There are always two sides to every story. In modern times it seems that these include the official story, and the actual story. For the Corporate Owned News, there is only one side to every story; the official story. In fact, it has gotten so bad in the US that now the Corporate Owned News literally talks about how officials need to censor anything and everything that does not adhere to the official story.
For The Blob, one side fits all.
You can tell when one side doesn’t have a leg to stand on if they refuse to even let the other side join the debate. If you start out a discourse by declaring your opponent to be so evil as to preclude them from participation in an open debate, then you obviously intend to prevent debate. You haven’t got a leg to stand on, and it shows.
There hasn’t been an open international debate between the US and Russia for a long time. It isn’t because Russia is recalcitrant; it is because the US is belligerent. The Blob has spent the last decade or more in rapid response mode to the globalization of information through the internet. Narrative management has become the new battlefront for The Blob. This is in no small part due to the fact that while The Blob is strong financially and militarily, it is weak politically. No one who has not already been absorbed by The Blob likes or trusts The Powers That Be.
Currently, the US narrative managers are in panic mode about Russia making any valid points about the Ukraine situation, including the fact that NATO has been expanding and pressuring Russia for decades, the fact that the US was behind the 2014 coup in the Ukraine that installed a rabid anti-Russian government, or the fact that the Ukrainians that the US and Europe are arming are far right wing and neo-Nazi types. So The Blob labels all these facts as “Russian propaganda” without a hint of irony that this response is purely US propaganda.
One relatively simple way to resist the narrative management juggernaut of The Blob is to refute Russia-phobia and support open dialog with our fellow humans there. Why not have open debates with the Russians, as well as the Chinese? This holds for Iran, Venezuela, North Korea, and many other countries that the US has forsaken in order to shut down international public discourse.
The Blob knows that its arguments are politically weak. What The Blob is counting on, is for the people to remain fractured and distracted. Our response should be to come together, and focus. Focus on what The Blob doesn’t want us to hear. Talk about how Russia, and China and Venezuela and Syria and Palestine and Iran and North Korea are all filled with people, just like us. An open debate between nations, held live on TV at the United Nations, would be a really great start, where each nation gets to present its vision of how international relations can be sorted out. And yes, Russia actually gets to speak to the world and the people in the US through US television. What a strange thought. This is not something that is allowed by The Blob. In fact, even talking about how we are not allowed to talk about it is also not allowed by The Blob. I’ve just committed two thought crimes in a mere two sentences.
Aren’t you at all interested to hear Russia’s side of the story? Or what about China’s point of view? The Blob will tell you that you don’t need to hear from barbarians; everything they say is propaganda! In fact, you won’t hear any points of view that have not been endorsed by The Blob. In fact, if you say you want to hear what Russia has to say, minions of The Blob will call you a “Putin Puppet”, an “appeaser” or worst of all, a useful idiot. Notice how none of these are substantive responses, they are all ad hominin attempts to discredit, proving that The Blob has no counterargument.
What is The Blob hiding from us? If Russia is so evil, then we should be able to tell when we hear them speak to us. We can compare the words coming from The Blob, to the words coming from the allegedly evil Russians. As it is now, people in the US never get to hear what Russia is saying unless they go to overseas news sources. That should tell you something right there.
If US journalism is so free of state influence, then why don’t “journalists” routinely bring on Russian guests to give their side of the story? Why is that something that never happens? Why not bring on Palestinians, Iranians, Chinese and Syrians to learn what they have their say? If you asked “reporters” why this is so, they will tell you that “people in the US don’t want to hear propaganda from the Russians!” Of course, what they mean by that is The Blob only wants you to hear domestic propaganda. The foreign type is dangerous.
Here’s an idea that might even make the Corporate Owned News wing of The Blob some money. Why not have international TV debates sponsored at the UN and televised around the world. Think of how fun it could be, Biden debating Putin on live TV. I’d break out the popcorn.
I am not talking about bringing on US-sponsored talking heads from those countries, I am talking about actual representatives from the countries we are excluding from our national debates.
This all melds into the current fervor over “disinformation” in the waging of information warfare, as defined by The Blob. The reason we have information warfare is that we don’t have debates anymore. But obviously, you only need to engage in information warfare if you won’t have actual debates.
Until people in the US start getting more curious and clamoring for information from other countries, to hear other people’s points of view, then the public will remain uniformed, fractured and distracted. It is critical for people to demand that The Blob and their media buddies regularly bring Russian and Chinese spokespersons on to offer their point of view. We should all demand free and open international debates that we can all tune in to and therefore participate in.
I think the ratings would be off the charts.
First Amendment Free Speech Rights in the US mean nothing if the US denies those same rights to other countries around the world and blocks their ability to engage with Americans. But don’t expect The Blob to change its ways, as long as many people in the US are comfortable with hearing only one side, then the Corporate Owned News will be more than happy to deliver.
Nothing messes up US narrative management like an open debate with countries that have been silenced by The Blob. But as long as one side fits all in the US, we are stuck with The Blob’s story, which means we are pretty much clueless.