caitlin paints a clear picture of the empire and its opponents in this essay;

 If, hypothetically speaking, the US wanted to rule the world, it likely would have begun planning years ago to subvert the rise of China. Step One would have involved a plan to cripple the powers who support it, like Russia. They’d have begun propagandizing us for this years ago. Hypothetically speaking.

It’s a good thing this is a hypothetical scenario and the US has no plans of global domination, because otherwise by now we’d probably have been marinating in a virulent anti-Russia propaganda campaign for five or six years and would be brainwashed into cheerleading for Russia to be choked off from the global economy with the goal of toppling Moscow.

This hypothetical scenario could never happen in real life, because such a propaganda campaign would require western intelligence agencies to plant stories demonizing Russia in the western press for years, and our free press would never uncritically publish claims by spy agencies. That would be flat-out propaganda. The free press are full of hard-nosed muckraking journalists who shine the bold light of truth on government agencies to hold the powerful to account. They’d never act as willing proxies for government agencies working to manufacture consent for unipolarist geostrategic agendas.

And it’s a good thing, too. Can you imagine if the US and its allies and the entire western press were working together, wittingly or unwittingly, toward toppling powerful nuclear-armed nations in the way the USSR was toppled? Things would be getting very crazy and confrontational by now.

Thank God we live in a free society where government agencies are transparent and accountable, where military geostrategic objectives are rigorously checked by democratically elected officials, and journalists never face any consequences for telling the truth about these things.

Because we might be staring down the barrel of nuclear armageddon just to fulfill the unipolarist fantasies of a few powerful psychopaths if the situation I just laid out were anything but purely hypothetical.........read more......