The Exercise Of Imagination

I exercised my imagination by doing some research of my own. It eliminated the hatred and fear that mainstream media propagandists peddle to maintain the status quo.

“The exercise of imagination is dangerous to those who profit from the way things are because it has the power to show that the way things are is not permanent, not universal, not necessary.” —Ursula K. LeGuin

The Exercise of Imagination

by C.A. Matthews

My husband has a new hobby. Every evening he turns on the local newscast to view the weather forecast so we know how much watering our garden will need the next day. Lately he waits until the national newscast comes on. This is when his cathartic yelling at the screen begins.

“What the…? It’s not a war, asshole. The children of Gaza are being murdered. It’s a goddamn genocide. Say the word, you stupid bastard!”

Mercifully, the six o’clock newscast runs only about sixteen minutes or else he’d be permanently hoarse. I timed the commercials one night, and discovered the half hour is made up of mostly commercials for Big Pharma. That gives you some idea who their target audience is—older Americans with deep pockets who love popping pills.

National newscasts really don’t provide news as much as they give out headlines. Their headlines tend to be predictable propaganda soundbites courtesy of the Ministry of Truth or the government propaganda machine. The news readers with their Hollywood-movie-star looks aren’t trying to impart factual information as much as they’re trying to persuade and provoke emotions, such as hatred and animosity toward those whom the oligarchy wants us to hate. They want us to despise and fear others so much that we’d be willing to go to war with them and die—or at least we’re okay with our children or grandchildren dying for the cause.

After watching several national newscasts, the emotional manipulation became bleedin’ obvious (as my British husband says). Do the regular consumers of mainstream (legacy) media realize they’re being manipulated to believe and feel a certain way in the first place? (See last week’s post about who does the manipulating and why.) What do they really get out of it? Do they actually enjoy being lied to? Do the lies reinforce their deep-seated prejudices and feed their wildest fears, making them fat and content in their hatred? Is warmongering propaganda a source of entertainment for them?

Why can’t otherwise intelligent and educated persons understand that the US government (or any other Western government) doesn’t have their best interests at heart? Why aren’t they able to exercise their imaginations and see through the smoke and mirrors and form their own opinions? Instead, the propagandists regurgitate whatever the military-industrial complex directs them to do, puking it into the mouths of their target audience who swallow it down happily like hungry baby birds.

The “adversaries” that the newscaster read off his teleprompter last night are not our real enemies my husband yelled at him through the TV screen. China, Russia, and Cuba are the latest nations we’re supposed to despise with a vengeance it seems. Putting your knee-jerk reactions aside, if you do your own research you’d find there is no real reason to hate any of these countries. Actually, there are many reasons to admire them and want to cooperate with them. I exercised my imagination by doing a little research of my own. It eliminated the hatred or fear that the legacy broadcasters try hard to peddle.

In the case of the US propaganda push to go to war with China over Taiwan (even though the Taiwanese insist they are happy with the status quo), it’s fairly easy to understand. It’s all about jealousy and competition and not about any actual threat that China has made against anyone. Contrary to the American mainstream media claiming “killer Chinese spy weather balloons” are on the loose, the Chinese government has never implied that they wanted to take over the so-called “land of the free and home of the brave.” They have enough people of their own to take care of already, thank you very much.

However, Chinese scientists have developed a cure for Type 2 Diabetes, a disease that affects millions of people worldwide, a disease that is on the rise and has killed over 100,000 Americans in the last year alone. This cure is seen as a threat in itself, and Congress is actively trying to pass legislation to prevent US businesses from working with Chinese medical institutions to bring this cure for diabetes to America because… because… Americans diabetics don’t deserve to be cured?

I’m not buying into that lie, are you?

It doesn’t take too much imagination exercising to conclude that Big Pharma corporations in the West are afraid that if diabetics were cured almost instantly, their profits on insulin and other related drugs would plummet. American capitalists can’t have potentially fatal conditions like Type 2 Diabetes cured forever. Why? Because how would the drug manufacturers make billions of dollars of profits for their stockholders off the back of suffering diabetics? And don’t forget it’s a crime for a Big Pharma CEO to live on any salary less than $100 million a year, so continue skipping those doses of insulin if you can’t afford it, you selfish working class American diabetics without health insurance.

This Breakthrough News clip explains it all:

Cuba presents a similar threat to US capitalism as you can tell from the above video. Cuban doctors a few years back also perfected a vaccine for lung cancer. No, it’s not available in the US, nor will Americans be able to avail themselves of it anytime soon. Big Pharma roadblocks have kept the US free and clear of this helpful vaccine. We can’t have American lung cancer patients cured overnight! No, sirree! It’s too dangerous… to profit margins.

Chemotherapy for lung cancer can be super expensive and leave an American family with huge medical debts. But it’s all worth it because it yields lots and lots of profits for Big Pharma and Big Credit corporations. So, lose your hair and your life savings and suffer unbearable nausea knowing that your pain and suffering (and probable death) are keeping billionaires in their luxurious mansions and helping them buy yet another super-yacht. It’ll be worth it in the end… just not for you and your ultimate end, that is.

And Russia? In my best Rachel Madcow—I mean, Maddow—voice: Russia! Russia! Russia!

Well, of course it’s 1960, and we’re living in the middle of the Cold War, right? Stop exercising that imagination of yours right away if you want to keep believing the drivel the Ministry of Truth has been dishing out for the past two years in regards to Russia. All you need to know is this: Ukraine is really 1930s Germany, which explains the Azov Battalion’s Nazi symbology, racist ideology, and their torture of ethnic Russian-speakers. And remember, it’s always a threat to the West whenever Russia docks their ships in a Cuban harbor.

Whoopee! The Cuban Missile Crisis never dies!

I beg you to don’t use your imagination here to dream about what it would be like if the US and NATO started a nuclear Armageddon to prove a point, like the West has much better nukes than either Russia or China and lusts after their trade routes and initatives like China’s Silk Road Initiative. You’ll suffer nightmares if you even remotely imagine this scenario. Pay no attention to the Doomsday Clock sitting at 90 seconds to midnight.

And down with the Warsaw Pact! (What do you mean it no longer exists? Why does Rachel Madcow and her ilk keep pretending that it does then?)

The following interview with an ex-pat American living in Russia provides a wealth of information that network newsreaders like Rachel will never share with their audiences.

By exercising our imaginations, intelligent, non-propagandized folks will see that Russia does the same things as the US does. It has naval drills with their allies from time to time. Russia is not threatening the US directly by parking a few ships in Cuba occasionally, since it’s done so in the recent past, and we’re still here.

As Mark Sleboda says, the US was crucial in setting up the pro-Western government in Ukraine during the 2014 Maidan Coup. Many Ukrainians don’t support the puppet government headed by Zelenksy, who currently holds office as an unelected dictator since his term expired without an election. As Professor Jeffrey Sachs states:

The evidence of U.S. complicity in the [Maidan] coup is overwhelming. Assistant Secretary of StateVictoria Nulandwas caught on a phone line in January 2014 plotting the change of government in Ukraine. Meanwhile, U.S. Senators went personally to Kiev to stir up the protests (akin to Chinese or Russian political leaders coming to DC on January 6, 2021 to rile up the crowds). On February 21, 2014,the Europeans, U.S., and Russia brokered a deal with [then President]Yanukovych in which Yanukovich agreed to early elections. Yet the coup leaders reneged on the deal the same day, took over government buildings, threatened more violence, and deposed Yanukovych the next day. The U.S. supported the coup and immediately extended recognition to the new government. (…)

In the course of 2014, Putin called repeatedly for a negotiated peace, and this led to the Minsk II Agreement in February 2015 based on autonomy of the Donbas and an end to violence by both sides. Russia did not claim the Donbas as Russian territory, but instead called for autonomy and the protection of ethnic Russians within Ukraine. The UN Security Council endorsed the Minsk II agreement, but the U.S. neocons privately subverted it. Years later, [German] Chancellor Angela Merkel blurted out the truth. The Western side treated the agreement not as a solemn treaty but as a delaying tactic to “give Ukraine time” to build its military strength. In the meantime, around 14,000 people died in the fighting in Donbas between 2014 and 2021. from Why Won’t the US Help Negotiate a Peaceful End to the War in Ukraine? https://scheerpost.com/2024/06/21/why-wont-the-us-help-negotiate-a-peaceful-end-to-the-war-in-ukraine/

The US and NATO are the ones who have set up a ring of military operations around Russia and are allowing weapons they provided to Ukraine to be targeted at Russian cities. With very little exercising of the imagination, it’s not hard to see it’s the US and NATO who are directly threatening Russia, not the other way around. Russia has followed the Minsk Agreements and has tried to negotiate peace on behalf of the persecuted ethnic Russians of the Donbas region. What countries have been sending armaments to Zelensky’s puppet government to bomb the ethnic Russian residents of the Donabas for the past two years now? Bingo! if you said the US and its NATO allies are the ones that have been prolonging this civil war for their own benefit.

The mainstream media’s anti-Russia message seems to be aimed at the older Baby Boomers who still believe we’re living in the 1950s - 1980s and that everything evil in the world is caused by Russia. There’s not much imagination being exercised in such overly simplistic thinking that can lead to World War III.

As Mark Sleboda emphasizes the Russian economy isn’t suffering under US/NATO sanctions. Even though the US has appropriated Russian assets worth $300 billion, the Russians still won’t recognize the corrupt government of Zelensky and his Nazi Azov Battalion. In fact, it’s the Western economies who have suffered the most since they began sanctions against Russia. The BRICS alliance has come out on top. BRICS now includes Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa and numerous new members including Saudi Arabia.

Speaking of which, Saudi Arabia recently decided they’re no longer doing oil trading in the US petrodollar because... why should they do business with a country that calls everyone an “adversary” and dictates the price of oil to them? The uni-polar world is collapsing; the multi-polar world is on the rise. BRICS will be the biggest economic force in the world before too long. Good-bye NATO!

I bet you what’s in my wallet you won’t find that bit of news on any of the mainstream (legacy) network newscasts. It’s just too embarrassing. Add in the US and NATO’s military and financial support of Israel’s genocide of Gaza as well and you can see the West has become the epitome of that viral meme: Are we the baddies? Yes, we are.

The US in particular has put Israel and its genocide of the indigenous Palestinian people above our own people’s health care. Like in the Ukraine, the US overthrows other countries’ governments so it can continue to profit from endless wars and resource stealing. (Last week Senator Graham told us all about the mineral resources in Ukraine worth stealing.) The US even appropriates other countries’ money deposited in American banks (like Russia’s) to continue its wars.

And now the US wants to start the military draft again with automatic registration in order to beef up its armed forces and threaten Russia. If recent pro-Palestine protests on college campuses are any indication, the kids don’t want anything to do with war and genocide, and they will fight against it. Hard.

YOUR KIDS ARE HEADING TO WAR: America Gears Up For Global War By Reigniting The Military Draft For 18-26 Year Olds

Can you see how exercising your imagination takes away the power of fear-mongering and hate-provoking that the mainstream media provides on behalf of Western propagandists? That rusty squeaking you hear in your ears at times comes from not exercising your imagination enough. Stop consuming mainstream media and keep thinking for yourself, and that noise will go away. Soon you will be able to read, hear, and understand what’s really happening and fight against the true adversaries in the world—Western capitalists’ greed and hate.

Here’s an evocative example of the Exercise of Imagination to bring about awareness to the genocide going on in Palestine: https://venerations.cargo.site

The UN Human Rights Council has investigated Israel’s conduct in detail:

"We conclude that Israeli authorities are responsible for war crimes, crimes against humanity... including extermination, internationally directing attacks against civilians... using starvation as a method of war... sexual and gender-based violence..."

All those states that touted the Rules Based Order in Ukraine must now act to impose a United Nations Security Council sponsored arms embargo on Israel.

—UN Human Rights Council https://twitter.com/tparsi/status/1803434047927902395

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