Feb. 23—Is there a graveyard for delusions?
Can derivatives, that is, placing side-bets, replace agriculture, manufacturing, energy generation, etc., as the basis of a population’s survival? Might a parasite persist forever, consuming and destroying its own home? Where do cancers go when the organisms are decimated and cease functioning?
The world is full of infectious delusions these days: The history of Ukraine began on February 24, 2022; the Russian action of a year ago was “unprovoked”; Chinese balloons are sapping our precious intelligence secrets; and the most indebted country in the world has kept sacrosanct, away from the $31.5 trillion hole, the funds to cover your Social Security obligations. And, yes, then there’s the unfathomable bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines last September.
The head of state, President Biden, had announced that the United States would end the Nord Stream pipeline if Russia did not do as we say. The pipelines then were destroyed. The countries along the pipeline assert that sabotage occurred—but it seems, for “national security” reasons or some such, everyone is to contract a collective amnesia. Somehow, it is impossible to investigate Seymour Hersh’s claim, that during the BALTOPS22 military exercise, there were U.S. divers and Norwegian boats deployed to plant the bombs in the area. Here we have a seasoned, tested journalist who has proven his integrity, and he’ s denounced by a State Department spokesman, Ned Price, with a very different track record. One says, here are the details of the story, go investigate; the other says, I told you it didn’t happen—don’t you dare investigate.
Recently, Seymour Hersh reported on a group of U.S. intelligence and security professionals, whom he says are have been willing to talk about a filthy task force, involving the National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, the Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, the Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the #3 at State, the Under Secretary Victoria Nuland, who in December 2021, plotted to bomb the Nord Stream pipelines. The story and its significance are dealt with at today’s Schiller Institute conference, “Investigate Nord Stream Revelations: Stop Nuclear World War III!”
But the immediate point is, Seymour Hersh is old-fashioned. He didn’t expect to have an easy time of it, telling the story that he did. He didn’t get flustered, when such a national story is ignored by the poohbas of the Establishment media. He went ahead and spoke to the non-mainstream media outlets. And it appears, with his second bombshell released yesterday—that the CIA and Norway weren’t only partners in crime in sabotaging the pipelines, but they partnered in the covert ops that provoked that Vietnam War debacle—that Hersh expected he would need to let loose a few depth charges of his own before the conspiracy of silence was shattered.
This week, the chair of the House Oversight Committee, James Comer, gave some of the same characters, Lloyd Austin, Antony Blinken and USAID’s Samantha Power, 14 days from now to hand over all the records on $113 billion of monies and matériel provided to Ukraine over the last year. He expects to find a trail of corruption amongst Kiev’s regime. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) introduced a privileged resolution under the War Powers Act to withdraw all U.S. troops from Syria, a move that requires a vote in 16 more days. The two co-chairs of the House’s Defense Spending Reduction Caucus, Reps. Barbara Lee (D-CA) and Mark Pocan (D-WI), introduced their “People Over Pentagon Act” to move $100 billion out from the defense budget and into other programs. Gaetz, Lee and Pocan all explicitly identify their common enemy as the “military-industrial complex.” What would bring these representatives of the “right” and the “left” into a conjoined struggle, but the same quality of leadership that fashioned the Feb. 19 peace demonstration at the Lincoln Memorial out of such previously disparate forces?
Infectious delusions undoubtedly can get a grip on healthy organisms and do no little amount of damage. But a life of relentless truth-telling, and enough deep-rooted optimism—enough to allow real humor and laughter over the ridiculous foibles that might ensnare us—might well send delusions to the graveyard. Because, the arc of the moral universe may very well be long, but it bends towards justice. To think otherwise means a short road to thermonuclear annihilation.
