 Bono is doing illustrations for the Atlantic now because everything's fake and stupid. So you two singer Bono is literally just doing illustrations for the imperialist propaganda rag the Atlantic now because that's a sort of thing that happens in a dystopian civilization during the death throes of a globe-spanning empire. A Washington Post article titled Bono likes to sketch Atlantic cover so the magazine hired him reports that Bono is into Atlantic cover fanfic. So much so that he was invited to illustrate the magazine's June cover featuring Ukrainian president Voldemire Zalinsky. Bono's latest contribution to the mountain of cringe-inducing Zalinsky moments we've been seeing for the past year provides a cover image for an article by lifelong war propagandists Ann Applebaum and Jeffrey Goldberg. The article endorses a Ukrainian offensive to recapture Crimea which experts largely agree would be the move most likely to trigger a nuclear war in this conflict. Here's a paragraph from the Applebaum and Goldberg article just so you can have a taste of the infantile good guys versus bad guys framing that western liberals are being fed by mass media war propagandists these days quote Sometimes the war is described as a battle between autocracy and democracy or between dictatorship and freedom In truth the differences between the two opponents are not merely ideological, but also sociological Ukraine's struggle against Russia pits a heterarchy against a hierarchy an open networked flexible society One that is both stronger at the grassroots level and more deeply integrated with washington brussels and silicon valley than anyone realized Is fighting a very large very corrupt top-down state On one side farmers defend their land and 20-something engineers build eyes in the sky Using tools that would be familiar to 20-something engineers anywhere else On the other side commanders send waves of poorly armed conscripts to be slaughtered Just as Stalin once sent penal battalions against the nazis Under the leadership of a dictator obsessed with ancient bones The choice Zalinsky told us is between freedom and fear and quote Many westerners felt their first stirrings of youthful rebellious passions while listening to you two songs like sunday bloody sunday and pride in the name of love But nowadays bono's voice has heard saying that he has grown very fond of war criminal george w bush praising capitalism at the world economic forum teaming up with warmonger lindsay graham to promote us empire narratives about syria And singing stand by ukraine in support of us empire narratives in a key subway And just when it looks like he can't become any more of a tool of the empire He gets hired by one of the world's worst militarist smut rags to draw a cover image of zalinsky Because that's just how things go in a highly controlled society where mainstream culture is designed to serve the powerful A society where the minds of the public are continually being shaped by mass scale psychological manipulation To ensure that they keep thinking speaking working consuming and voting in ways which serve the rich and powerful Everything that gets elevated to the top of mainstream attention facilitates this agenda or is at least harmless to it And as soon as it becomes potentially threatening to this agenda, it is either corrected or marginalized away from mainstream attention This dynamic can cause some truly jaw-dropping flotsam and jetsam to surface in the roylings of our cultural waters Like simpsons characters waving ukrainian flags Or an opera about a drone operator sponsored by general dynamics Here's responsible state crafts connor eckles on that last one quote This fall dc denizens will be treated to the world premiere of grounded an opera following an air force ace Named jess whose unexpected pregnancy forces her to leave behind her beloved f16 and join the chair force Throughout the show the hot shot pilot wrestles with the mental impact of firing rockets from a drone in afghanistan From a trailer in las vegas As jess tracks terrorists by day and rocks her daughter to sleep by night the boundary between her worlds becomes dangerously permeable an ad tells us The production is brought to you by presenting sponsored general dynamics one of the world's largest weapons companies And wouldn't you know it the maker of jess's favorite plane? Playwright george brant wrote the libretto Which will be brought to life by mezzo-soprano, emily d'angelo and tony winning composer jenine tesori and quote You'll also see things like humanitarian intervention champion samantha power enthusiastically tweeting about Collaboration between the sesame street franchise and the cia cut out us aid in iraq Here's a tweet by samantha power great to hear from basma and jad About the new friends they're making in iraq through alan simsum A us aid and sesame workshop early learning activity that promotes inclusion respect and understanding by showing Children from all different backgrounds coming together You see things like this all the time under the shadow of the us empire and individually they don't look like much But once you start noticing them you come to recognize them as symptoms of the profound profoundly diseased civilization that we are living in One where our heartstrings are pulled in the most obnoxious ways imaginable to get us to support capitalism empire and oligarchy Where we are manipulated into espousing values systems which benefit powerful sociopaths under the cover of noble sounding causes Where we are trained like rats to support systems that are driving our species toward extinction Because our rulers gave lip service to humanitarianism and waived a rainbow flag This is what dystopia looks like Like a bunch of thought controlled automatons mindlessly marching toward ecocide and omniside To a beat played out by screens who tell them every day and in every way that there is no higher purpose than this Like military industrial complex funded feminist rock operas about drone operators and cookie monster helping Samantha power psychologically colonize iraqi children Like bono coming home from singing a heartfelt number about the assassination of martin luther king jr To illustrate a cover for a war propaganda piece in the atlantic It's like they're pouring concrete over our hearts Sewing blindfolds over our souls numbing us distracting us sedating us So that the local riffraff won't interfere in the workings of the imperial machine They're killing off something beautiful and sacred in humanity and they're doing it to roll out the ugliest visions This planet has ever seen