I have been behind on my initial goal this year with my blog and podcast. Part of my work this year included the introduction of a series of shorter essays, the Keiran Express series. I have now decided to add a new series, Keiran’s Take on the Week. This will be much shorter, more of a newsletter outlining my thoughts on a few significant news events of that week, as well as my favorite hip hop release from that week. I did not manage to publish my take on the week ending June 18th last Sunday, so it will be published today here, as the introductory post in the series.
My take on this week will be published later this week, on Sunday, or the following Monday, I will see which day works better for me. I am experimenting with different schedules to find one that I can fit into a busy schedule with work and additional work that I am doing.
A lot of reading and notetaking goes into each post, even the shorter ones, so my primary gaol is to provide the best content I possibly can each time I post. I never rush any essay just to get it out.
For this week, I will omit the section about my favorite hip hop release from the week. I will incorporate it within the next couple of weeks and will likely publish a post dedicated to my favorite releases from past weeks this year or perhaps even 2022. From here on this series will be published weekly on Sunday or Monday, and a longer post will be published on Thursday of Friday. Due to my continued work on my TEFL course, this will be the extent of my posting for the near future.
I. Donald Trump indicted and arraigned in Miami.
Former president Donald Trump has been indicted and arraigned at a Miami Courthouse. Firstly, there was supposed to be a violent protest. Instead, there were a few hundred people there, most of whom were journalists, drooling at the chance to cover Trump, the one spectacle they can rely on for views and clicks. I will elaborate on this event in my next post in the War on trump series, but here I will make a few brief points that are my takeaways from Trump’s arrest in Miami.
My instant reaction is a blend of outrage and indifference. It is an outrage that the persecution, not prosecution, of Trump continues to the cheers of the illiberal liberal class, while issues like income inequality worsen. Worsening income inequality between the oligarchs who operate in Silicon Valley and in Washington and the plebs who either work in low paid labor or have had their jobs outsourced is a primary reason for the popularity of figures like Trump.
However, I am indifferent to the news as well, as at this point, it would be shocking if there were no further attempts to arrest and jail Trump. The spectacle that is the Trump show is a distraction from real problems facing the US.
For the corporate news, the Trump show is a useful tool to distract viewers from what they should be enraged about, like that people were lied to about COVID19, or the absence of alternative views on Western involvement in Ukraine on major platforms.
For the Democratic party, the Trump show distracts from their complicity in allowing a demagogue like Trump to rise to power in the first place.
I will provide further analysis in the coming weeks, but as of now, it is obvious that the indictment of Trump over his mishandling of classified documents, though it is a much stronger case than Alvin Bragg’s indictment in New York, is purely political and is intended to stop Trump from running for re-election. This is not about supporting or not supporting Trump, as it should be up to the American people whether Trump is to return to the White House, not a bunch of goons in the permanent regime whose full-time job is to manage empire, not the well being of US citizens.
Those who oppose Trump should understand the precedent that will be set if the persecution of Trump continues and understanding that it is a persecution is the first step in this process. Sadly, this first step is beyond the tribalism of far too many in US politics. Making friends and tribal loyalty is the priority of most in the media and political sphere. Promotions are given to those who submit loyalty to the permanent regime, not to those who tell the truth.
II. The CIA celebrate pride month.
Pride month is upon us, and among the many slick corporations and institutions vying to virtue signal their allyship, the CIA, which is, as concluded by the Church Committee under Senator Frank Church, is a deceitful, murderous, and overly secretive organization, has draped itself in the symbols of pride allyship. Just like the ads they’ve cut on the diversity of their workforce and the emphasis they place on hiring from a range of different backgrounds, this is virtue signalling in its most sinister and deceptive form.
This is the same institution that, as the paramilitary arm of the permanent regime, engages in clandestine operations abroad, authorizes multiple drone strikes in states where the US has not officially declared war, where those killed are often innocents, and who according to recent revelations, was definitely more involved in the assassination of JFK than they initially let on.
One does not need to be well versed in past operations of the CIA, like their activities in Angola, a country which, due to their election of a socialist leader, was not recognized as a formal government until its overthrow in 1991, to know that the acts of depravity that we condemn other states for have been practised by America’s permanent regime. Consider the depravity of the infamous torture regime set up under the Bush administration, where torture methods like forced anal feeding were used on people who were almost certainly innocent.
The CIA is a contemptible organization. It serves the interests of the permanent regime, not the American people. In 2014, then CIA director John Brennan noted the contributions of LGBT officers in the CIA and their impact on the work done by the CIA in the realm of diversity and inclusion, and he said that “By advancing the principles of equality and inclusion, they have helped promote fair treatment for everyone,”[i] They have promoted fair treatment for everyone, unless you live in a poor country, a country led by a government that does not meet their approval, or if you have the incorrect ideology. Perhaps by fair treatment for everyone, Brennan means that everyone is spied on in the same way and to the same extent, or that those who are tortured are exposed to all the various methods at the CIA’s disposal.
In all seriousness, such virtue signaling should be roundly rejected by everyone, as it is beneath our contempt. More importantly, it allows the CIA to pretend that it is virtuous, not vile.
III. Are Aliens real?
In Tucker Carlson’s first episode of his new show exclusively on Twitter, he critiqued the narrative around the Ukraine war and on Ukraine potentially being responsible for destroying the Kakhovka Dam.[ii] However, Carlson made an even more important observation on the corporate media and their role as an apparatus not of information, but of control, more akin to the Soviet Union than the shining beacon that we perceive the West to be. Carlson cites the leaks from Pentagon whistleblower David Grusch, which were run in a little known technology website called The Debrief, and he argues that the lack of interest in the leaks from Grusch prove that the American people are the most propagandized people on earth, so much so that a story that should be, as he notes, “the bombshell of the millennia”, is largely ignored and when it is cited, the claims of Grusch are dismissed as conspiracy theories. Even if his claims are complete bunk, he should at least be given a fair hearing, as conspiracy theorists like David Icke will be able to point to the treatment of the claims by Grusch as evidence that there is a grand conspiracy being perpetrated by the new world order.
Although Grusch may be a nutcase, he may have some revelatory information to share with us, if only we would listen. The truth is we have been made incapable of listening to alternative views and narratives. As Carlson describes in his monologue, a handful of oligarchs control the flow of information. Thus, the citizenry is left blissfully unaware on important topics, and are instead told about systemic racism and transphobia, and how the far right is mobilizing to take over the country, and then the world. We have been programmed to fear and fight each other for so long that we have lost our collective curiosity.
In Tim Burton’s film, Mars Attacks, his last creatively risky project, Martians land at an elaborate welcoming ceremony intended to show the otherworldly visitors that humans mean peace, not war. After a brief introduction, the presence of a bird sparks a calamitous firefight between the Martian delegates and the human army present at the ceremony. The eyes of the entire country are implied to be witnessing the ceremony, both its peaceful start and violent end.
Burton’s film depicts the Martians as fiendish, nihilistic, and violently cruel, who show a disinterest in humanity beyond their enjoyment of the various ways which they find to kill people, from shrinking them and stomping on them like ants to firing death rays at them, reducing them to a heaping pile of bones and ashes. The same lack of interest possessed by Burton’s Martians is shared by us about the possibility of aliens being real, as are the same cruel tendencies.
Also, Burton depicts US leadership, both in the government and the military, as buffoonish and inept, awkwardly speaking with the Martians, if because they have achieved such technological advances, they must be sophisticated and diplomatic. However, they are like us, unsophisticated and hubristic.
Burton was being more prescient than he could have known. The only difference between the first contact that he depicts and the potential contact that the US government has had for years, according to Grusch, is that people are not even interested in such a possibility. Like Pavlov’s dogs they have been trained to react to such narratives with hostility. As Carlson notes in his monologue, it is curiosity that is treated with hostility in journalism now.
A populace that lacks curiosity and interest in ideas like the potential of extraterrestrial life is one that is easy to control. We are little more than playdough, molded by a system of inverted totalitarianism.
[i] Blinde, Loren. “CIA Celebrates ‘LGBT Pride Month’ in June.” Intelligence Community News, June 24, 2014. https://intelligencecommunitynews.com/cia-celebrates-lgbt-pride-month-in-june/.
[ii] Carlson, Tucker. “Https://Twitter.com/TuckerCarlson/Status/1666203439146172419.” Twitter, June 6, 2023. https://twitter.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1666203439146172419.
References
Blinde, Loren. “CIA Celebrates ‘LGBT Pride Month’ in June.” Intelligence Community News, June 24, 2014. https://intelligencecommunitynews.com/cia-celebrates-lgbt-pride-month-in-june/.
Carlson, Tucker. “Https://Twitter.com/TuckerCarlson/Status/1666203439146172419.” Twitter, June 6, 2023. https://twitter.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1666203439146172419.
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