Monday, March 5, 2018

Why Libertarians Should Shrug-Off Memo Mania

By Ilana Mercer - March 05, 2018 at 09:50AM

undefined

First came the Republican memo, courtesy of the Republican House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes. Their memo detailed the surveillance abuses against one Carter Page, enabled by a kangaroo court which was strengthened immeasurably by the old Republican-Party boss, George Bush.

Bush II had fortified the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), and the Stupid Party greased the skids for the expansion of FISA infractions. Following Barack Obama's lead, Republicans have reauthorized the controversial Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which has resulted in the "incidental" collection of the communications of American citizens, and likely served as an impetus for prosecutions.

Enter Rep. Adam Schiff, Democrat from California. He and the other Democrats on the House intelligence committee have now presented their distillation of the counter case, namely that the "FISA warrant and repeated renewals to conduct temporary surveillance of Carter Page" were all justified. Well of course.

Media eminences—Republican Mark Steyn, for instance—have accused the Democrats of assaulting the rule of law. The libertarian, however, might wish to avoid wading into an intra-party fracas. Why intra-party? Because the Democrats and the Republicans of DC share most of their political DNA.

Am I saying libertarians have no dog in the fight over whether "Hillary Clinton and the DNC funded the [dodgy] dossier that was a basis for the Department of Justice's FISA application"?

Do we not care that the "venerated" FBI "had abused its surveillance authority and relied improperly on politically motivated sources—namely former British spy Christopher Steele who had been paid by Fusion GPS, a private intelligence firm hired first by conservative underwriters and then retained by Democrats during the 2016 campaign"?

Put it this way: What libertarians should care about is that the "America's political police"—the Federal Bureau of Investigation and its malignant offshoots—is being thoroughly discredited by its most enthusiastic advocates. This is of a piece with the creative destruction generated, inadvertently, by Donald Trump.

Moreover, the meta-perspective argued for here relies on a recognition that America is regularly convulsed by episodes of mass, hysterical contagion.

What is "hysterical contagion"?

Sociologists explain it as the spread of symptoms of an illness among a group, absent any physiological disease. It provides a way of coping with a situation that cannot be handled with the usual coping mechanism.

Arguably, the Trump-Russia "collusion," "obstruction of justice" probe and the attendant frenzied behavior and belief-system it has engendered meets the definition of mass hysteria. With an exception: This particular form of mass madness involves a meme, a story-line that catches on and sticks. In particular, it is the emotional pitch with which the Trump-Russia collusion group-think is delivered, day in and day out, that has gripped and inflamed irrational, febrile minds.

Infected as it is by statism and group think, the country's collective consciousness is ready for the taking.

The topics for two years have been rumors for which no evidence can possibly be adduced, recounted as facts and, eventually, accepted as such.

The penalty: Criminalization by the Federal Government — it has enough laws on the books to destroy each one of us, if it so desired—of naturally licit behavior: diplomacy with Russia and voluntary contact between Russians and Americans.

This collective and collectivist fetish has further been fueled and sustained by organizational and communication networks. Here, friendship and workplace networks, dominated as they are by like-minded individuals — government agencies and departments, newsrooms, think tanks, classrooms; the teacher's lounge — serve as conduits in a system that transmits faulty signals across the synapses of the country's collective, damaged brain.

At root, the storyline du jour is manufactured by America's gilded elites of both political parties.

During the era of Bush, aforementioned, DC operative Karl Rove put it plainly: "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality."

Indeed, when you're the most powerful entity in the world, as the US government certainly is — the only government to have dropped nuclear bombs on civilian populations ("good" bombs, because dropped by the US) — you get to manufacture your own parallel universe with its unique rules of evidence and standards of proof. What's more, as the mightiest rule-maker, you can coerce other earthlings into "sharing" your alternate reality. Or else.

Beltway averse libertarians need to understand that the manufacturing of Fake News by the Deep State and its institutional connective tissue, circa 2018, is of a piece with the anatomy of the ramp-up to war in Iraq, in 2003. (Chronicled in achingly painful detail in "Broad Sides: One Woman's Clash With A Corrupt Culture.") Except that back then, Republicans, joined by diabolical Democrats like Hillary Clinton, were the ones dreaming up Homer Simpson's Third Dimension.

Conscripted into America's reality, Iraqis paid the price for this ghastly American concoction. Hundreds of thousands of them were displaced and killed due to "Operation Iraqi Freedom," an idea that originated in Republican minds.

Because of Fake News generated so effectively by the likes of Judith Miller, the Gray Lady's prized reporter at the time, American soldiers paid dearly, too. Miller shilled for that war over the pages of the New York Times like there was no tomorrow. She's now a Fox News "expert."

Then as now, elements in the intelligence community worked with neoconservative counterparts in Bush 43's administration, in particularity with "the Office of Special Plans," to further manufacture consent around the war. And while Fake News babes did wonders to sex up the cause of senseless killing—the dissemination of Fake News, vis-a-vis Iraq, was hardly the exclusive province of Fox News. With some laudable exceptions, Big Media all was tuned-out, turned-on and hot for war.

Then it was war on Iraq that the reality faking political apparatus was peddling. Now it is all-out war on Trump.

Salient in 2003, as in 2018, was the monolithic quality of the cheer-leading emanating from the networks; an unquestioning uniformity that spoke to a slutty sell-out throughout the media establishment. For journalistic jingoism — war porn, really — it was, still is, impossible to best the coverage of the high-tech media extravaganza known as "Operation Iraqi Freedom."

Embedded with the military turned out to be a euphemism for in bed with the military. Practically all network embeds focused exclusively on the Pentagon's version of events, to the exclusion of reality on the Iraqi ground. Yet reporters who slept with their sources were treated as paragons of truth. Those of us who refused such cohabitation were punished.

Reporting hearsay as truth and failing to verify stories were all in a day's work on cable and news networks. A Geiger counter that went off in the inexpert hands of a Marine stationed in Iraq became "Breaking News," possible evidence of weapons-grade plutonium. Every bottle of Cipro tablets located in Iraq was deemed a likely precursor to an anthrax-manufacturing factory. Anchormen and women somberly seconded these "finds," seldom bothering to issue retractions.

To comprehend the anatomy of the hysterical mass contagion behind the memo narrative, it's vital to trace the contours of that other war, "Operation Iraqi Freedom," and understand the way an engineered reality is sold to the public.

If past is prologue; the frenzy of inflamed imaginations could spill over into all-out war — against Russia, Iran or North Korea. This existential evil is the litmus libertarian concern.

Ilana Mercer has been writing a weekly, paleolibertarian column since 1999. She is the author of “The Trump Revolution: The Donald’s Creative Destruction Deconstructed (June, 2016). 

from Ron Paul Institute Featured Articles

via IFTTT

No comments:

Post a Comment

Merchandise

Ron Paul America Cloud

Site Credits

Ron Paul America

is voluntarily affiliated with

Liberty Operations Group

______________________________

Site created, maintained and hosted by

Liberty Web Services

Tags

#TurnOnTheTruth 2008 2012 4th amendment 911 ACTION Afghanistan war Agency Aggression Principle al-Qaeda Alan Colmes Alert America America's Fault Americans antigun AR 15 assault weapon Audit Authoritarian bailouts Believe Big Brother big government bill of rights Blame blowback bubbles Bush Campaign for Liberty Career Politician Eric Cantor Central Bank Charity China churches collapse Collectivism Commission committee Compassion Congress Conservative constitution Crash dangerous person Democrat Democrats Donald Trump Donald Trump. Planned Parenthood drones economic Economy Edward Snowden End the Fed European Union Federal Reserve Floyd Bayne floyd bayne for congress force foreign interventionism free market free markets GOP Nominee GOP Presidential Debates Government Great Depression gun control House of Representatives housing bubble HR 1745 I like Ron Paul except on foreign policy If ye love wealth better than liberty IFTTT Individual Individualism Institute Irag Iran Iraq war ISIL ISIS Judge Andrew Napalitano libertarian Liberty Liberty Letters Liberty Report Lost mass Media meltdown metadata Micheal Moore Middle East Mitt Romney nap National Neocons New Ron Paul Ad New York Times Newsletters Newt Gingrich No Non non-interventionism NSA NSA Snooping Obama Overreach overthrow Patriot Act peace Peace and Prosperity politicians Pope Francis President Presidential Presidential Race programs prosperity Race Racist Racist Newsletters Rand Paul Read the Bills Act recessions redistribution of wealth refugee crisis Repeal Obamacare Report Republican Republican Nomination Republican Nominee Republicans Revolution Rick Santorum Rick Santorum Exposed Ron Ron Paul Ron Paul Institute Ron Paul Institute Featured Articles Ron Paul Institute for Peace And Prosperity Ron Paul Institute Peace and Prosperity Articles Ron Paul Next Chapter Media Channel Ron Paul Racist Newsletters ron paul's foreign policy Ronald Reagan ronpaulchannel.com ronpaulinstitute.org Rosa DeLauro russia Samuel Adams Saudi Arabia Second Amendment Security Senate Senator September 11th attacks Show Soviet Spying stimulate Stock Market surveillance Syria tech bubble terrorist The the Fed the poor US US foreign policy Us troops USA Freedom Act Virginia Virginia Republican Primary voluntarism. Liberty Voluntary Warner Warning warrantless wiretaps YouTube