The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of this site. This site does not give financial, investment or medical advice.
As has been documented by such authorities on U.S. military spending as Winslow T. Wheeler, Robert Higgs, and others, America spends each year around $1.5 trillion for its military but hides at least around $800 billion of it (so as for the U.S. not to be publicly recognized as spending half of this entire planet’s military expenses) by spending it from other federal Departments than the Defense Department; or, “The US National Security Budget for 2023/24 is approximately $1.5 Trillion”, as Wheeler headlined a year ago, on 1 May 2023. He detailed there how approximately $800 billion of that $1.5T was budgeted as being from the Veterans Affairs Department ($320.8 billion, all of that for the military), Homeland Security Department ($103.2B for the military), Treasury Department ($78.2B+$13.1B=$88.3B for the military), State Department ($46.4B for the military), Energy Department ($35.7B for the military), Justice Department & others ($12.1B for the military), plus $146.0B national security share of interest on the federal debt. All of that non-‘Defense’ Department U.S. Government military spending totaled to $752.5B. He also mentioned “Supplementals” as then being “To come”; and, now, as-of the 19 April 2024 House passage (“Roll Call 142 | Bill Number: H. Res. 1160”) of the procedural motion “On agreeing to the resolution Agreed to by the Yeas and Nays: 316 – 94 (Roll no. 142)” so innocuously titled as to hide the dirty deed that they had just done, it added $26.38B to support Israel’s annihilation and/or expulsion of the 2.3 million Gazans, plus $60.84B to extend Ukraine’s war at least until President Biden becomes re-elected, plus $8.12 billion to encourage and support the leaders of Taiwan to declare Taiwan’s independence from China (of which it currently is a Province) so that the U.S. Government will have won Taiwan and would then need to invade China in order to defend from China that new U.S. colony (‘ally’). The “Supplemental” this year (Ukraine+Gaza+Taiwan) totals to $95.3B, which causes the original $886B ‘Defense’ (or Aggression) budget for this fiscal year to be:
And we are lazy thinkers for reasons that aren’t really our fault. The human brain is wired to select for cognitive ease, which means we tend to favor pathways of thought which require less mental strain in order to conserve energy — probably because our evolutionary ancestors needed all their mental energy for important stuff like finding food and avoiding saber-toothed tigers…
This lazy tendency to select for cognitive ease and defend the worldviews we construct as a result of that tendency is what gives rise to confirmation bias, because believing things which confirm our preexisting ideas about the world is easier than believing things which would blow our worldview apart.
It’s not so much that people buy into the mainstream propaganda worldview because humans are dumb, or because humans are selfish. Primarily, people buy into the mainstream propaganda worldview because humans are lazy.
By this I don’t mean to say that people don’t work hard enough or don’t stay busy enough; humans sleep less than any other primate on earth, and if anything the world would probably be better off if our species chilled out a bit. When I say people are lazy, I mean we are lazy thinkers.
And we are lazy thinkers for reasons that aren’t really our fault. The human brain is wired to select for cognitive ease, which means we tend to favor pathways of thought which require less mental strain in order to conserve energy — probably because our evolutionary ancestors needed all their mental energy for important stuff like finding food and avoiding saber-toothed tigers.
This lazy tendency to select for cognitive ease and defend the worldviews we construct as a result of that tendency is what gives rise to confirmation bias, because believing things which confirm our preexisting ideas about the world is easier than believing things which would blow our worldview apart.
If you’re among those who’ve gone from fully believing the mainstream propaganda worldview to realizing that everything you’ve been trained to believe about the world is a lie, then you know how uncomfortable and disruptive this shift can be. Our psyches are stacked toward avoiding that work and discomfort, in the same way they’re stacked against exercising regularly even though we know it’s good for us — which by the way also happens because there was a time when conserving energy was beneficial for our species’ survival, causing an adapted preference for rest over exertion.
This glitch in our minds is exploited by propagandists, who serve up power-serving information for us in ways that is palatable and easy to digest. You can see this immediately by watching Fox News or MSNBC; both channels are a nonstop deluge of propaganda promoting the information interests of the US-centralized empire, differing only in the types of confirmation bias they’re meant to appeal to.
Silicon Valley reinforces this dynamic, with social media algorithms dividing people into self-reinforcing echo chambers where empire propaganda can be easily slid down their throats without the slightest twinge of gag reflex.
So consent is manufactured for a giant, globe-spanning power structure using propaganda which takes advantage of cognitive biases that emerged in our consciousness due to evolutionary conditioning which arose under circumstances that no longer apply to human life in the modern world. We no longer need to seek out cognitive ease and preserve our worldviews to conserve mental energy for more pressing matters like avoiding prehistoric predators and other now-obsolete existential perils.
In fact, in modern times our existence as a species is actually being threatened by those ancient adaptations. The fact that nowadays we find ourselves psychologically herded en masse into worldviews which consent to a status quo that is killing our biosphere while marching us toward nuclear armageddon means our very survival depends on our overcoming our mental inertia toward learning the truth about our world, so that we can stop being propagandized away from revolution and start using the power of our numbers to force an end to that status quo.
Everything in this dystopian civilization is stacked to prevent this from happening. Our news media. Our entertainment. Our mainstream culture. It’s all engineered to prevent us from understanding the truth about our nation, our government, our society and our world, because if we all had a lucid understanding of how badly the powerful have been screwing us over this whole time, there’s no way the powerful would be allowed to remain in power.
MCViewPoint 