Kayla Carman
Would Uncle Sam just sit back and chill if Russia backed a coup in Canada to help implant a pro-Russian president that outlawed the English language and was unable to control government troops murdering pro-U.S., Canadian citizens near the border?
As Hannah Ardent once remarked, "What makes it so plausible to assume that hypocrisy is the vice of vices is that integrity can indeed exist under the cover of all other vices except this one. Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core." Currently, nothing is more rotten to the core than the institutions of the West.
The USA's latest claim, following events in late September, would have us all believe that Russia blew up its own gas pipeline to Europe, despite having sole control over the on/off valve, which makes as much logical sense as launching a range of chocolate teapots. The Western media have lapped this up without critique, unsurprisingly, failing to question why Russia would engage in such an act of self-sabotage, instead focusing on how, given it occurred in Danish waters, this provocation justifies the potential for a NATO-led World War III. No consideration is given to the fact that Gulf of Tonkin, WMDs, and Assad's chemical weapons attacks were all proven, under scrutiny, to be false flags to garner public support for more aggressive U.S. foreign policy.
In The Fate of Empires Glubb asserts that, "In spite of the endless variety and the infinite complications of human life, a general pattern does seem to emerge... the life-expectation of a great nation, it appears, commences with a violent, and usually unforeseen, outburst of energy and ends in a lowering of moral standards, cynicism, pessimism, and frivolity." The decadence and decay are palpable. Gleefully, the Western media propagandises the public to support the desperate imperialists as they fight to the death to maintain hegemony. A fight which, for anyone that understands the deterministic and cyclical nature of history and empires, knows, they cannot win. But before we consider these absurd claims of Russian sabotage within the context of hypocrisy, let's turn our attention to events that occurred earlier in September.
Less than a month ago, the neoliberal elites finally conquered the apex of irony when the former late night talk show host and self-proclaimed, "Jewish, but not a serious Jew," John Stewart, partnered up with the cartoon mouse creation of everyone's favourite anti-Semitic uncle to present a literal Nazi with a medal of honor! Old Walt must've been highly conflicted in his cryogenic tank trying to make sense of such insanity!
The incident in question occurred during the DoD funded 'Warrior Games', held at Disney World, Florida. Normally, this is an annual event billed as, "celebrating the resiliency and dedication of wounded, ill, and injured active-duty and veteran U. S. military service members." This year, however, in a transparent attempt to justify siphoning off billions in taxes to arms dealers while dispassionately allowing their own people to starve, the government spin doctors added "and friends" to their mission statement.
As Kissinger once stated,"America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests," hence possibly why only two teams were invited. Europe really should take note. The Pentagon's first toady was their neighbour, Team Canada. The second would've been unthinkable a few years ago, given all the Western documentaries produced on the Neo-Nazi threat in the country, but with the PR machine whitewashing away all sins, brave Team Ukraine was representing to ensure yet another emotive win for the arms industry at the expense of ordinary citizens.
Of course, Ukrainian flags had to be draped over these "heroes" to disguise the black sun tattoos and other Nazi symbols adorning their forearms. Even mentioning these is simply playing into the hands of Putin, allegedly. It's bizarre how many Americans are so concerned about the threat of the "far right" to their "democracy" and yet are dismissive of the threat of the Neo-Nazis to the "democracy" of Ukraine that they are apparently fighting for. In this upside-down world, Joe Rogan, who voted for left-wing Bernie Sanders, is a far-right danger to liberal values, but the battalion responsible for ethnically cleansing the Donbass, murdering 14,000 civilians since 2014, is simply misunderstood and misguided.
Whilst on the Donbass, how is it possible to argue that Ukraine's self-determination against the threat of Russia should be defended at all costs, yet concurrently fail to recognise the Donbass region's similar desire for self-determination following the NATO-led coup in 2014 and the subsequent criminalisation of Russian language and culture of those in the East? The hypocrisy flies in all directions. Not more so than in the condemnation of Russia.
The complexities of causation, taught by any decent historian, have been smashed to oblivion within the fog of war, in favour of bleating the same old simplistic tropes of good versus evil, good guys and bad guys, to justify the prolonging of a proxy war that has no genuine concern for the people, nor the impact on Ukraine. For months, Western media has denounced this unprovoked attack, which is as inaccurate as it is duplicitous. For those paying attention, Ukraine and Russia almost reached an agreement back in April, but the deal was scuppered by the UK, working as the U.S. lackey, having a vested interest in inducing a war of attrition to try and topple Putin. A desperate final act from an empire imploding, refusing to go down without a good fight.
Unprovoked is an intriguing concept in and of itself. Would Uncle Sam just sit back and chill if Russia backed a coup in Canada to help implant a pro-Russian president that outlawed the English language and was unable to control government troops murdering pro-U.S., Canadian citizens near the border? What if Russia then put bases in Canadian cities and utilised the country to launder all of its dirty money whilst speculating that Canada would join a military alliance with themselves, China and Iran? Should one speculate that the U.S. would do nothing? The Cuban missile crisis would suggest the opposite, and arguably there was less cause for concern in comparison.
Even if this wasn't the case and the attack was entirely unprovoked, the audacity of the Western media to engage in faux outrage is beyond nauseating. As mentioned, almost every historical event that's been utilised to justify U.S. military escalation across the globe were proven to be false flags to garner public support for illegal invasion. The states on the receiving end, rich in resources or unwilling to succumb to America's demands, not necessarily the agent provocateurs the public are led to believe. I'm sure the Afghans have some thoughts on unprovoked invasions, as do the Libyans that aren't being auctioned off in human slave markets. Still, at least those countries were rid of evil tyrants and are now thriving, as promised, thanks to the 'liberation' they never asked for.
What's even worse than the hypocrisy is the arrogant dismissivism; the ability to sell a war to people so far away and so ignorant of the regions they're pillaging. Despite suggesting 9/11 was linked to Saudi Arabia, the fear of brown people led to the support for the 'War on Terror' that essentially was about seizing oil fields, eradicating another of Israel's enemies, and embezzling billions in restructuring contracts to siphon out wealth for years to come. A perfect hat trick of objectives, none of them aligned to the nonsense spouted about freedom and democracy. Did anyone ask the people of Iraq if they wanted their country decimated by these liberators that had already murdered half a million children by sanctioning medical aid for years? According to Albright, it was "a price worth paying." Thank the Lord for the humanity of the West!
This cerebral confutation is even more evident in the Nord Stream attack. The scope of hypocrisy involved in this event ranges from the explicit to the subtle; the obvious to the esoteric. Firstly, it's an ecological disaster. The impact these leaks will have on the flora and fauna of the area will be devastating for decades to come. The same establishment that tries to guilt its own people for their minute carbon footprint and that is willing to let millions starve in their ideological pursuit of green renewables, suddenly usurps its "Greta energy" when there are strategic and geopolitical advantages to be gained. How can anyone buy into the notion that the establishment cares about anything other than maintaining its own power and maximising profit in the face of this hypocrisy is frankly baffling. It was never really about caring for the planet, it was about control. Religion no longer has the impetus it used to have. Consumption replaced it, but as the Western economies collapse and mass poverty beckons, a new narrative is needed to appease and control the millions of 'useless eaters'. That's not to say there's no truth in it; as Lehane asserts, "Every good lie is threaded with truth." It's simply that the motives are more about preserving power than preserving nature. More hypocrisy from a nation that masquerades as a bastion of integrity and justice.
The conformity of the mainstream media in supporting the NATO-led military industrial complex's absurd version of events, understandable once aware of Operation Mockingbird, is yet more subterfuge. The unashamed hypocrisy of chastising state media around the world as no better than pure propaganda, when in the West it's even worse because the people are duped into believing they have a free and fair media that holds power to account, is outrageous. The stratagem is scandalous.
Perhaps the most duplicitous act of all is the gaslighting of the populace. The hypocrisy of the Western elites, maintaining that their system of governance breeds the most civilised, humane, and logical citizens, with more humanity and critical thinking skills than other cultures. Yet if the ability to think critically leads to dissent, voices are silenced and deplatformed, with mob mentality utilised to destroy debate, discussion, and alternative perspectives. Very civilised indeed. The majority of Western society doesn't realise it's in an abusive relationship with its own government.
Most citizens in the West can at least acknowledge that the U.S. government sometimes does bad things, but will then, predictably, malign a dictatorship they know only through the distorted lens of western propaganda as justification that overall they're part of the more virtuous civilisation. The cognitive dissonance required to accept that everything indoctrinated into the psyche could be false is simply too much to bear. This is precisely the point; the system cannot function without hypocrisy and, furthermore, thrives on it. Whilst the institutions, including the media, bombard the citizenry with the notion of ethics and "right think" in order to ensure compliance, those in power fail to adhere to these perceived shared values and instead exploit even their own people through brazen corruption. During the COVID hysteria, the masses were locked down whilst the elites ignored the rules set for the rest and partied. Politicians and business leaders were all exempt from travel bans, whilst us serfs had to beg for a 5-minute walk outside of our homes. If an average person gambled on the stock market based on privileged information, they'd be arrested for insider trading; when Pelosi does it, she's just smart. It's not a far stretch to suggest that the growth of virtue-signalling within the masses is perhaps a subconscious reaction to the lack of genuine ethics within a system they have to believe in for their sanity, now increasingly overtly rotten to the core.
Let's be clear, pointing out this hypocrisy does not make one pro-Russian nor a Putin apologist. Complexity is something that intelligent and mature people understand. Was Putin unprovoked? No. Was the only possible response, invasion? Also, no. Do the powerful have more in common with one another than their citizens? Arguably, yes. Is it possible to be concerned for the people of Ukraine whilst acknowledging their government is just as, if not more, corrupt than the Russian oligarchy? It should be in a culture that prides itself on being a haven of logical reasoning and free speech, but as aforementioned, that's some more hypocrisy for another day; just ask Julian Assange.
Scratch below the surface of the faux values, tired rhetoric, simplistic justification, and unwarranted outrage and it's not difficult to see that the West's commitment to freedom and democracy are about as absurd as the notion of Putin shooting himself in the foot, and as real as a giant talking mouse and his Disney World.