Breaking my silence.

An homage to Dr. Martin Luther King.

At the end of Galbraith Road. Townsend, Vermont. Summer, 2022. C.M.

"Our Lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."                    —Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

I haven’t written anything in a very long time. My silence on this blog has stretched out so long that I began to wonder if Our Journey was over, if I would ever have anything worth saying again. And so I have waited. When the above quote landed in my lap like a message from the gods, I realized I’d become silent about things that matter.

Sad and angry

In every decade of my life, my country has waged one or another war of aggression, undermined and overthrown democratically elected governments, supported murderous rightwing dictators, sanctioned and engaged in torture, armed and trained terrorists and death squads. Tens of millions of people have been killed and displaced and entire regions of the world have been destabilized.

All of this is a matter of historical record. All of it happened under Republican and Democratic administrations and with the support of a majority of Democrats and Republicans in Congress. And almost all of these crimes were justified on completely false humanitarian grounds, as necessary to advancing democracy and human rights. It is hard to imagine anything more callous or cynical.

With a few notable exceptions, such as the publication of the pentagon papers, our press and broadcasters function as stenographers reporting what they are told to report by those in power. They are propagandists. They do the exact opposite of what journalists are supposed to do, which is to expose the abuses and corruptions of the powerful, ask hard questions, and make our government and those who hold power accountable.

Every time the U.S. exits a war our leaders promise “never again.” And many of us think to ourselves “never again.” Never again will I fall for the lies my government tells me. And then the next war begins and the propaganda machine kicks into high gear and the same old lies are repeated.

With the Ukraine war approaching its second year it’s a very good time to ask, Am I being lied to again?

Monsters

The Biden Administration and the Democrats and Republicans in Congress are lying to you about the war in Ukraine. When they tell you this war was unprovoked, they are lying. When they say the U.S. is not actively involved in this war, they are lying. When they say this war is about defending Ukraine’s democracy, its sovereignty and freedom, they are especially lying.

Ukraine has not had any meaningful sovereignty since the United States fomented a coup and toppled their democratically elected government. It is a thoroughly corrupt and failed state. It is not a functioning democracy. Opposition parties have been outlawed, political dissidents jailed, journalists silenced and even murdered. Ukraine has long been the single largest source of global blackmarket weapons sales. Many of the weapons the U.S. is pouring into Ukraine have disappeared into the blackmarket enriching Ukraine’s corrupt leaders and making the world more dangerous.

This current conflict has little to do with Ukraine. The purpose of this war is to preserve U.S. global hegemony and enrich Boeing, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and all the other military contractors. Our leaders want this war to go on as long as possible, regardless of how many Ukrainians die, with the hopes that it will destroy Russia.

The Biden Administration doesn’t actually care about the Ukrainian people. If Biden cared about the people of Ukraine he would do everything in his power to support a negotiated settlement. Instead, his administration did the exact opposite and undermined a settlement reached by Putin and Zelenskyy in April.

This war was provoked by successive U.S. administrations, both Republican and Democratic, over the course of three decades. It was provoked against the advice of numerous U.S. officials and diplomats who understood that our country and NATO had long been aggressing against Russia and threatening its security. Ukraine is being cynically used by the U.S. in a proxy war to enact regime change in Russia and break up the Russian federation.

Using Ukraine to destabilize Russia has been a long standing goal of the neoconservatives who run the Biden Administration. These neoconservatives are the same sick group of imperial warmongers who ran the Trump Administration, to a lesser degree the Obama Administration, and who lied us into war in Iraq during George W. Bush’s tenure.

Breaking Silence

And this is what I want to say, this is what I have broken my silence to say:

There is not one degree of meaningful difference between the Democratic and Republican parties. Both parties serve corporate interests. Both parties serve the military industrial complex, which is why we are always at war. Both parties enrich themselves, and the ruling elite they serve, at the expense of ordinary American. Democrats and Republicans are, as others have pointed out, two wings of one war party. They are both monstrously evil.

None of this stops until each one of us frees ourselves from the lies and propaganda of our respective political parties.

Homage

The United States is the greatest military empire that has ever existed on this planet. The man I quoted above, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., understood the evil of U.S. imperialism. It is what made him so dangerous and why he was assassinated. I break my silence in homage to Dr. King.