Since 9/11 there have been three massive propaganda campaigns aimed at the American public.

The first one was the concerted effort to invade Iraq, where Bush’s chief of staff Andrew Card, let the cat out of the bag with his admission that you “don’t introduce a new product in August.” The product being war, of course.

Then there was Russia-gate, where liberals were whipped into an FBI, CIA loving, war frenzy due to their overarching hatred of Donald Trump. Indeed, one of the most bizarre but important dynamics of Trump-era U.S. politics is that the most fanatical war-hungry neocons, who shaped Bush/Cheney militarism, have become the most popular pundits and thought leaders in American liberalism. They have not changed in the slightest as they are employing the same tactics they have always invoked, and for the same causes, but they have correctly perceived that their agenda is better served by migrating back to the Democratic Party which originally spawned their bloodthirsty ideology.

There’s been a lot of rehabilitation.

And now there’s the hysterical propaganda campaign to bring about war with Russia over Ukraine, largely sponsored by the same fucking, bi-partisan cast of characters. It really is a Blob. All of the usual suspects are claiming that Russia has amassed over 100,000 combat troops near Ukraine’s eastern border and is threatening to invade and that Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to rebuild the Soviet Empire by expanding Russia’s territory beyond its borders.

But in truth the Blob and their corporate media buddies have concocted a fake storyline about a “Russian invasion” to divert attention from the US’s long-term geopolitical strategy of encircling, weakening and ultimately, splintering Russia into smaller pieces in order to become the dominant player in the development of Central Asia and in order to exert greater control over China’s explosive growth. Paging Halford Mackinder.

The invasion propaganda is also designed to obscure Moscow’s reasonable demands for legally-binding security guarantees that address the pressing issue of hostile foreign armies (NATO) and nuclear missiles on Russia’s doorstep. Russians do not want to live with nuclear missiles aimed at their Capital and located just a few hundred miles from their targets. That’s unacceptable. Nor do Russians want hostile armies and military bases looming on their western flank in Ukraine. 

Our official propagandists never let the reality get in the way of a good narrative, one that’s designed to “scare hell” out of the American public. “I think we’re basically just on the cusp of war,” retired lieutenant colonel Alexander Vindman, best known for his role in the Trump impeachment, told MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace on Friday. “I think it’s all but certain in my mind that there’s going to be a large European war on the order of magnitude of World War II, with air power, sea power, massive ground force offensives, and my concern right now is making sure that the United States is postured for that outcome. I think there’s little to be done to avoid it at this point.”

Think about it. If Vindman’s claims are true then we should all be freaking-out and demanding our governments do everything possible to prevent a possible nuclear war from being unleashed upon our world. However, if his claims are not true then a US news network just aired brazen propaganda to further the war agenda. We should take very seriously the fact that they are working to insert these propaganda narratives into public consciousness.

Washington think-tanks and their corporate media fan-boys exist to factory-generate intellectual justifications for foreign interventions and wars, while attacking the appearance of ideas like the “peace dividend” that threaten to move any of their funding to some other constituency. Meanwhile, the neocon members of the Blob believe themselves impervious to error, and take extraordinary offense to challenges to their judgment, which is pretty fucking amazing given the spectacular failures in every arena from Iraq to Libya, Afghanistan to Syria.

And, what’s depressing is that after the invasion of Iraq and Russia-gate you would think Americans would have learned. Instead, American’s, as a general rule, remains absolutely clueless. Politicians and pundits feel free to claim with absolute certainty that Russia is about to launch an unprovoked invasion of Ukraine because five years of Russia hysteria have taught them that they will suffer exactly zero professional consequences when they’re proven wrong.

But there is no threat of a Russian invasion. Once again, it’s a massive propaganda campaign designed to stampede us to war. The only narrative, hammered 24/7, is “Russian aggression”. The corporate media is shaping a narrative to fit the policy which is the very description of state propaganda. Remember kids, in a corporatist system of government, corporate media is state media. 

Orwell would be impressed. Big Brother has been privatized.