 The best journalists are persecuted and despised. Notes from the edge of the narrative matrix. The best Western journalists are overwhelmingly despised while the worst are acclaimed millionaires. Western civilization is built on lies, dependent on lies, powered by lies. Don't seek widespread approval. It's worthless. Live long enough and you'll learn that the people who will really hurt you and screw you over aren't the obvious overt monsters, but the sly manipulators who smile to your face. The US Empire is a sly manipulator smiling and posturing as the good guy by contrasting itself with overt monsters. As our consciousness has expanded, it's become unacceptable to be seen as an overt tyrant by the public. But that's just meant the emergence of a sneakier form of tyranny. The age of the brute gave way to the age of the manipulative bitch. This manipulative bitch of an empire has been instigating and orchestrating violence at mass scale and then using its unrivaled narrative control machine to blame the violence on other powers. And its provocations are only getting more and more aggressive and more and more dangerous. If humanity meets its end, it will come not at the hands of the overt monsters, but the sly manipulators. The trajectory toward the horrifying global conflict we appear to be fast approaching was set by the manipulative bitch of the US centralized empire. If there's one thing sly manipulators hate, it's people who continuously highlight whatever they are being manipulative. That's what drives the ongoing push to silence, censor, and marginalize critics of empire. Julian Assange is in prison because he spotlighted the manipulative bitch. Manipulators can only manipulate when their manipulations are invisible to their subjects. A grassroots push to bring public awareness to the empire's manipulations would hamstring the empire. The empire knows this, hence the push to neutralize empire critics in myriad ways. A friendly reminder to the English speaking world that Iran is none of your fucking business and any kind of intervention from your government literally always makes things worse. Remember, it's crazy and conspiratorial to say the CIA likely is involved or will soon become involved in domestic uprisings in a US targeted nation. The same position is to believe that the CIA never does anything, and its officers are all sitting in their Langley offices watching Netflix. The responsible correct view is that the CIA's extensively documented role in fomenting domestic uprisings around the world is strictly a thing of the past, and that the agency now receives billions and billions of dollars each year to do nothing whatsoever. If you lived with someone who always steal things, you'd suspect them any time one of your valuables goes missing, but you're a crazy conspiracy theorist if you think domestic uprisings in a US targeted nation might involve the CIA. We learned the CIA was literally plotting to assassinate Julian Assange five years ago, and people still act like it's crazy and outlandish to suggest that they're doing evil things in the world currently. If you don't want people speculating about CIA involvement whenever there's unrest in a nation the US government doesn't like, you should be calling for the dismantling of the CIA. Otherwise, you're just supporting the CIA as it works to foment those kinds of uprisings and yelling at people who don't like it. People don't serve in the military, they work in the military. It's a job. And if it's a job with the US or any of its imperial member states, it's one of the most unethical jobs that anyone can possibly have. People who defend the US Empire from criticism aren't actually defending the Empire, they're defending their worldview. They're staving off the flood of cognitive dissonance they'd experienced if they saw that everything they believe about the world is a propaganda-induced lie. That's why so many of them say things like, of course our government does bad things, but, and then make up some nonsense gibberish like, you think Putin is an innocent little flower or whatever, they don't love the Empire, they're just flailing around protecting their worldview. Their arguments consistently lack robustness because they're not invested in defending some globe-spanning power structure, people don't usually do that unless they're paid to, they're just throwing up any kind of walls they can that will protect their worldview. Still, though. Imagine being such an embarrassing, sycophantic bootlicker that you're emotionally incapable of handling the fact that there are a few fringe people on the Internet who spend their time criticizing the most powerful and destructive government on Earth. Imagine actually seeing that as a problem. There are actual people who sincerely see the existence of Empire critics anywhere online as a problem that needs to be solved. How far gone do you have to be to live like that? How much bullshit must you have poured over your mind and heart for that to seem sensible? Most people get that you can't win a nuclear war, but not enough people understand that you can't even remain fully in control in a nuclear standoff. There are too many small moving parts, too many things that can go wrong. Google nuclear close calls if you doubt this. Our rulers are ushering us into a nuclear standoff of steadily increasing escalation, and they cannot, cannot, cannot control its outcome. They're gambling everyone's life hoping to win the prize of planetary domination, and their game is getting more dangerous by the day.