them, as does Hannity.
Ah, for the innocent old days of Tass and Pravda. The best part was that no Americans believed them.
point extremely well taken.
during all the years I worked in the Board of Ed, my opinions about the utter lack of attention paid to "social studies" at first seemed dumb. the fishy. I ended up with the definite sense that there had to be some method to that madness. it sure smelled conspiratorial (and remember that "No Child Left Behind" was one of Bush Jr.'s "selling points" and had no social studies component at all. when I'd argue to those middle-school kids that they needed to pay attention to that stuff, their answer was that I was wrong because they were told all the time that the only things that counted were math and English (then referred to as "English Language Arts," although there was very bad English, a moronic sense of Language and no Art at all). and who was I to argue, being a mere social worker (obviously all my years of teaching college writing were irrelevant)?
in the Bd. of Ed., one thing you could count on was that whatever the current buzzwords were, they reflected a panicked sense in NYC public schools that something was terribly Wrong. during my last years there, the buzzword was "Critical Thinking" (I know it's two words, but it's one thing). most of the kids I knew believed anything they read, including ads.
now, people I've considered friends, ostensibly (and biologically) adults, will believe any fucking spew that issues from RFK Jr. now, among other serious flaws, RFK Jr. is not especially bright to begin with and isn't very well-educated because Harvard won't let you go--or to fail--if you're a Kennedy, dope shooter or not. RFK Jr. says "when I was a kid, nobody was autistic, but now there are so many autistic people." now, being a mere social worker (albeit one with a pretty good awareness of the politics and vagaries of psychiatric diagnosis), I know perfectly well that those vagaries are directly responsible for this supposed "increase" of autism. this kind of thing would never occur to these "friends of mine." and actually, JFK Jr. seems pretty spectrum-y to me.
so yeah...a lot of people will believe anything. and sorry for taking so long.
give me five minutes, I'll take an hour.
How depressing! Did you have allies? Is a return to standards imaginable, or is all hope lost? As for RFKjr, I see him as yet another of Ethel's bad boys, true to his tainted Skakel blood.
I still remember the old saying "In Pravda there is no Izvestia; in Izvestia there is no Pravda." (Izvestia = "news" and Pravda = "truth.")
Good! A fragment of that was floating around my head, but I couldn't recall it coherently.
Sheesh, everyone knows the Maui fires were started by Marjorie Taylor Sporkfoot wielding Jewish Space Lasers to fool the dimwits in Congress into starting a seccession war. You cannot believe a word spoken by China.
Ahem.... do you mean "secession" rather than "succession?"
Damn, foiled again by talk to text!
Remember, you can edit by clicking on the three black dots.
Hi Judith, I think I learned that through you before but I noticed when you click the 3 dots and make your correction it seems to re-post the comment as if brand mew? At least any previous "Likes: disappear.
yes, I've noticed that as well. otoh, I'd rather make sure my remarks are spelled properly, reasonably clear and contain no blunders and boo-boos than worry about likes.
Refresh fixes that.
"Succession" would fit if she were starting a civil war to depose Biden and install Trump.
She's trying.
Aided by the Gazbacho Police.
Bazinga!
Chinese identification of the "weather weapon" which allegedly started the Maui fire evidently didn't mention the specific religion of those who invented and/or used the imaginary device, probably in recognition of and deference to the ga-billion Chinese meals eaten by American Jews on Sundays and major holidays. The Chinese know which side of their egg roll is swimming in "duck" sauce, and who put it there.
Empty Greene has her eye on the ball!
I’d just like to know when we are going to start helping ourselves by dealing with our own traitors. I could care less about Chinese or Russia meddling when we sit by and allow RNC fascists to subvert this democracy. They make a mockery of the judicial system even as they use it against us.
Great point, the MAGAs are traitors, the Chinese and Russians are just promoting their own interests.
If you work your way back through recent and not-so-recent U.S. history, you may see a correlation between alarms about foreign aggression and the undermining of democracy at home. The threat of foreign aggression is a continual moneymaker for the defense industry. The threat, and even the reality, of right-wing insurrection isn't very lucrative. Although, true, domestic law enforcement has benefited handsomely from surplus military equipment -- but they seem to think the real domestic danger is people of color, not white right-wingers.
Absolutely! The Chaos-makers fomenting division and exploiting fear--it’s a tactic described in The Shock Doctrine and employed by the neonazi fascist billionaires (The KKKoch Gang) who want to subvert this democracy.
Well my lovely friend, you have set the most beautiful table - even the place cards are just right. I can't say this helped my growing feeling of ennui, which while charming on a waif of 22 is truly unbecoming on a woman of my age. This awful sense of dread is soul crushing. I want to run away from home but there's really no where to go.
I feel the same way, Linda. Sigh...
Am on a search! My sister lives in Ireland. Whoever thought that “taking the boat the OTHER way” might be the best option? My parents are rolling in the graves!
A large percent of the cash-paying students at America's top state (and private) universities are Chinese. We don't appear to be concerned that our own citizen's can't afford college tuition while we educate the prosperous children of our enemy??? Our big box retail stores from coast to coast are chock full of products made by our enemy ??? Our enemy owns trillions of dollars worth of T-bills ??? This WWIII is a weird one.....all this while many of our Fortune 500 USA corporations have decalred war on the health and well-being of Americans!!! What kind of war is this? See: Walt Kelly
My family and I are in college-visiting mode. It is very distressing to see the large numbers of Chinese nationals who are attending the Engineering schools of Big Ten schools in the Midwest. It is also distressing to think about all of the American students who are being rejected from these schools because international students pay so much more to attend these schools. I don’t mean to say they aren’t qualified, they are. But it’s changing the experience on these campuses. I think it’s really scary that we are educating their best and brightest and then sending them home to use that knowledge possibly against our country.
Yup.... That little vignette from the cartoon strip is more relevant than ever!!!
If I hadn’t already been tending my existential dread like a crazed Martha Stewart (I know, redundant) curate (her favorite word dear god) her garden, I wouldn’t be strolling inside to watch a life-affirming episode of the real something or other right now. Which I never have.
This makes me understand what my brother meant (when my father asked him to tell him exactly what went through his head when he decided to drop out of college and skip to Manhattan) - and he answered- (despite the Wrath of Dad) “Of what cosmic importance?”
This kind of writing makes me eat chocolate, Lucien.
I never miss an opportunity to link to my blog, and you gave me one: https://selfabsorbedboomer.blogspot.com/2010/05/do-you-curate-if-so-you-rate.html
I very much liked your kicker.
Lucien,
Very good insights in this article. The information war against us is kicking into high gear and we’re not ready.
Peace,
Steve
Can't help but wonder where they could have got the idea that the American people and the rest of the world could be so easily lied to and fooled via media. I mean, it's not as if you would ever encourage your own or reward them for doing it, is it?
A career from an army captain's Vietnam My Lai attempted whitewash report, to a General and Shrub's Chaiman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff onward to Secretary of State's global televised delivery of the "facts" to the UN about Sadam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.
That little vial of pure bulllshit Powell held up sure grew up into a big boy weapon of mass distraction in twenty years huh?
Disinformation and weaponized lies are very cheap and effective vs tanks and planes etc that cost billions and get blown to smithereens as one of your recent columns pointed out. A population that hasn't learned to "fact-check" or worse yet is addicted to getting fed BS that's exactly what they want to hear/believe is a soft target.
I think because I was an auditor for so many years, I tend to be skeptical - not suspicious, just looking for a different way to either support or discredit any proposition that is put on the table before me. Trust, but verify.
We Americans have two choices for verdicts in criminal trials : Guilty and Not Guilty. But the Brits have a third choice: Not Proven. I like that.
We Americans prefer our Manichaean, black-or-white world. We either go in whole hog, or we reject completely. And that makes us susceptible to pitchmen like Trump and Russian covert operators.
My background in science makes me want to get at the original source of information not a second or third hand re-interpretation. One thing that needs to be "taught" about checking references - reverse image Google search. Amazing how many people are fooled by manipulated pictures or reject ones as fake that are actually real. AI is only going to make these problems worse.
I like the American system, a not guilty verdict just means Not Proven, its not some existential determination of truth. A juror may find that Trump is not guilty because the prosecution hasn't proven its case beyond a reasonable doubt, yet still believe that Trump was guilty of the acts charged.
Read the Harpers June issue about our war in Ukraine. No one in their right mind will argue in favor of Putin. When it comes to our Foreign policy we are as culpable as anyone else. Our government is still run by MIC(Military Industrial Complex). As it turns out our democratic presidents are more hawkish. I use the term lower case democracy as we don’t really live in one. Our country was founded on Genocide and Slavery. Too much? That’s the point. Always interested in what you have to write. Your Elon Musk piece was especially informative. Thanks!
Unless and until wimmin replace men as national, societal, and economic leaders this planet will remain at a constant state of war including at war with the Blue Marble itself.
I am stunned though, by the number of women who still scream and yell for Trump wherever his pig body shows up. It looks like almost half the crowds are female.
Agree. Like Trump. his supporters have no shame and no honor.
(Tongue-in-cheek) But, but, but, they suredafuq own "the" libs, "the" Dems, "the" lefties, "the" blacks, "the" 2spirit. "the" Jews", "the" woke, (...) simply by showing up and going gaga over Trump.
The lunatic is on the grass
The lunatic is on the grass
Remembering games
And daisy chains and laughs
Got to keep the loonies on the path.
(...)
The lunatic is in my head
The lunatic is in my head
You raise the blade
You make the change
You rearrange me 'til I'm sane
You lock the door
And throw away the key
There's someone in my head, but it's not me
Pink Floyd!
The ignorant magat morons live for the latest Chinese, Russian, or US whack job wing nuts’ latest dysfunctional, partisan meme. Bad juju!!
At least since Gingrich’s GOPAC memo, the GOP has abandoned reasoned political discourse. They’ve decided that politics is war by other means - and the first casualty of war is truth. And they will accept any help from anywhere.
Ah, Lucian, in 1445 words (by actual MS Word count) you have absolutely outdone the October 27, 1951 issue of Collier's Magazine, which was headlined, "Preview of the War We Do Not Want" with a tab sub-head, "Russia's Defeat and Occupation 1952-60." (For your non-geezer readers, Collier's was a large-size weekly national, print magazine, circulation over 3 million, which competed with Life, the Saturday Evening Post, and Look. My mom always had all four in our apartment.) I have a distinct memory of reading that issue of Collier's when it was published, which is why your headline triggered what us sentient geezers know is called ASMR. Wikipedia has an accurate entry about the 1951 article, using the Collier's headline, and a Google search will show you the cover of the magazine, our guy holding his M-1 Garand rifle with fixed bayonet.
Thank you Lawrence I found that issue a few minutes ago and read the editorial.
Wow. You're a better (computer person) than I, Gunga Din. My admittedly wrong-end-of-the-telescope memory is that many of the articles read as though the writer was describing a football game. USSR ran this play, USA and allies ran that. The Wikipedia entry does mention that nuclear blasts were not described in an apocalyptic way. Yes, the first U.S. hydrogen bomb test was 13 months later, but we certainly knew enough from Hiroshima and Nagasaki to understand just what kind of devastation "mere" A-bombs would cause. A juicy factoid in the Wikipedia entry is that the Collier's (associate, not even senior) editor who put the entire package together was Cornelius Ryan. Five years later he began writing a book, published in 1959, titled "The Longest Day: June 6, 1944." That best-seller, and the book's movie sale, surely got him out of the office for good.
BTW to the person who thinks the Russian press lied. The NY TIMES lied us into Iraqi war.
You're right about the Russians still throwing their hand into the fray, and they're doing it via social media.
I had the unpleasant experience of talking to a Russian troll on Mastodon-I'd posted something about feminism, and he replied with some garbage about how becoming a feminist means you avoid responsibility.
Boy, did that one go south fast-because by the end of his rant, I'd figured he was a fundamentalist who loved Darwinism, and blamed women for not having babies.
But I didn't block him-even after I'd blasted him to kingdom come and back, until one day I had posted something about Jan 6 and noted that a few congressmen who supported it should have been in the indictments list or at least before the Jan 6th committee-and that the people who were there were justly charged with crimes.
The troll popped up and stated that the people who were at the Capitol that day were there because there were inaccurate votes being counted and they wanted to make sure they were done correctly.
That was the time I blew my stack, cursed him all the way to Moscow, told him where to go and how to get there-then blocked him and the instance he came from. I did not want to even deal with this kind of propaganda, because that is exactly what it was.
Yeah, the Russians are still there, doing their best to make their impact-and that's the way they do it.
I sometimes wonder if there is a connection between Fox News (not just their hosts) and Russia, because there seems to be one. Tucker Carlson sure did like them, as does Hannity.
Mary, I have no doubt that there is a connection between the two.