To Fight Or Not To Fight: That Is Our Question — Paul Craig Roberts

To Fight Or Not To Fight: That Is Our Question

Paul Craig Roberts

This is my quarterly request for your financial support. Whether this website continues is your decision.

Being a writer who attempts to discern and to tell the truth is both encouraging and discouraging. It is encouraging that some of you make monthly donations in support of the website as are your written appreciations I receive in emails. Many have written that I have rescued them from their existence in The Matrix, which is my purpose.

Discouragement comes from the ignorant diatribes that arrive in emails. I never fail to be amazed at the hate-filled ignorance of many Americans. Every time I read emails, I experience hope on one hand and despair on the other.

As I have written previously, many Americans want to hear what they have been inculcated to expect to hear. They are brainwashed, incapable of thought or evaluating evidence. If they don’t hear what they have been trained to hear, they respond with denunciations. To see so many Americans totally incapable of thought and reason makes me question the point of my efforts. Then I remember Margaret Mead’s statement that it only takes a few determined people to change the world.

In the 21st century, the neoconservatives have been those people. They have changed the world for the worst. Now we must change it for the better.

As Morpheus tells Neo: “The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you’re inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it.”

In the film, Neo is The One who has powers to defeat the Agents who protect The Matrix, but I am just an ordinary person although with extraordinary experience. The Agents who protect Washington’s Matrix are focusing on truth-tellers. The alleged library of Osama bin Laden contains many of Washington’s critics. Washington’s release of the fabricated bin Laden library suggests that Washington intends to discredit its critics by associating them with bin Laden, and failing that to deal with critics in more harsh fashion.

It is discouraging that many readers are incapable of seeing the difference between the Cold War, non-jobs-offshoring days of the Reagan presidency and neoconservative Washington’s post-Reagan assault on the economic and political rights and civil liberties of the American people and on the lives and prospects of millions of people via war or sanctions in eleven countries (Serbia, Ukraine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Iran, and Russia).

I have explained so many times that Reagan’s two goals were to end stagflation and the Cold War. In order to end stagnation, Reagan’s administration changed US fiscal and monetary policy. Reagan did not change the policies in order to enrich the rich. He threatened the Soviets with a military buildup and imaginary weapons systems such as Star Wars that he could not produce, and he prevented the success of left-wing political takeovers in “America’s sphere of influence” in order to make the point to the Soviets that there would be no further expansion of Soviet influence. This was done in order to bring the Soviets to an agreement to end the Cold War. Reagan was advised, probably correctly, that hardliners would not allow Gorbachev to agree to an end of the Cold War if left-wing governments were proliferating in Washington’s sphere of influence.

Reformist governments in Granada and Nicaragua were not threats to the US. They were stymied, although Nicaragua more or less prevailed in the end, in order to send a message to the Soviets. Reagan believed that ending the Cold War and the threat of nuclear armageddon was more important than Grenada and Nicaragua’s left-wing, possibly Marxist, governments.

The air traffic control strike was not an attempt by Reagan to break the unions. Reagan was a union member and he was elected President with union votes. The air controller strike was illegal. It was done, on bad advice, to test Reagan and if he folded to break his presidency before it could get underway. This was completely obvious. No president, least of all Reagan, is going to throw away his chance to stop stagflation and the Cold War for the sake of an illegal strike by air traffic controllers.

With their ignorance of the Reagan years, how can Americans possibly understand the difference between 20th century America, which was far from perfect, and the 21st century neoconized and deregulated America in which the American Empire, both political and economic, is pursued universally at the expense of everyone except the One Percent?

Ronald Reagan did not claim the power to ignore habeas corpus and to detain US citizens indefinitely without due process of law. This crime was the achievement of America’s first 21st century president, George W. Bush.

Ronald Reagan did not claim the power to assassinate US citizens on suspicion alone without evidence or due process of law. This crime was the achievement of America’s First Black President, Obama.

The American left-wing is impotent, because it cannot recognize the rise of American Caesars beginning with Bill Clinton’s second term. Under George W. Bush and Obama, the accountability of the executive branch to law ceased to exist.

It was Bill Clinton who deregulated the US financial system, but hardly any Americans understand that. Many are prepared to put Clinton’s wife into the presidency completely unaware that they would be furthering the One Percent’s assault on their economic existence. I do not intend to imply that the Republicans have a candidate who would do any different.

I am not Neo. Neither is Edward Snowden, William Binney, Julian Assange, Glenn Greenwald, John Pilger, Chris Hedges, Noam Chomsky, Michel Chossudovsky, or any of the other writers who attempt to speak the truth. Against our voices are arrayed a massive number of voices of fools, well paid Internet trolls, the presstitute Western print and TV media and NPR.

It is such an unequal fight that I wonder at my participation. My participation has reduced my income and my social acceptance in influential circles. Try to imagine a former Wall Street Journal editor and Assistant Secretary of the Treasury who cannot publish in the mainstream media or appear on a TV program, except to be denounced in absentia.

Consider the oddity of truth-tellers ostracized while presstitutes like Thomas Friedman rake in large speaking fees for lying for the Establishment. Lies told by newspapers and TV “news” programs, spoon-fed stories supported with money by Washington and vested interests, comprise the news, while truth is ridiculed as “conspiracy theory” and “Putin apologetics.”

The older you become the more you realize how little of your life is left. Is it a good decision to use one’s remaining time attempting to bring truth to people, the majority of whom are incapable of comprehending it?

As I say each quarter, this is your site. It will continue as long as you support it. As long as you have hope, I have hope. It only takes a few determined people.

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