Meet the New Propaganda War, Same as the Old Propaganda War

Longtime readers of this blog will know that I am a huge fan of surrealistic English singer-songwriter Robyn Hitchcock. Uncle Robyn began his unlikely pop career with a band named the Soft Boys (some of whom later backed him as The Egyptians in his later pop incarnation). Perhaps the best known Soft Boys songs is an anomaly in the band's typical oeuvre of psychedelic jangle-pop songs... I Wanna Destroy You was written as a spoof of the English punk scene, but nobody at the time seemed to get the joke because the song is a legitimate punk barnburner. It's also a song that I return to every time there is a push to get this country into another war (and we're in one with Iran, you can't just kill a general and say you're not already at war), since it is a scathing indictment of the News Entertainment Industrial Complex which hasn't seen a war it doesn't like:





Just like Robyn, I feel it coming on again, just like it did before...

The infuriating thing about the current propaganda push is that it is identical to the same propaganda push, as MoveOn.org demonstrates with this montage:

The Trump administration is using the same reckless arguments that got us into the Iraq War to take us to war with Iran. We don't need ANOTHER senseless war. #NoWarWithIran pic.twitter.com/EPRbajTV0k

— MoveOn (@MoveOn) January 3, 2020

Various news organizations are even trundling out the same mendacious monsters who lied the country into the second Gulf War, people that a sane society would have shipped off the the Hauge, or at least Leavenworth. We are even hearing the same 'if you're not with us, you're against us' lie. Heavens forbid a nuanced approach to a subject as serious as yet another land war in Asia, waged while we still have two continuing wars in the region. As Robyn sang, "A pox upon the media and everything you read, they tell you your opinions and they're very good indeed."

We're already at war, folks, no matter what any politician or pundit will tell you. It remains to be seen what sort of escalation is possible, but we already started the shooting. I just hope that people remember the past seventeen years, and the propaganda war waged on the American public. I've listened to enough news for the day, it's time to sit back and listen to some righteously angry music.