Dystopic visions of the future have long been a staple of science fiction. Though science fiction writers have imagined a wide diversity of ways our species could go to hell in a handbasket, certain themes keep recurring.
One is a vast gap between rich and poor. Another is an Orwellian Warfare State. A third is state-controlled media masquerading as a free press.
Like the alcoholic who wakes up in a gutter covered in vomit finally admitting that, yes, he has a serious problem with alcohol - I’ve hit my own personal limits of denial.
I’m finally letting it in. That dystopic future we were warned about: It’s already here.
It’s getting harder and harder to talk about a North American ‘free press’ in the present tense.
I take some comfort from the fact that Big Brother’s control of the media remains uneven.
In a perverse way, the polarization of America, with the mainstream media bifurcated into Democrat and Republican goon squads, has facilitated a certain diversity of opinion.
The conservative Epoch Times reports extensively on pandemic issues that liberal media outlets actively censor, including excess deaths, natural immunity, the damage caused by lockdowns, vaccine side-effects, and the ineffectiveness of masks.
On the other hand, if I want to know about Donald Trump’s current legal problems, and can’t find any coverage on Fox, I can be reasonably certain CNN will tell me everything I want to know.
Where the US Government does have something bordering on complete control over the media is in the area of foreign policy. (The reason for this is quite simple. There in no partisan divide. The Democrat War Party and the Republican War Party are blood-brothers.)
My alcoholic-in-the-gutter moment came yesterday when I read this piece from Moonofalabama. Here’s the section that pushed me over the edge:
“Scores of hits from publications across the globe pop up from an internet search for veteran investigative reporter Seymour Hersh’s claim that the US destroyed Russia’s Nord Stream gas pipeline.
But what is most striking about the page after page of results from Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo in the weeks following the February 8 posting of Hersh’s story isn’t what is there, but what is not to be found:
The Times of London (2/8/23) reported Hersh’s story hours after he posted it on his Substack account, but nothing in the New York Times.
Britain’s Reuters News Agency moved at least ten stories, the Associated Press not one.
Not a word broadcast by the major US broadcast networks—NBC, ABC, CBS—or the publicly funded broadcasters PBS and NPR.
No news stories on the nation’s major cable outlets, CNN, MSNBC and Fox News.”
It’s not as if I’d expected that anyone in the mainstream press would give Hersh’s expose front page coverage. I’d already flagged it as an under-reported story. But to have the entirety of America’s mainstream media blacklist Hersh’s bombshell charges for a whole month is a truly stunning level of censorship. I just wasn’t prepared for it. China’s totalitarian regime must be green with envy at the extent to which America’s mainstream media has become so grovelingly obedient and compliant.
What’s equally stunning for me is how cravenly America’s mainstream media will spew out ridiculous pro-Government propaganda. First we were told that Russia blew up its own 6 billion dollar pipelines rather than simply turning off the taps. This week, The New York Times tells us a shadowy group Ukrainian extremists blew up Nordstream. (Supposedly they chartered a private yacht for the job.) Do they really think Americans are that stupid?
US Government actions are steadily pushing the world closer and closer to World War 3. Much of America is still oblivious to this risk.
If avoiding a world-ending war is important to you, you need to help your fellow citizens find their way around Big Brother’s information blockade.
Send an email to one or more friends with the title This is so important. Then give them the address of Hersh’s Substack piece:
https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/how-america-took-out-the-nord-stream.
Or do the equivalent on Facebook and Twitter.
Who knows, it might be the most important thing you do today.
I suspect Hersh’s piece will continue to spread inexorably through internet back-channels. It would not surprise me if it eventually has as much impact on ending the war in Ukraine as the Pentagon Papers had on ending the war in Vietnam.