As of this writing, a tweet by disgraced Broadway fraud convict Roland Scahill has 90 thousand shares and 362 thousand likes, which if you’re not used to Twitter is a ridiculously high amount that nobody generally hits. The tweet features nothing but four seconds of video footage from the John McCain funeral, and the caption “George W. Bush sneaking a piece of candy to Michelle Obama is warming my heart.”
George W. Bush sneaking a piece of candy to Michelle Obama is warming my heart . pic.twitter.com/pAtDdIcSeB
— Roland Scahill (@rolandscahill) September 1, 2018
That’s it. That’s all it took to win Twitter for the day. Those four seconds of footage have been circulated around TV news stations to ‘ooh’s and ‘ahh’s of fawning establishment pundits yammering incessantly about how the death of War Hero John McCain™ has let everyone Put Aside Our Political Differences™ and Come Together As Americans™ to celebrate the life of a man who dedicated his entire political career to sowing death, suffering and devastation at every opportunity. A war criminal giving a piece of candy to the wife of another war criminal at the funeral of a war criminal is all it took to get mainstream American brains gushing with dopamine and oxytocin.
Because that’s how compartmentalized Americans are from the reality of what war is and what it means. The explosions, the screams, the charred and shredded human bodies, the chaos and displacement and all the suffering, terrorism, slavery and rape that necessarily always comes with it, the million Iraqis killed under Bush, the unfathomable humanitarian disasters created in Libya and Syria under Obama, all the devastation created in all the military interventions McCain helped push for, all of that is so peripheral and distant in American consciousness that it can be dismissed with a wave of the hand and a piece of fucking candy.
And it isn’t really their fault. The more woke Americans who’ve grown to resent their brainwashed countrymen hate it when I say this, but it isn’t. It’s not a coincidence that the nation with the most powerful military in the history of civilization and the most billionaires in the history of civilization also happens to have the most sophisticated propaganda system in the history of civilization, and that propaganda system is pointed at them from a very early age to normalize the war machine that is used to protect the empire of the billionaires.
The United States is the most important player in the imperial alliance centralized around it, and therefore its citizenry are necessarily the most propagandized people on earth. You can’t have the populace of such an important nation suddenly demanding that troops be brought home and the resources being spent on bombs be spent eliminating the economic inequality on which your empire depends instead, so you’ve got to get into their minds early and aggressively to manipulate the way they think about war. Everything from flag worship to the fetishization of military personnel to Pentagon-controlled Hollywood movies are used from early childhood to install the assumption that their nation’s bloated military budget is only ever going toward good and never evil, and to prime their minds for the war propaganda they will be fed by the plutocrat-owned news media.
McCain killed people in Vietnam and supported killing people elsewhere. GWBush killed 1 million Iraqis and Obama killed thousands and brought slavery to Libya. But Bush gives Michelle Obama a piece of candy so let's just forget about all that.
— Margaret Kimberley (@freedomrideblog) September 1, 2018
Day after day after day after day, from when they are small until their dying breath, the American psyche is pummeled with this relentless assault upon its natural sense of empathy and reason. So it’s understandable that every now and then one of them snaps and shoots up a building full of people, inflicting the same kind of mass murder at home they’ve been trained to accept as normal abroad. And it’s understandable that they’d be duped into thinking the monstrous evils that have been inflicted upon our world by Bush, Obama and McCain (and Henry Kissinger, who also made an appearance at the funeral) are innocent little oopsie-poopsies which pale in comparison to something so monumentally heroic as correcting a woman who called Obama an Arab once, or sharing a piece of candy.
But if Americans are ever going to escape from the chains of oligarchy, they’re necessarily going to have to cease consenting to imperialism. Without their resources being funneled into hundreds of bases and countless military and intelligence operations overseas, there’d be a chance to fix America’s infrastructure and make sure everyone gets what they need. Without the US economy being propped up with the barrel of a gun to ensure the success of globalist agendas, Americans would have a chance to create a real economy based on real things that they themselves own and control. Without the ability to use the US war machine to advance their agendas, the oligarchs who control America’s economy, government and media will be unable to rule over the increasingly wealthy and powerful masses. Without the best technology and the brainpower of the brightest Americans being sucked up into the war machine, the nation’s most creative minds will lose their incentive to point their ingenuity at death and destruction, and can point it at useful innovations instead.
And then the propaganda machine which holds the whole empire together will be useless and impotent, and the shackles on American minds will crumble. And the rest of the empire will follow.
We live in a media culture that basically says that even if Henry Kissinger, George W. Bush & Dick Cheney show up to a nationally televised political event, it is uncouth to even gently mention the wars they initiated & the thousands of deaths their decisions are responsible for.
— David Sirota (@davidsirota) September 1, 2018
The first step in this direction is to cease normalizing the monsters who facilitate human butchery around the world. Stop believing they need to be regarded as “heroes” just because they wore a uniform at some point. Stop believing that it’s ever okay to push for needless wars which butcher innocent men, women and children. Stop believing a man can facilitate the slaughter of a million people and not have that clearly be his single defining legacy. Stop believing that it’s worse to criticize a warmonger than it is to be a warmonger.
Because if it’s up to the bastards who rule us currently, they’ll happily keep shushing us into polite silence while continuing to march us along our current ecocidal, omnicidal trajectory until it gets us all killed. They’ll make saints of warmongering empire loyalists and uphold their murderous lives as exemplary and virtuous, and if we say we want to move things in a different direction we’ll be shouted down with buzzwords about heroism and decency until we shut up. If we leave it up to these pricks, we’ll become the first species to go extinct due to politeness.
Stop letting them normalize and elevate people who embody the very essence of the imperial oppression machine. Stop letting them humanize psychopathic war whores. Stop letting them twist this into a conversation about respecting those with different political opinions and make it about what it is: the mass murder of innocents for power and profit. Refuse to be reprimanded into polite silence. Refuse to die of politeness. Seize control of the narrative and force sanity into our imperiled world.
_______________________
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ADDENDUM
The Scahill Dossier
Click on the orange button to read the Manhattan District Attorney's Indictment
DA Vance: Theatre Producer Indicted for Stealing From Investors in Fake Broadway Play
“Play” Purportedly Based on Life of Opera Singer Kathleen Battle, “Starring” Lupita Nyong’o
Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance, Jr., today announced the indictment of ROLAND SCAHILL, 41, for stealing $165,000 from seven people through a fraudulent investment scheme in a fake Broadway play. The defendant is charged in a New York State Supreme Court indictment with Criminal Possession of Stolen Property in the Second Degree, Grand Larceny in the Third Degree, and Scheme to Defraud in the First Degree. [1]
“This indictment closes the curtain on Roland Scahill’s phantom production,” said District Attorney Vance. “The defendant is accused of putting on an elaborate performance to steal $165,000 from seven people in less than three months – going so far as to tell his victims that he secured Kathleen Battle’s life rights, that Lupita Nyong’o had agreed to star in the production, and that Broadway’s historic Booth Theatre had agreed to run the show. Even worse, in an attempt to steal additional money from those he had already victimized, Scahill is alleged to have told the investors that he secured a contract with Netflix to film the play and make it available to its millions of subscribers. My Office will continue working to safeguard the integrity of this vital industry.”
According to court documents and statements made on the record in court, between October 13, 2014 and January 8, 2015, SCAHILL stole $165,000 from seven would-be investors through a scheme he orchestrated in which he purported to be the lead producer of a new Broadway play based on the life of famed opera singer Kathleen Battle. SCAHILL, who owns a production company called RMS2 Productions, claimed that he had purchased the rights to Kathleen Battle’s life story, that he had contracted with Oscar-winning actress Lupita Nyong’o to star in the play, and that he had reserved the Booth Theatre on Broadway to run the production. However, representatives for those parties attest that they were never approached by the defendant and never contracted with the defendant.
In the initial stages of the scam, the defendant told the would-be investors that he was raising capital at a price of $15,000 per share in order to fund the early stages of the production. SCAHILL told the victims that only investors who participated in the early stages of the investment process would receive subsidiary rights in the production, allowing each investor the potential to garner multiple income streams in any subsequent book or film deals based on the play.
According to court documents, in January 2015, SCAHILL informed all of the investors that Netflix had agreed to film a performance of The KB Project and make the play available to its subscribers. Citing his fictitious contract with Netflix, SCAHILL offered the existing investors the opportunity to participate in a second round of funding before he would open the opportunity to a larger group of outside investors. Based on the strength of SCAHILL’S representations about the success of the planned production, two of the victims invested additional money.
In the fall of 2015, after several investors demanded the return of their money, SCAHILL sent them checks. Each of the checks bounced due to insufficient funds, and the defendant ceased all communications with his victims.
SCAHILL allegedly spent the stolen funds on personal expenses, including more than $129,000 on stocks and stock option contracts; approximately $23,000 in personal credit card payments; $18,000 to pay rent for his apartment; and nearly $10,000 on various food, alcohol, and entertainment purchases.
Assistant District Attorney William Furber is handling the prosecution of the case under the supervision of Assistant District Attorney Archana Rao, Chief of the Financial Frauds Bureau; and Executive Assistant District Attorney Michael Sachs, Chief of the Investigation Division. Paralegal Anna Vaynman and Senior Rackets Investigator Anthony DiCaprio assisted with the investigation.
[1] The charges contained in the indictment are merely allegations, and the defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty. All factual recitations are derived from documents filed in court and statements made on the record in court.
Defendant Information:
ROLAND SCAHILL, D.O.B. 1/17/1975
New York, NY
• Criminal Possession of Stolen Property in the Second Degree, a class C felony, one count
• Grand Larceny in the Third Degree, a class D felony, seven counts
• Scheme to Defraud in First Degree, a class E felony, one count
Caitlin Johnstone is a brave journalist, political junkie, relentless feminist, champion of the 99 percent. And a powerful counter-propaganda tactician.
Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found
In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” -- acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump -- a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all.— Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report
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