Perceptions Managed

Everything happens for a reason.

It’s funny, but I hear that all the time about my own personal situation, the disintegration of my big relationship, the deceptions and lies that lead to that…and the overall mess I seem to be in.

But when it comes to our country’s situation, the disintegration of Iraq, the deceptions and lies that lead to that…and the overall mess of our “democracy”…I keep hearing that life is random, filled with mere coincidences and not a result of an agenda.

It’s just incompetence.

Bullshit.

It is bullshit in my personal life, and it’s bullshit writ large for the state of the world. I had my perceptions managed by my Ex. She got what she wanted and I embraced denial. She profited. Mightily.

So, now I am working on a story about the role of perception management in our government and their policies. How they sell occupation to the Iraqis with bogus news stories. That whole “soldiers writing news” thing that came and went about a week ago. Three companies are making $100 million each to sell this crap to the hapless, increasingly insurgent Iraq people.

I won’t be able to go there, but this has been going on for fifty years. In Iran and Guatemala in the 1950’s, domestically and internationally in the 1960s…curtailed by revelations of CIA hijinx in the 1970’s, but re-instituted by a presidential directive in 1983. It lead to our mess in Central America and Iran-Contra. The news, my friends, is a code that has to be deciphered. It’s filled planted news designed to sell us enemies, to gin up wars and, therefore, create new markets for military-industrial products.

We have the Lincoln Group doing it in Iraq. And we have the Rendon Group doing it here. They’ve been creating the perception of necessary wars since we invaded Panama. John Rendon recently bragged about it in Rolling Stone.

Folks, everything happens for a reason. Syriana tries to let us in on it a bit. Not as much as I’d like, but perhaps that’s too much for our delicate stomachs. We have a hard truth to swallow. Our perceptions are being managed on a daily basis. It went into overdrive during the 2000 election recount, and it hasn’t stopped. It’s not that the information isn’t out there. You just have to work to find it. Read multiple sources…news from outside the bubble. You have to trace the money and see who benefits from what. You need to think about motivations and holes in stories…and why those holes never get plugged.

The Pentagon is spying on us, they’ve spent $100s of millions to build the case for invading Iraq, for managing the news once we got there…and for placing stories throughout the media. Guys like Bob Woodward get access for a reason. No coincidence. It was no coincidence his book told all those Red State voters that W talked to God about invading Iraq and God said, “Don’t worry…I’ll sort ’em out later.” That helped him with Evangelicals in the election. It scared Blue Staters…but Rove said, “Who cares…we ain’t gonna win those states anyway.” Woodward is no better than Judy Miller.

Judy Miller was working with John Rendon, by the way, helping to push faked intelligence as gospel to the New York Times. It was a PsyOp…a psychological warfare operation. Most of what we see as news is now a PsyOp. Read and read and read…study how the CIA conducted itself throughout the Cold War and you’ll see the pattern, compile the evidence. Investigate Team B during the 70s and how they rewrote the intelligence estimate of the USSR. Overnight, it went from a collapsing power to a virulent menace on the march. George H.W. Bush was head of CIA and he put Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle on the case…the case for viewing the Soviets as the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism, a powerful enemy…a power that required a massive upsurge in military spending. CIA analysts disagreed, but the fix was in. They saw a waning threat, so they were left out of the process.

Good old Team B…sounds a bit familiar, eh? Perceptions were managed and it became the Reagan anti-communist agenda. But the USSR was dying…and Reagan’s “victory” was going to come no matter what he did. That’s why Congress asked in 1990 how the CIA failed to predict the fall of the USSR. Because they rewrote the intelligence! Rinse, repeat.

It happens over and over again. Embedded journalists, terrorism scares, anthrax attacks we can’t figure out, a Bin Laden we can’t find…and on and on. We are through the looking glass, people.

The real problem is denial…once again. I had to accept that I was in denial, that everything happened for a reason. So should we all. Let’s stop clinging to fairy tales about democracy and incompetence and look at the course of events, the flow of money and who benefits from what’s been going on.

Our perceptions can only be managed if we want to managed. Believe me, I know.

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