From The Ramparts

   

                                                     From The Ramparts

                                                  Junious Ricardo Stanton

                                                       Lessons from History

 "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." George Santayana

In George Orwell’s novel 1984 the main protagonist Winston Smith works in an agency tasked with rewriting and altering history so the ruling party can control the narrative as it lords it over the masses in their totalitarian society. Most perceptive people would agree that with each passing day the US becomes more and more like the dystopian society depicted in Orwell’s 1984.

In the US the corporate mind control apparatus, six giant conglomerates own and control almost all of the electronic and print media and much of what is on the Internet https://www.morriscreative.com/6-corporations-control-90-of-the-media-in-america/  . They constantly bombard us with what they want us to believe and accept. It is brainwashing and mind entrainment at a quantum level George Orwell never even dreamed of.

I call it promulgating the Three B’s: believe, buy and behave. The media programs us to see the world in certain ways and to think any other interpretation is the work of “conspiracy theorists”, rubes or tin foil hat wearers.  The media presents models they want us to emulate, imitate and be like and of course their advertising arm showers us with lies and manipulates our psyche so we buy gadgets and gismos we don’t really need.

Just like in 1984, the corporate media (our real life/real time version of the Ministry of Truth) scrubs history, programs us to have short attention spans and limited understanding or recollection of past events all designed to make us malleable to their values, world view and their agenda of personal and global hegemony. Couple this 27/7 mind control with a failing education system that presents and reinforces a fake reality and false history and we have a clueless populous. This is designed to make us mindless pawns and zombies easily manipulated and duped into doing their bidding and fighting amongst ourselves while the 1%ers remain in power, harvest us then kick us to the curb.

Step back from the mind control machine’s bogus narrative about Russiagate and their obsessive focus on Trump’s personality (which they didn’t do to Hillary, Obama or George W. Bu$h) and look at the policies of Trump and the 1%’s minions in Congress. They recently enacted massive cut taxes that even they admit will raise the national debt over a trillion dollars while simultaneously increasing military spending (the US already outspends all the world put together on Military funding) further increasing the national debt!  They are imposing economic sanctions, engaging in currency and trade wars against Syria, Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela and now they are threatening Turkey. Trump raised tariffs against Canada and Mexico and threatened to do the same against the EU!

Don’t they know trade disputes can lead to military conflict? The Opium Wars were the result of the West’s reaction to China’s Qing Dynasty shutting opium imports into China from India and because the Chinese refused to trade for inferior Western goods opting only for payment in silver. The British and later the French, British (and US in a limited role) waged war against and defeated China so they could open China as a lucrative market for opium and Western goods! https://www.nam.ac.uk/explore/opium-war-1839-1842

 America’s 1940’s policies towards Japan: seizing their US assets, embargoing oil and other much needed materials, canceling treaties and trade agreements with a rising industrialized nation that had few indigenous natural resources that was wholly dependent upon imports and trade with other nations which put Japan in an untenable position. Roosevelt’s unwillingness to negotiate with Japan goaded them into military action; action many scholars believe he deliberately did hoping Japan would respond militarily thus giving Roosevelt a rationale to enter WWII!

We are seeing a repeat of this today with Trump imposing crippling sanctions against Russian oil, banking and other facets of its economy, engaging in a tariff tit for tat against China and being bellicose towards other nations and trade blocks like the European Union. Keep in mind; this is just on the economic front. Geopolitically the US is contending with China for access and control of the South China Sea (keep in mind Modern China like Japan in the 1940’s is heavily reliant on oil imports to fuel their growing economy), US puppet NATO is encroaching on Russian borders and the US media’s demonization of Putin and Russia does not bode well for future relations.

As for as North Korea goes, aside from the fact both North and South Korea want normalized relations, the North could easily leverage its trillion dollars in rare minerals and natural resources https://www.quora.com/What-natural-resources-does-North-Korea-have, to secure military protection and partnerships from China and Russia in its negotiations with the US.

So far Russia and China have exhibited restraint, they’ve signed more mutual trade and security agreements between themselves, both are key players in the BRICS economic alliance that offers an alternative to US imperial hegemony and both nations are dumping their holdings of US Treasury Bonds and debt https://money.cnn.com/2018/07/30/investing/russia-us-debt-treasury/index.html , https://www.quora.com/Russia-and-China-are-selling-massive-US-treasury-bonds-Will-this-affect-the-stock-market-if-this-goes-on . How will all this bode for the American Empire?

Here’s another historical fact, when President Herbert Hoover took office in 1929 he inherited a budget surplus, GDP was booming but the economy was taking a downturn. He cut taxes even further (Presidents Harding and Coolidge before him had cut taxes and spending, and paid down the national debt the only time “supply side economics” has ever worked in this country) but the economy was still unraveling. In 1929 the Stock Market crashed and Hoover and Congress increased tariffs massively in 1930. His tax cuts and tariffs exacerbated and possibly prolonged the Great Depression!

Will Trump’s tax cuts, tariffs and trade wars result in an adverse economic consequences or military conflict? Only time will tell, but if we are ignorant of the past, we put ourselves at a severe disadvantage.

                                                -30-