I am not a puppet
by Not Sure
15 December 2024
In a
1929 literary debate with Edward Bernays, journalist Everett Dean Martin wrote,
“Propaganda
is making puppets of us. We are moved by hidden strings which the
propagandist manipulates.” Here is a
quote which Alan Watt shared with his listeners from Bernays’ 1928 book Propaganda,
“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and
opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who
manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government
which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are
molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never
heard of.”
Over the
last several years, I have been thinking about epistemology from time to
time. This is defined as ‘the theory of
knowledge’. Samuel Clemens was an
American humorist and writer whose pen name was Mark Twain. He wrote, “Don't use a five-dollar word
when a fifty-cent word will do.” I
haven’t been thinking about the theory of knowledge, or epistemology in the
philosophical sense. My musings have
been along the lines of questions like, ‘How do we know what we do?’, ‘What
justifies our beliefs?’, ‘What is the evidence for our beliefs?’, ‘What is the
difference between perceiving something and repeatedly observing it?’
Whenever
I am presented with something I have not observed, or cannot test or replicate,
I start with the question, ‘Is this true?’
Life was simpler when Alan Watt gave us his weekly analysis of current
and historical events. 2020’s Operation
C did not come packed with enough explosives.
The digital landscape had to be mined with plenty of extras, to ensure
that safe footing was impossible.
‘Lab-made?’, ‘HIV inserts?’ ‘Furin cleavage?’,
‘Bats in a wet market?,’ ‘Iver-maybe, baby’. On the fringes of the hot zone, it’s hardly demilitarized. Watch your step, there goes a Germ Theory.
Popping
up all over the place, timed to join Oppenheimer on the red carpet is
Nukes are Fake. If the photos of
Hiroshima were doctored or faked, does this necessarily mean there was no
nuclear explosion? If the radiation on
the ground was not at levels to correlate, does that mean it didn’t
happen? Little Boy was detonated 1900
feet over Hiroshima. Fat Man exploded
1650 feet over Nagasaki. Does that
height really explain the slight ground radiation?
Years
ago, with Alan, I watched an episode of the BBC’s Thirty-Minute Theatre
entitled “The News-Benders”, that nicely summarized how I had come to see
events as they were officially presented: some shadowy cabal, some secret
brotherhood sat around in plush offices and just made it all up. We’re given state-sponsored news masquerading
as private businesses. CBS’s All-Seeing
Eye for a logo, or two wings on the same bird cradling ABC, as their logo
appeared in the 1950s, or the BBC -- until the redesign in 2021, their letters
were in slanted boxes, perhaps to signal that the news too was slanted.
The good
old days, when the pillars of the public square were just a few boring news
channels and a handful of newspapers. At
some point in the early to mid-1990s, those of us who were around then hopped
onto the Information Superhighway. I
regularly speak with people who were born post-Nine/Eleven, so the Information
Superhighway is the only way they’ve ever known. Those of us over the age of forty used this
Web to find a Counter-Narrative. Those
born on it are seldom looking for that Counter-Narrative because there are so
many Possible Explanations (Rabbit Holes) to explore and every single one of
them is billed as The Truth.
If
writers, thinkers, and manipulators in the 1920s thought we were governed and
molded, made ‘puppets’ by propaganda then, how much easier the marionettist’s job is now, in the digital age. Those of you who follow closely the content
of Cutting Through the Matrix/CTTM, will have seen and heard various meanings
of the letter X recently. Eustace
Mullins wrote, “The legendary symbol for Nimrod is ‘X.’ The use of this symbol always denotes
witchcraft. When ‘X’ is used as a
shortened form meaning Christmas, it actually means
‘to celebrate the feast of Nimrod.’
[Nimrod, empire builder]. A
double X, which has always meant to double-cross or betray, in its fundamental
meaning indicates one’s betrayal into the hands of Satan. When American corporations use the ‘X’ in
their log, such as ‘Exxon,’ the historic Rockefeller firm of Standard Oil of
New Jersey, [or X née Twitter], there can be little doubt of this hidden
meaning.”
Look at
the simple construction of a marionette, a puppet. The little man might have twelve parts. Three little segments on each arm, a couple
of segments for each leg, a body, and a head.
Strings will be attached to each of the hands, and another string to the
head. But who’s pulling the
strings? How are they pulled? It’s a simple little wooden cross. An X.
By the
sorcery of the X, our strings are pulled.
As Everett Dean Martin wrote in 1929, “Propaganda is making puppets of us. We are
moved by hidden strings which the propagandist manipulates.”
Which
brings me to the point. We’ve not heard
one honest statement in the Western news, ever, about Syria. Bashar al-Assad has been a ‘bad’ man for his
entire despotic, autocratic, totalitarian, dictatorish,
chemical-weapons-deployed-on-his-own-people reign of terror. Now, Syrians dance in the street, statues are
toppled, journalists feel free to write truth without fear of reprisals,
families are reunited. Finally, sane
people can ferret out this monster’s stash of mustard gas, and nerve agents ‘so
deadly, a few drops can kill thousands quickly.’
I am not
going to defend politicians of whatever stripe in any country; I’m sure Assad
is a mixed bag. He might have as many
repellant qualities as Joe Biden, or Donald Trump, or Kier Starmer, or Benjamin
Netanyahu. Certainly, he is not a
saint. He is being sheltered by the
hated warmongering Putin, Russia having always allied closely with Syria. But I also see the mild-mannered doctor who
went to London to study ophthalmology.
By all accounts, Bashar was not his father’s first choice for
succession.
Assad’s
wife, Asma, was born and raised in London.
Her father was a cardiologist and her mother a diplomat who served at
Syria’s London Embassy. Asma graduated
from King’s College, went into investment banking at JP Morgan, and was headed
for an MBA at Harvard when her relationship with Bashar took a turn towards
marriage. Asma might not be the average
Londoner, but she is clearly a Westerner.
She was even featured in Vogue magazine back in 2011. More propaganda. Vogue pulled the story not long after
it ran because of backlash.
This is
a headline from the New York Post on 10 December 2024. “Ex-Syrian first lady was more ‘cutthroat’
than Assad, demanded editorial control over scrubbed Vogue story.” This would be a good place to say that any
head of state, or spouse of a head of state, or royalty, et cetera, will have
editorial control over a story for which they volunteer to be featured. But thirteen years and a toppled regime
later, it makes good copy to call her ‘cutthroat.’
I don’t
know any more about recent Syrian history and politics than I do about nuclear
weapons, so I rely on input from trusted sources of which there are few, and
combine that with my lifetime’s accumulation of knowledge, which is scant. If a story makes me angry, the puppeteer has
succeeded in lifting my little wooden body from its resting position. If I pick a side, my wooden arms are made to
dance about. If I claim some expertise
on the matter, the marionettist laughs while my wee
wooden head bobbles about.
The
splintered digital world is described by some as ‘atomized.’ Alan Watt has taught us this Ancient System,
where the marionettists are part of a Deviant
Priestly class. Studying humans is what
they’ve done for thousands of years and manipulating them to desired positions
is low-level witchcraft. My theory of
knowledge must start here: I don’t know much.
But it needn’t end there. Soul
animates, spirit liberates. I can watch
Punch and Judy because that little wooden woman is not me.
© Not Sure
Additional reading:
The News
Benders' (1968) by BBC
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ys1D7hRDKBQ
The Secret
Strength Behind Bashar al-Assad
https://themillenniumreport.com/2015/03/the-secret-strength-behind-bashar-al-assad/
Ex-Syrian
first lady was more ‘cutthroat’ than Assad, demanded editorial control over
scrubbed Vogue story