American exceptionalism oozes from the pores of recycled political hacks turned paid pundits, elected war freaks and the state-corporate media parrots as the anti-Russian propaganda spews from every orifice of our corrupt establishment. With the months constant smearing, disinformation campaigns and fear-mongering over imminent terror attacks in Sochi reaching a crescendo by the opening ceremonies the onslaught is vile and ongoing. The Cold War never ended in the minds of a good amount of our sordid political class and their interlocking networks of warmongering think tanks and media outlets whose festering hatred for all that is Russian burst forth anew last year when the reviled Vladimir Putin punked Barry and the boys with his granting of asylum to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, swept in to pounce on a John Kerry gaffe to prevent another Middle Eastern war in Syria and topped it off with a New York Times editorial published on that holy day of September 11th calling out our very exceptionalism. The Sochi Olympics were naturally going to be payback time for an establishment scorned.
In his Monday column “Diagnosing Sochi Media Coverage: Virulent Russophobia” libertarian Justin Raimondo of Antiwar.com excoriates the corrupt careerists, lackeys, presstitutes and stenographers of the putrid U.S. media for their complicity in trashing the Olympics. I excerpt some pieces below:
Any illusions some naïve soul may have had about the objectivity of the US media has been dispelled by their embarrassing performance at the Sochi Olympics: the chorus of whining complaints might as well have been written for them by the US State Department – which, come to think of it, is entirely within the realm of the possible given the imperious tone. The water, the toilets, the hotels – nothing pleases our pampered media divas, whose hatred of all things Russian oozes from between the lines of their "reporting" like pus from an old wound.
All the antipathy we saw aimed at Russia during the cold war years is now being revomited up by the political class, albeit in a new flavor: instead of genuine martyrs like Andrei Sakharov and Alexandr Solzhenitsyn being lionized, we see the professional provocateurs of "Pussy Riot" elevated by Western media to the status of "dissident" stars. Why do these heavily made-up show biz types merit our attention? Well, didn’t they desecrate a Russian Orthodox cathedral by stripping off their clothes, screaming obscenities, and insulting parishioners? Clearly this is the type of "dissident" the American media can get behind. (Try that in New York City, ladies, and see what happens.)
Our shameless media is always eager to place itself at the disposal of the State. If it isn’t David Gregory calling for the arrest of Glenn Greenwald, it’s the ubiquitous Richard Engel of NBC "News" – tireless cheerleader of US-sponsored "revolutions" abroad – deliberately downloading a virus onto his computer and then pontificating about how the minute you enter Russia you are bound to be "hacked."
And
Confirming George Orwell’s theory that sport, international games, and militant nationalism are all inextricably intertwined, Sochi is the stage on which the new cold war is being fought. The battlefield is in the column inches given over in the Western media to the alleged shortcomings of Putin’s "Potemkin Village," as the critics are calling it. However, the nature of their complaints – the lack of luxuries to which they feel entitled, and which much of the rest of the world goes largely without – just underscores the utter cluelessness of Western propagandists posing as "reporters." They fail to understand why this makes them look bad to everyone outside of Brooklyn’s hipster precincts and Washington’s tonier neighborhoods.
Raimondo as usual is spot on and his personal bullshit detector always set on high and his willingness to call out American establishment hypocrisy whenever it occurs: a tireless job in these grim days of the mew American century. That the Olympics are supposed to be a sporting event and entertainment for millions who turn to such distractions to escape the daily drudgery that they are subjected to in a post capitalist corporate state that in many areas has all of the indignities and cruelty of the old Soviet system that our elite punditry so denounce. It is sad that the agents of The Homeland have to once again exploit the games for cheap political gain to bolster their mania for more wars, an uncontrollable urge that borders on that of a pack of pederasts.
While Putin is certainly no saint his counterparts in The Homeland are every bit his equal in terms of repression albeit in a less ostentatious form. Our very own American Stasi, the NSA conducts illegal (at least when it comes to that antiquated and pesky U.S. Constitution) surveillance and data-mining of the domestic population and stores the data for some vague future purpose which will undoubtedly include persecution, interrogations, show trials and according to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia even the future rounding up and internment of American citizens. This sort of stuff isn’t on the level of Putin but rather of Stalin and who needs the NKVD when you have the NSA and the Department of Homeland Security. The greatest achievement of the rotten domestic lickspittle media during their run towards the Olympic gold for their propaganda is that they are able to foist off Putin as the devil himself while never bothering to mention that we are the ones living in Hell and have been ever since September 11, 2001 the ‘day that changed everything’.
So the state media smear campaign rolls on as lunatics, degenerates and reprobates are trotted out on the Sunday morning bloviation circuit where the trifecta of the deranged anti-Muslim fanatic Peter King continues to insinuate that there will be a terrorist attack, Representative Michael McCaul vows that something will “detonate” and the ubiquitous Mike Rogers blasts the Russians for not sharing intelligence (translation: where is Edward Snowden hiding?) with the U.S. of A. The parallel track is of course the ongoing blasting of Putin for his dismal record on gay rights but what is left out is that there are a number of U.S. states that have laws against homosexuality that are every bit the equal of the Russian boss. There is however the lack of context, use of false equivalence and just plain lying that is the hallmark of all great propagandists be it Edward Bernays, Joseph Goebbels or Roger Ailes and his competitors the ability to successfully rise to the pinnacle of historical bullshit artists is both an art and a science. One needs to look no further than the ongoing coverage of the Winter Olympics which will endure long after the closing ceremonies as a case study in how it’s done.
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