The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that s… - Noam Chomsky

If you take a poll among U.S. intellectuals, support for bombing Afghanistan is just overwhelming, but how many of them think that you should bomb Washington because of the U.S. war against Nicaragua, let's say, or Cuba or Turkey, or anyone else? Now if anyone were to suggest this, they'd be considered insane, but why? I mean, if one is right, why is the other wrong? When you try to get someone to talk about this question, they just won't try. They can't comprehend what your question is, because you can't comprehend that we should apply to ourselves the standards that you apply to others. That is incomprehensible! There couldn't be a moral principle more elementary... There's a famous definition in the Gospels of the hypocrite. The hypocrite is the person who refuses to apply to himself the standards that he applies to others. By that standard, the entire commentary and discussion of the so-called "war on terror" is pure hypocrisy, virtually without exception. Can anybody understand that? No, can't understand that. But that's not so unusual... I know it was true in Germany and France and everywhere else. It's just standard. It's ugly, but it's standard.

Trump was not silent, however. He issued a stream of confident pronouncements informing the public that it was just a cough; he has everything under control; he gets a 10 out of 10 for his handling of the crisis; it's very serious but he knew it was a pandemic before anyone else; and the rest of the sorry performance. The technique is well-designed, much like the practice of reeling out lies so fast that the very concept of truth vanishes. Whatever happens, Trump is sure to be vindicated among his loyal followers. When you shoot arrows at random, some are likely to hit the target.

وفي هذه اللحظة تقوم واشنطن بتعليم العالم درسًا بالغ القبح والخطورة: إذا كنت تريد أن تدافع عن نفسك في مواجهتنا، فالأفضل لك أن تحاكي كوريا الشمالية، بحيث تمثل خطرًا عسكريًا ذا مصداقية يتهددنا. ___ مداخلات