Reject Mainstream Culture: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

Thursday, 29 April 2021, 3:46 pm
Opinion: Caitlin Johnstone

Hey remember when we learned that the CIA unilaterally funds its own clandestine operations via drug trafficking without the permission or oversight of any elected body and then everyone went "meh" and forgot about it?

It's strange how many westerners who grew up watching Star Wars still side with the evil empire on every foreign conflict.

A foreign policy perspective which does not begin with and account for the fact that the US government is the most powerful and destructive force on earth, and that its behaviors are aggressive instead of defensive in nature, is a foreign policy perspective based on fantasy.

People tell me, "You just hate America!"

I don't even know what this means. What specifically is it that I hate? The people? The dirt the country is built on? Or is it possible that my actual target is the most powerful and destructive government in the world and the oligarchy which runs it?

"I hate the USA" is as nonsensical a statement as "I love the USA"; the land that label points to is so vast and its people so diverse that nobody can have any emotional relationship with it. Beyond that it's a just collection of conceptual constructs which exist only in our imagination.

This, just by itself, is a sufficient argument for tearing down the entire US political system. https://t.co/CjY24XYgR7

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— Caitlin Johnstone

(@caitoz) April 23, 2021

Americans: Help!

Republicans: Fuck you.

Democrats: We need to come together and have a conversation about the help you need because these things take time and there's a process and really it's not just about the what it's also about the how and the how sometimes gets lost in the what of the how of the how what how...

"The Oscars" is a big fancy party where vapid airheads who've profited immensely from the status quo give each other trophies for making movies which reassure everyone that the US empire is awesome and capitalism is totally working.

It's not just mainstream politics and mainstream news media, it's the entirety of mainstream culture: all its movies, books, music, values systems, ideals. It's all inseparably intertwined with the sick status quo we now find ourselves in and the manufactured worldviews which consent to it.

Teenagers understand this better than adults. There's an intuitive rejection of mainstream culture; it feels weird and dissonant. Adults make fun of them for it--"Ooh, it's not 'alternative' enough for you?"--but that rejection is arising from a very healthy impulse. Mainstream culture should be rejected, because it's what got us into this mess. It's sick. The instinct to reject it is as healthy as the immune system's instinct to attack a pathogen.

Every part of this tweet is hilarious:

Ships from Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps harassed two U.S. Coast Guard vessels earlier this month in the Persian Gulf, Navy officials said, the first such incident in a year https://t.co/lUOEl2lHyu

— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) April 26, 2021

The more you read it, the funnier it gets.

The US Coast Guard is where now? On the other side of the planet from any US coast? And they're being "harassed", are they? Oh, by the Persians? Where are the Persians harassing them? Oh? In the Persian Gulf? The US Coast Guard is being harassed in the Persian Gulf, by Persians?

This is like saying "Burglar Harassed In Living Room By House Occupants".

Our media are so truthful and objective that they always take care to give us all the different perspectives from the full range of political opinion: both liberal corporate warmongers and conservative corporate warmongers.

Telling the mainstream media to do their job and report the news truthfully is like walking into a shoe factory and telling them to do their job and make dentures. It isn't the mass media's job to tell the truth, it's their job to administer propaganda. And they do a great job.

We're definitely leaving Afghanistan but first we need to add more troops to Afghanistan to kill the people who want us to leave Afghanistan before we're ready to leave. https://t.co/QSpzCFOVhS

— Caitlin Johnstone

(@caitoz) April 26, 2021

It sure was nice, that brief window between the fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of China where westerners temporarily paused their hysterical shrieking about communism.

When people object to criticisms of the US-centralized empire, it isn't because those criticisms are unfounded. It's because if those criticisms are valid, it will mean everything they believe about the world is wrong. It would be a kind of death for them, and people fear death. Because perception is reality, finding out that your entire worldview is wrong is experientially the same as losing your entire world. Losing your entire world, your belief systems, your knowing, your understanding and all the stability it gives you, is like experiencing death.

That's why we've got whole cognitive defense systems in place designed to keep information that is incongruous with our worldview out of our heads. We protect our worldview like we're protecting our own identity, because, in a very real sense, we are.

It's funny how of all the many desires people have, the desire for their own minds to be purged of illusion barely features. Some want for themselves, some want for others, but hardly anyone even considers the possibility that the mind which forms those wants could be deluded.

If people just put the desire for freedom from delusion above all other desires, the other desires would quickly fall into their proper place.

I’m celebrating the hardback release of Woke: A Field Guide For Utopia Preppers by making a pay-as-you-feel PDF available.

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Caitlin Johnstone

Rogue journalist

Caitlin Johnstone is a 100 percent crowdfunded rogue journalist, bogan socialist, anarcho-psychonaut, guerilla poet and utopia prepper living in Australia with her American husband and two kids. She writes about politics, economics, media, feminism and the nature of consciousness. She is the author of the illustrated poetry book "Woke: A Field Guide For Utopia Preppers."

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