New York Times Shines the Light, Readership Mind Boggled

Yesterday the long awaited, much anticipated Dutch Safety Board interim report (PDF) on MH17 came down the chute. What an embarrassment that must have been for Holland. Now the whole world knows they’re sellouts too. With the world’s resources at their disposal, all they can tell us is “MH17 came down?” We’ll never know who shot down that Malaysian Airlines plane over Ukraine, but rest assured the New York Times has won the propaganda  in America. Here’s how you can tell.

This morning is already full of surprises though, why The New York Times has allowed a dissenting view on Ukraine and Vladimir Putin to pass the pearly gates of editorial Olympus. The West Is Wrong to See Putin as the Enemy, “why this must be some kind of test of readership opinion,” I thought. Boris Kagarlitsky, who’s director of the Institute of Globalization and Social Movements in Moscow, somehow his views on the new Cold War made it to those illustrious pages. But before I get all glossy eyed over NYTs comeuppances here, the comments section there glows black and blue with bruising troll-ishness.

Someone known as Raven55, they’re up there on top deprecating anyone telling Russia’s side as “without a moral compass.” Someone with the iconic Internet label “Juris”, they just come out and tell us Russia will always be barbaric. Then “LM” reflects on the nowadays intellect of NYTs readership…. “Boris, you have no idea about the West. The sentence above disqualifies you from commenting on politics.”

So only Americans have “ideas” about the world? Is this the “exceptionalness” Mr. Madman Obama disclosed to us? We are so, so smart. But wait! “There is hope,” I said. John Riehle, who uses his real name in novel fashion, he’s got other “ideas” of the world. And since I like his thinking, here’s his comment:

“The majority of the responses to Boris say everything necessary about the degree to which a vicious campaign of anti-Russian propaganda has penetrated popular thinking among Americans that depend on the corporate media and US politicians for their information about the world. This level of mass delusion is an obstacle to seeing and understanding the nature of the situation and supporting a negotiated solution, while it is a positive basis for supporting a disastrous expansion and intensification of the war. At this point one might almost say that the less Americans “know” about Russia, Ukraine, the US and NATO the more they might be capable of understanding the interaction between them.”

Ah well. John is not alone in his modernity, but he is,sadly, vastly outnumbered by the likes of the Dave Hancocks who enthrall us all with their acumen, “An interesting perspective, sort of, Boris. And, yes, the fact you’re based in Moscow is not lost on your readers.” See there! Those geography lessons I gave back when did not fall on deaf ears in America. Why they even reached central New Jersey, wherever the hell that is. Reading on, Harry (the scotch drinking rabbit), johnp (who was too tired to use space-bar), and some San Fran couch general named Nathan Lemkhin, they’re all as transparent as the purest fused silica. The extent of their intellects reaching deep, deep, deep into THE READER-LISTENER zone. 

You got it, you smart ones out there, now didn’t ya? The propaganda, the party line, Big Brother’s ham hock fist grabbed all of them by the jugular. Their rhetoric a menagerie of Reuters, Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal and 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue dogma. Then Oprah watcher Nelle chimes in…

“For propaganda to be effective it cannot offend common sense. and must have some basis in fact. Mr. Kagarlitsky’s piece might not be scoffed at by a Russian audience, but it is a total failure for those reading it in the West.”

“Good morning Mr. Baquet.” “Why yes, yes, the test went as planned sir, our reader hate Putin’s guts and they’re ready to kick his Rusky ass.” “No sir, I don’t think the 20 percent that responded positively toward Russia will be a problem.”  Yes sir, we can continue heralding the great society, the red scare, we have the readership by the balls.”

Well, something like that.

Two cups of great Lavazza out of our very own expresso machine, and I’ve an epiphany.  I’m wondering what it feels like to be a complete nincompoop? What must it be like to wake up, look down at one’s bedroom slippers (if you wear such contraptions) and to ponder through the Sandman’s nightly toil, “today I’ll change the world with my utter American perfection.” And then to wander into the machine shop or bank office, or used car lot, to take up air and space…. on a world that needs more.

Well, if you ARE what you read idiots, become this. When the reunification of Germany was being contemplated spoken assurances in between the west and Russia’s Mikhail Gorbachev seem acutely relevant here today. And I quote from Germany’s Spiegel:

“After speaking with many of those involved and examining previously classified British and German documents in detail, SPIEGEL has concluded that there was no doubt that the West did everything it could to give the Soviets the impression that NATO membership was out of the question for countries like Poland, Hungary or Czechoslovakia.”

Yesterday I told a friend in America, “Do you know how you determine the good guy these days?” “No,” he replied. “The good guy is the one dying in the images we see in the news,” I told him. Since the Berlin Wall came down Russia has expanded nowhere. In the Middle East Gaza and Syria had all the “dead people” images until ISIS came into view. Russian speakers in east Ukraine seem to be doing all the dying in Eurasia these days too. And NATO? Well, they’re threatening to put missiles on Moscow’s front doorstep.

We’re so smart, now aren’t we? You CEOs out there, you industrialist billionaires, what if the world discovers your secret? What if your growth perspectives based on killing people and stealing their birthright are known? How will those bedroom slippers look when the world realizes how utterly stupid, shallow, and greedy you are? Hey, we asked for world peace at the Miss America contest idiots!

Smart leaders and industrialists, smart New York Times trolls, they’d be demanding this… not Vladimir Putin’s head.