When those who push for war are elevated to positions of prominence in government and media while those who push for peace are smeared as antisemites and Russian agents, you know you are living in a wildly dysfunctional civilization. US warmongers editorials
By Caitlin Johnstone
September 4, 2024
dystopia, peace, US empire, war
By Caitlin Johnstone You can tell a lot about the health of a society by how it treats its warmongers and how it treats its peacemongers.
When those who push for war are elevated to positions of prominence in government and media while those who push for peace are smeared as antisemites and Russian agents, you know you are living in a wildly dysfunctional civilization.
When politicians who promote the interests of empire managers and war profiteers rocket to the top echelons of government while those who promote the interests of war victims and ordinary people have their homes raided and their devices seized by police under counter-terrorism laws, you know you are living in a profoundly sick society.
US warmongers editorials
When those who spend their lives promoting mass military slaughter at every opportunity are rewarded with esteemed and lucrative punditry careers while those who call for an end to mass military slaughter have their influence relegated to increasingly marginalized online platforms, you know you are living in dystopia.
War is the most insane thing humans do. The most destructive. The most traumatizing. The most destabilizing. The least sustainable. The least morally defensible. The least conducive to human thriving. It is promoted by the very worst among us, and it is opposed by the very best.
In a healthy society, those who dedicated themselves to the task of getting as many human beings ripped apart by military explosives as possible would be reviled as monsters and caged for the health of the collective. In our society this is seen as a perfectly legitimate career path, from which someone can earn a very comfortable living.
In a healthy society, only those who promote the interests of ordinary human beings and spurn the influence of malign manipulators would ever be elevated to positions of leadership. In our society, it’s the best way to make sure you spend your life in perpetual obscurity.
This is what powerful manipulators have successfully duped us into accepting as normal. This is the insanity that mass media propaganda and mainstream culture-manufacturing have convinced us to regard as okay. But it is not okay. It’s about as far from okay as anything could possibly be.
US warmongers editorials
And now here we are, our eyes full of genocide in the foreground and a looming global conflict between nuclear-armed states in the background, with those who decry this being shouted down and silenced while those who support this become millionaires and presidents.
There is no part of this that is acceptable. Every aspect of this civilization is a freakish abomination. We’ve got to wake up to what’s going on, and we’ve got to find some way to remove the people who have placed us on this trajectory from power.
So long as any part of this nightmare looks fine and normal to most people, we’ve got no chance at a healthy world.
My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to find video versions of my articles. If you’d prefer to listen to audio of these articles, you can subscribe to them on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud or YouTube. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
The author graciously has granted this website permission to reprint selected essays.
The views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of APS Radio News or of its affiliate, APS Radio.
war mongers editorials
