News Used and Abused

All of us are abused in one way or another.
How would we classify it? There’s folks who don’t know they are being abused, but we can’t always pity them if they like it or just don’t care either way. There’s folks who know it, but we don’t usually pity them unless they seem genuinely powerless. Too many folks simply assume they are powerless when it’s not necessarily true, or at least not true in the way they assume it. Most of the time I can’t even begin to figure out what is actually going on, but if it seems to affect me, I do try to pay attention.
So we have this wild story of troops, probably American, who were redeployed from Iraq to Jordan, of all places. This would be somewhat obviously in preparation for military operations against, and perhaps inside, Syria.
You’d have to decide if Sibel Edmonds is likely reliable on the subject. Then you further have to decide if her sources are likely reliable. The idea itself is wholly plausible, given what we know of past military idiocy in that region, particularly given my own experience with military idiocy in general. Further, we should hardly be surprised if the MSM is quiet on this. Finally, we should expect a decreasing level of reaction from the general public, particularly in the US, once the story of such operations is officially announced, or leaked, having been so thoroughly pummeled by propaganda against the current Syrian government. The whole publicity campaign is highly reminiscent of my training in using a more literal artillery to soften up a target prior to assault.
But the whole thing calls to mind the wider question of propaganda itself. Back when I was attending East Anchorage High School (Alaska) in the early 1970s, I never would have imagined living through my own experience of Animal Farm when we read it in class, or 1984, which I read later on my own. Particularly the latter, as I’ve been watching the cases of folks like Susan Lindauer and Edgar Steele. Do we call it a conspiracy when agents of the government do what governments have always done, but lie about it in the most implausible ways? What sort of traffic runs through your mind when someone holds a gun to your head, literally or figuratively, and demands you must not say, “water is wet”?
It’s not as if there is much we could do to stop our government from invading Syria or any other country, for the simple reason we can’t stop them from invading our own homes, or even our very conscious thoughts. I’m not sitting anywhere near the border between Jordan and Syria, so I can’t even verify any of this. A part of me cares deeply about the needless suffering sure to come, just as our troops have afflicted so many others in that part of the world. On the other hand, ours is just the latest wave of several thousand years of such wanton bloodshed and general mayhem.
Yeah, I believe in prayer, but that’s another book I probably need to write some day.
Right now, the one thing I know for certain is if I don’t struggle with the information available, regardless of what I decide about it at any point on the timeline of my existence, I’m cannot rise above the liars, enablers, commanders and killers. I may not be any better however you evaluate such things, but if I don’t try, I’m not worth evaluating at all, not worth knowing, contributing nothing against the implacable demand upon my soul to fight evil.
We can’t afford to ignore even what we cannot affect.