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Reprinted from caitlinjohnstone.com
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Westerners are taught that evil foreign "regimes" don't let their people criticize their government, meanwhile westerners themselves are trained to never criticize their government. They're trained instead to criticize decoy dichotomies "- false partisan nonsense "- not the real power.
Westerners are trained to criticize the actions of the other party or the beliefs of the other ideological faction, never the foreign or domestic policies which are fully supported by both parties. The power structure which maintains 99.9% of the same policies regardless of which party is officially in charge is the real government, but westerners are trained never to look there. They're instead trained to fixate on a false two-handed puppet show diversion.
Westerners say "Well I'd rather live here than China or Russia, because here I can criticize my government whenever I want!" Okay. But you don't. You don't criticize your government. You just criticize the puppets, and usually only the puppets of the party you don't like. You never criticize your actual government. Criticizing your actual government looks like attacking the murderous foreign policy that's supported by both parties. Attacking the authoritarian domestic policies supported by both parties. Attacking the exploitative capitalist systems supported by both parties.
Westerners are trained not to do that. They're trained to believe that "criticizing your government" looks like saying "Drumpf" or "Let's go Brandon" while the same tyrannical agendas march forward regardless of who sits in the White House.
Westerners are "free" in the same way "free range" chickens are free; sure the door's technically open and they can technically go outside, but they're conditioned never to do so. Western so-called liberal democracy purports to offer freedom while in practice only offering the illusion of freedom. It uses the most sophisticated propaganda machine ever devised to keep people trapped in an existence as blindly obedient gear-turners while cartoons about freedom play in their heads.
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The problem isn't "wokeism", the problem is that important conversations like US militarism and imperialism get bogged down in ridiculous conversations about whether the US military is too woke or not woke enough instead of how it's killing people and threatening the whole world. Engaging in either side of that debate protects the worst impulses of the most powerful and dangerous people in the world, because it moves the crosshairs of public scrutiny from the powerful to the other side of the "wokeness" culture war. This is happening all over the place.
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